Who's Tried Blender 2.80 Beta?

[Saki_Sliz]

Just asking. Not sure what all you guys are using, but I am a heavy blender user. I have tried the beta version of 2.80, and while it is neat, I kinda stopped using it after like 5 minutes.

For those of you not in the loop, Blender 2.80 beta is the most recent update to blender in like years. It makes so many changes that many in the blender community think that they should have called it version 3.0 since it is such a drastic change. They have completely rebuild the tool, and designed it to be more graphically appealing and focused, making it easier to get started with and use for first-timers.

The issue I have with it is that I am not a beginner, I like having my hotkeys and being able to quickly jump around and do a bunch of stuff real fast, the two main issues I had with the 2.80 beta is 1 while a lot of the hotkeys still work, some of them still require me to interact with a graphic, which is much slower than just entering the specifics with my keyboard, 2 I can't remake my custom hotkeys (beacuse it's still in beta). the most important being able to shift into material preview mode and reprogramming how camera panning and rotating works with my mouse. It is absolutely frustrating not being able to do something as simple as rotate to see the left side of my object.

As for switching to 2.80, there is no benefit since they use pretty much the same stuff like the cycle render engine, the two reason I may want to switch in the future is to use the EEVEE viewer to allow for quick rendering and previewing, and using the new Hair shader (based on a paper by Disney) since I have yet to figure out how to make a universal hair shader. Trying to figure out a hair shader is the only thing holding me back from releasing an updated version of my procedural skin and clothes shaders.

I was just wondering if any of you guys had tried it and what your thoughts are.I know a lot of you use either daz or prefer to focus on writing/programming, but what are your thoughts on blender. As far as I can tell, although I am still new here, I am the only regular who goes around bringing up Blender propaganda any chance I get.

And why is there no blender/daz prefix? I have seen them elsewhere but I can't seem to add them to threads in this sub section.

Spoiler: Just some eye candy to show you what I was working on

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[Winterfire]

Wait what, I guess I'll stick to 2.79 then

-edit-
Is the hotkey thing a bug or feature?

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Is the hotkey thing a bug or feature?

It's in Beta right now, so that just means they haven't gotten around to adding in the feature yet, that's all. I'll have to wait till it is no longer in beta.

 

[Egglock]

It is absolutely frustrating not being able to do something as simple as rotate to see the left side of my object.

Middle mouse button? Or Npad 3 or +ctrl Npad 3? These shortcuts does exactly what you said, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

2 I can't remake my custom hotkeys.

It is still in beta so if you have a unique mouse or keyboard, it might not have those keys register. But as far as I know remapping is available in 2.8

As for switching to 2.80, there is no benefit since they use pretty much the same stuff like the cycle render engine,

I disagree here. If you don't utilize the workspace tab, layers tab, Pie menu among many other things, then I can understand why it doesn't seem to have any benefit. Here are some of the features that I would consider beneficial.

Aside from Eevee, there's the workspace tabs. In 2.7x these were obscure, it was like a drop down menu, and I doubt many bother to even look for it. But now in 2.8 these are are easily recognizable, switching from modeling to UV editing, to compositing is as easy as a click.

The second biggest one is grease pencil. Considering it got a massive overhaul means that people wanted this feature for a long time. To elaborate on this, let's just imagine for a moment that we are skilled in terms of 2D and 3D. Just think of the possibility and creativity this offers compare to other 2D applications out there. It's an all in one package deal for free.

The next one is collections or in another term, the layer system. In 2.7x this is a nightmare. With 2.8 it's nicely packed in the outliner. Turn off and on what ever collection you have setup

Extension of Pie Menu - If you never used the Pie Menu, I highly recommend it. It will make your workflow a whole lot easier.

The ease of use for beginners - self explanatory.

To answer why it isn't called Blender 3, check this link

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He gives a good explanation as to why it's 2.8 and if you haven't, check the videos on that channel it has great information pertaining to Blender 2.8.


As far as my own opinion goes, I don't disagree that jumping from 2.7x to 2.8 can be intermediating or even frustrating. I sure as hell was intermediated and frustrated at times, but spending 5 minutes on it isn't going to give you a real good impression on how great 2.8 is. I've spent roughly 20-30 minutes on it, just messing around and getting a feel for it, and I'll tell you what, I love it. Even in it's beta stage there are so many features I have yet to play around with, such as the node editor, composition, animation, render time and performance, fully utilizing the grease pencil, among many other things.

 

[lobotomist]

I also stopped using it right away, but not for the workflow wich i find more intuitive, what is a dealbreaker for me is that my plugins arent there, and the ones that are seem to not import automatically.

I hope the plugins get updated soon, cause I find 2.8 so much better.

