There are four main view shading modes in Blender: Wireframe, Solid, Look Dev and Render¹. Their main differences are as follows:
- Wireframe mode only displays the edges of objects (wireframes), allowing you to see all objects in the scene and also adjust the color of the wireframe and the color of the background¹.
-Solid mode displays the solid surface of an object, but uses simplified shading and lighting, without using shader nodes¹. Solid mode is suitable for modeling and sculpting, and also has many options to highlight the geometric features of an object, such as lighting, color, shadows, cavities, and more¹.
- Look Dev mode is dedicated to visualizing materials, using the Eevee rendering engine to render 3D views².
It allows you to preview your models and materials under different Environment Maps, and also compare between two different Environment Maps². - Environment mapping is a technique used to simulate global illumination and reflection. It is usually a spherical or cubic texture that contains light information in all directions in a scene³. Environment maps can be real shots or synthesized HDR (high dynamic range) pictures, or they can be custom-made pictures². Look Dev mode can render without adding a light source object because it uses the environment map as the light source and calculates the lighting and reflection effects on the object surface based on the brightness and color in the environment map². You can select or import different environment maps in the Look Dev window, and you can also adjust the rotation, brightness, contrast and other parameters of the environment map².
-Rendering mode uses the selected rendering engine (Eevee or Cycles) to render the 3D view. Rendering mode uses all light sources in the scene to render, including light objects, ambient light, world background, etc. Different rendering engines have different lighting algorithms and parameters, which can affect the rendering effect and speed.