Detail Not Holding Up to Lighting

[bethjett]

When viewed head-on, my geometry of my object doesn’t stand out at all. I tried increasing the width of my inset and adding beveled edges, but I still can’t achieve the contrast I want for the darker areas. From an angle, I can see some detail, but the shading still looks off. When  you look at it straight on it disappears completely. Any tips on improving the visibility and shading of the geometry?

[Martin Bergwerf]

Make it less dark.

You can also have a look at the Color Management Settings in the Render Properties Panel.

[Omar Domenech]

Eevee is not great at global illumination and bounce lighting, for light to be calculated on those tight spots Cycles is what will get the job done. If you want to stick to Eevee then you have to use light probes to calculate and bake the shadow information or you can also use raytracing of course. Things may have changed a little when using probes lately, so you should watch the Fundamentals of lighting if you haven’t already. Here’s one of the lessons that will give you a quick understanding:

https://cgcookie.com/lessons/baked-light-with-irradiance-volumes

[bethjett]

Thank you! I didn’t even realized I had switched to Eevee since I normally workn in Cycles. I switched back, and it still didn’t help. I also played with the render color management settings, and that didn’t make a difference. I will check the course out and see if following that will solve my problem.

[Omar Domenech]

Are you sure you are not in material preview? There is no way in Cycles it would look like the image you posted, something funny is going on. Can you give us more details? Maybe even share the blend file.

[Author]

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