As for your rotating problem one neat feature on 2.8 is that apart from rotating the camera on middle mouse if you hold shift while doing it you can rotate by 90° amounts wich i find much more useful than older versions.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Middle mouse button? Or Npad 3 or +ctrl Npad 3? These shortcuts does exactly what you said, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

Oh no, these still work. Remember my comment about not being able to make custom hotkeys, well one of them is to reprogram the mouse to control the camera similar to how many CAD programs operate. It's just a personal thing but as a result, until I am able to make new hotkeys commands for the mouse, I'll have to relearn how to use the mouse in Blender. I'm used to doing not just hotkey remapping, but more advanced core code system rewriting with my hotkeys. So in order to use 2.8 as I would 2.79 (which may defeat the whole point idk) I would need to make a custom plugin which could hot cut into different codes and functions for me).

workspace tab, layers tab, Pie menu

ok, now the new layer system is a godsend, I freaking love what they did with that. It's one of the reasons I may be super excited for 2.8, but I do worry about not being able to swap between layers quickly via hotkeys anymore.

as for the workspace tabs, in 2.79 they aren't that interesting, and I make custom work layouts anyways, so I never dealt with this. But having them as they are in 2.8 is great for new users, it's so visual. Same with the Pie menu. I have used it, for like 3 days and then stopped when I learned all the hotkeys, or for more complex commands I either just press space and search the command or made a custom plug in to automate some stuff. so again, the pie menu is great for newer users who need to first find the commands before they need to worry about hotkeys or just like to work visually, but as a more veteran user (and I haven't been using blender that long) I need to work faster to stay in the flow, so hotkeys all the way!

The second biggest one is grease pencil.

Can't argue with that, it's awesome to see Blender become so powerful and competitive against other pro (as in proprietary) software. But so far my workflow isn't dependant on it... yet.

The ease of use for beginners - self explanatory.

Ahmen!

I was planning on teaching a workshop on how to use 2.8 beta to 3d print for my club, since it was so visual and would help new users, but since I myself have yet to master it, I am kinda putting that project on the back burner XD

As for the video, I've seen it, and basically, they keep it 2.8 for personal reasons, because they want to keep it humble, to not show off. I can respect that, but I respectfully disagree. There is no industry standard which dictates when a company can or should say when a product has a particular version number. Everyone company I am aware of uses a different system. The blender dev's argument was that it, the changes in 2.8, was an incremental improvement. Well, technically so is every version of every software ever that is beyond 1.0. Sure sometimes programs will be completely rebuilt as to accommodate for a new way of operating, and that is most certainly a for sure reason to go to a new version number, and while blender 2.8 is not a complete rebuild, it doesn't need to be for them to slap on a new version number. It just comes down to personal preference and who gets the say.

spending 5 minutes on it isn't going to give you a real good impression on how great 2.8 is.

Wise words indeed. I will certainly try again in the future but right now I can't afford to spend a day to reteach myself blender, or having to stubble across odd quarks later on in my various projects. The issue with 2.8 beta is the fact is that it is that, a beta, where it is not expected to be at the most stable or reliable state yet. Despite having various teams working on major film projects in blender, those teams also are working with the developers, and for the rest of us, the blender dev team does not recommend using the beta for any serious projects because of issues like corrupted files.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

I also stopped using it right away, but not for the workflow wich i find more intuitive, what is a dealbreaker for me is that my plugins arent there, and the ones that are seem to not import automatically.

I hope the plugins get updated soon, cause I find 2.8 so much better.

As for your rotating problem one neat feature on 2.8 is that apart from rotating the camera on middle mouse if you hold shift while doing it you can rotate by 90° amounts wich i find much more useful than older versions.

Considering a lot of plug ins are developed by third parties, such as retopoflow, which is a commercial example, they may have to wait till 2.8 is stable so they don't have to worry about any plugin breaking changes happening that they need to accomidate for (without pay). It doesn't help that when I tried to make some plugins to regain some hotkey functionality, that they changed some of the names of functions inside of blender. It is almost as painful to code for as it was trying to get into Godot. (Godot is a still in development game engine open source like blender, but it is so early on and the team is so small that when they update all the code, there was no reliable documentation, I had to start to make my own manuals. I'm not here to make the program, I'm here to make games, so I quit using Godot and moved over to unity).

as for the shift trick, it's in 2.79 as well, shift tab to toggle this, and the small tool bar to change modes. or something similar, idk. :3

 

[Egglock]

Oh no, these still work. Remember my comment about not being able to make custom hotkeys,

Ah, gotcha. It is still in beta with an overhaul to it's coding, so it's expected that some features are still missing from 2.79. I don't write any custom scripts or remap my keys so that's why I have a different view on the matter. I do understand it does suck not having to ability to remap it the way one would back in 2.79.

As far as the version naming convention goes, I might of misunderstood the point you were trying to convey, but version naming doesn't matter too to much to me, as long as it's readable i'm all for it. Though what baffles me is the argument over it. I mean this there's awesome software with great features that have many hours poured into it and the community is arguing over this silly thing.

The layer system or rather the collection, wouldn't it be cool if the layer tab made it's way back alongside collections? I'd say that's a win-win for a lot of users.

My question to you or anyone who swings by this post, what kind of work do you do in Blender? Do you create models, render/composition, animations, ect?

