Thanks, everyone! I hope the New Year is far better overall than this year has been for all of us.

@HMorton Eevee is definitely capable of the final output, especially where animation is involved. There are, however, going to be some glitches and issues here and there. It's always a tradeoff of speed vs. quality, but Eevee can get very close to Cycles in some cases.

Since Eevee is using "screen space" calculations to help speed up rendering for things like reflections and ambient occlusion, it will never be as accurate as Cycles, and you may find inconsistencies between certain frames. I think that is what caused the sudden shadow "flicker" as the camera is pulling away from the Christmas tree at the start of the shot. The AO is suddenly calculated differently because the screen space pixels are changing rapidly at that point. You may also notice that AO between surfaces will seem to appear or disappear based on camera angles whenever the camera is moving around an object. Again, this is the result of screen space AO calculations. Raytraced or path traced ambient occlusion would never have this problem, but it would take longer to render.

I think it would be great if eventually, we have raytraced AO and reflections options available for Eevee rendering in the future. Optional raytracing would allow the user to turn on path traced or raytraced AO for a certain shot to avoid this problem. I don't think Eevee will ever be used in a high-end production until these problems with screen space AO are fully resolved. It's not a big deal for smaller productions but could be a deal-breaker for studio work. We can, theoretically, reduce the visual inconsistencies with certain lighting tricks, but it's impossible to avoid them completely.

Adobe After Effects has a 3d plugin called Element 3D, which will render 3d objects and scenes in a composite from within After Effects. This addon has various features similar to Eevee, including screen space AO and reflections. However, it also allows the user to turn on high-quality raytraced AO or reflections if they wish. Obviously, doing this will require much more in terms of render time, but it helps avoid the anomalies associated with screen space effects rendering and can be used when trouble areas are unavoidable. I think for sure we will see this type of option in Eevee as well.

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