I do a lot of modular assets and props, been trying to get into character modeling / sculpting but that stuff looks intimidating. Strangely I can model vehicles to a certain degree but when it comes to characters that scares me.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

My question to you or anyone who swings by this post, what kind of work do you do in Blender? Do you create models, render/composition, animations, ect?

I 3d model either mechanical stuff, or custom characters. Rigging and animating characters, or my scripts to control simulated robots. I've used it as a physics simulator for some projects, or to model things for robot competitions. I work with shaders, compositing, sculpting, but not so much texturing and painting. I have also used it for 2d animating similar to flash animations. Right now my three main projects with blender are, 1 modeling a robotic hand for my capstone project, 2 modeling a robot for my club competition, and 3 I am messing around with trying to make lewd versions of star wars characters to see if I can make a game based off of it.

As for tips on character modeling and sculpting, since I do not do it regularly enough, I too find it interesting to get started again. I usually have to start with some image I found on Pinterest which acts as inspiration, try to make a rough front left and back side view of the character (which going from 2D to 3d sucks because proportions that work well in 2D look goofy in 3D and vis versa), and then I rough it out not by sculpting, but by using a bunch of spheres to make the rough shape to see if I like it. Then I smash everything together and clean things up, and by that point adding in details is all I need and things get over with pretty quickly (she says, 6 hours into a sculpt). The thing that is the most work is probably retopology, where tools like retopoflow help. I bought retopoflow, but since I rarely need to use it, and I like having direct control as I edit, I prefer to just make a new mesh directly. Things like surface snapping really helps. But I most certainly am not the best at this.

It is just a mater of finding something motivating enough to face your fears, 90% of the work is just getting started, as they say...

 

[Egglock]

True, maybe I'm still too early in my development that I haven't found the motivation to act upon it yet. Though I've spent quiet some time reading and watching tutorials.
As for retopology, have you tried Mesh Lab? It's a free retop software. I haven't used it much myself, but heard good things about it.

When you say scripts to control, is that in a sense, something like an empty that acts as the controller to move a selection of bones or the IK FK bone? Or is it in the sense of copying the animation data to a selection of robots? I'm having a tough time imaging why you would need a script to do that?

 

[Saki_Sliz]

I too have heard good things about Mesh Lab, and have considered using it, but I haven't switched over since I haven't started any new projects that required me to make custom characters again, for now i am just playing around with merging the collection of models I already have. For those control scripts, I am saying, I build an simulate robots in programs such as blender, so the control scripts are two thing, 1 they are the code that the robot use, 2 they are the code that takes data from blender and sends it to the robot code, tricking it to treating the data like the real thing and telling the fake simulated robot body it's next commands. To be honest it's been a long time since I have done this, and I only tested with with blender, In the past I did this mostly with java.

 

[caLTD]

I like new look of 2.80. It feels more efficient screen usage.
Last weekend I try it for a serious job and after some minutes it feels not so right and I go back to 2.79

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Yeah, I think it looks pretty modern now.

I didn't play around to see if it had multi-screen support or customizability, since I kinda stopped right at issue with camera navigation, but such customizability would surely allow for even greater screen usage efficiency.

 

[Egglock]

Gotcha. As for the multi-screen it's a lot more flexible now. You have an entirely separate duplicated window in which you set it up however you want in it. Unlike in 2.79 where you can only split windows within the main window.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Unlike in 2.79 where you can only split windows within the main window.

No, 2.79 can support multiple screens, you just, when trying to move windows with the main window, hold shift for the window to pop out as a separate window which you can move no another screen, you can even save screen configurations, such as I have blender always start up with the normal window on my right with the default loadout, a main sculpting window on my center screen, and on the left monitor it opens up node and properties editing when blender starts up.

But it's good to hear that the 2.80 beta still allows for multi screen support.

 

[Egglock]

Say what!?, well that certainly would of help lol. I guess a lot of features like that stuff was obscure. Then again I didn't really bother going through Blender's documentation (since a lot of the information is somewhat out of date) Well it's a lot easier to find in 2.8 than in 2.79 I'd tell you that.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Well it's a lot easier to find in 2.8

Really? That's certainly comforting to know. I know with old versions of blender, everything was kind of hidden, so to really learn how to master it, you kinda had do browse around for a long time, finding odd posts of some guy discovering a hidden trick, or answer forums to solve odd bugs. It was kinda like a secret society, not really the best when you want to try to advertise your favorite program to everyone. Better documentation will certainly go a long way!

 

[Egglock]

Better documentation will certainly go a long way!

I certainly agree here. Hopefully the documentations catches up to 2.8 since it's such a massive overhaul. Though the quriky thing I found out is that, I don't believe 2.79 does exatcly what 2.8 does when splitting windows. I think in 2.79 it makes a duplicated window instead of an actually split window, because in 2.8 when you split the window and close down the main window it closes all windows, while in 2.79 closing the main window doesn't actually close all the windows. Just something I noticed while messing around.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Interesting, that is something I noticed with 2.79, so I guess it could be consider a convenience or improvement it 2.80

 

[Passenger3D]

thats rendered in realtime