
Blender 2.82 - app4soft
https://www.blender.org/press/blender-2-82-released/
======
dagmx
For those unfamiliar with Blender's versioning, the major number is
effectively meaningless. The 8 is effectively the major number and the 2 the
minor.

Anyway the big items in this release IMHO are:

\- preliminary support for the Pixar USD format (
[https://graphics.pixar.com/usd/docs/index.html](https://graphics.pixar.com/usd/docs/index.html)
) which is gaining large traction in film studios, gradually in game engines
and is the format of choice for Apple's AR ecosystem

\- coming in line with the VFX reference platform (
[https://vfxplatform.com/](https://vfxplatform.com/) )

The combination of both which means that Blender will be easier to integrate
in existing pipelines rather than being a very interesting curiosity for large
studios with preexisting pipelines.

Blender is certainly very powerful, and with the 2.8x releases, I think
they're really opening up appeal to a larger set of artists and studios.

Just recently been talking to some large studios that are actively considering
adding it to their toolset.

An overview of some of the major features in this release with accompanying
videos can be found here : [https://www.blendernation.com/2020/02/14/the-five-
key-featur...](https://www.blendernation.com/2020/02/14/the-five-key-features-
in-blender-2-82/)

~~~
vadansky
How is it compared to ZBrush? I’ve seen a lot of the sculpting tools they’re
showing and I’m wondering if they’re up to par yet?

~~~
Arcanum-XIII
Zbrush is it’s own thing. Nearly all 3D package can (and have) produced the
equivalent. What you have with Zbrush is another way of looking at how to do
3D illustration and as a side effect 3D sculpting.

So, blender was on par already for quite a while. And since the version 2.8,
it seems that they’re more than on par with the rest of the industry.

~~~
cma
2.81 is what brought it near zbrush, not 2.80:

[https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-81/](https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-81/)

[https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.81/S...](https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.81/Sculpt)

It was almost all focused on sculpting improvements, adding a voxel remesh
workflow.

~~~
Arcanum-XIII
Honnestly, it's mostly the UI revamp that put Blender up to big gun: a
familiar interface mean that every artist trained on other software can
"easily" transfer. Sculpting improvement, are, well, an open discussion. Poly
modelling with subdiv is still better in Mirai, a software dead for nearly 20
year now for example, and lot of artist using nurbs still miss Softimage 3D 4.

------
stateoff
We're very excited about this new release. I'm pipeline lead at Tangent
Animation. Blender was used for "NextGen" and our future projects. I may
answer how it is to be part of the development (Blender/Cycles) while
producing features, but better yet you can talk to us at the SparkFX in
Vancouver if you happen to be there.

~~~
samstave
Do you have any example work done either solely or mostly with blender for
viewing?

~~~
dagmx
[https://youtu.be/uf3ALGKgpGU](https://youtu.be/uf3ALGKgpGU)

[https://youtu.be/iZn3kCsw5D8](https://youtu.be/iZn3kCsw5D8)

~~~
samstave
Those were great, thanks

------
antome
While not all the new features will be in this release, the rate of
improvement for Blender's sculpting tools has been astounding. For example,
the new cloth brush:

(
[https://twitter.com/pablodp606/status/1223663016811618307](https://twitter.com/pablodp606/status/1223663016811618307)
,
[https://twitter.com/pablodp606/status/1223060180344147970](https://twitter.com/pablodp606/status/1223060180344147970)
)

Available as an experimental build here:
[https://blender.community/c/graphicall/Sjbbbc/](https://blender.community/c/graphicall/Sjbbbc/)

------
tayistay
\- Will Blender put the competition out of business? Maya, C4D, Modo, ZBrush,
etc. are all rather expensive, and Blender covers so many workflows.

\- How could one build new and better 3D software when competing with free and
good enough?

\- Does blender as a business generate good income for its developers? If you
look at their Development Fund [0], it says $115k/mo for 20 developers.

\- What is the extent of contribution to Blender from unpaid contributors?

[0]: [https://fund.blender.org](https://fund.blender.org)

~~~
snuxoll
> Will Blender put the competition out of business? Maya, C4D, Modo, ZBrush,
> etc. are all rather expensive, and Blender covers so many workflows.

It’s happening, you have game studios like Ubisoft throwing money at the
Blender Foundation and switching to it.

~~~
xvilka
Moreover, they also support other FOSS too, for example Krita. I hope these
companies would support GIMP as well, and some FOSS video editing tools, like
Shortcut.

------
knolan
I use Blender to make videos of fluid flow to make my teaching more
accessible. I absolutely love it, I wish CFD tools had half the polish and
capability.

I’m going to do a summer workshop for my colleagues so they can start to make
animations of their own, all these new usability features are very much
welcome.

A truly incredible open source project!

~~~
nitrogen
I've long wanted to play with fluid simulatuons, but haven't had time for a 3D
gfx hobby for a while. Could you recommend a good tutorial or set of
documentation for a starting point with Blender's fluid dynamics?

~~~
knolan
This new version of Blender comes with a new fluid solver called MantaFlow.
There should be tutorials popping up on YouTube as I type. I use the FLIP
fluid add on which comes with good documentation.

~~~
thdrdt
Note that MantaFlow also has a FLIP solver, which is a combination of a volume
and particle solver. This is nice because you can simulate how a fluid changes
into a foam for example.

FLIP: FLuid Implicit Particle

~~~
knolan
I haven’t had much time to try it. I like the add on because it handles
viscosity and surface tension rather well.

------
rcarmo
Me and my kids have been using it routinely since 2.80 (thanks to the shift to
saner mouse button defaults and other UX tweaks), and there are loads of great
YouTube tutorials out there these days, so I’d say it’s really helped 3D
rendering become mainstream.

------
ur-whale
Blender has become so good and so complete, my bet is it will become the de
facto standard for all things 3D over the course of the next decade.

It still is difficult to approach, but it has come a very very long way and is
almost on par with commercial packages wrt usability.

~~~
adamdoyle
It gets some criticism for it, but, in my opinion, it has one of the most
innovative/powerful UX of any software I've used.

Some highlights:

\- Any panel can be positioned/sized however you like

\- You can create custom named layouts for your own common workflows

\- Fully extensible via Python plugins (create new UI panels, menu items,
hotkeys, etc.)

\- Anything you can do manually can be scripted with python

\- By default, (although this has changed some) the more-frequently-used
hotkeys are single-key. And of course it's all configurable and (if I remember
correctly) they have presets for matching other apps like 3ds max / maya.

\- searchable commands palette (press [space], start typing command name,
press [enter] to execute command)

\- on load / "new file": it loads [something like] "default.blend" instead of
a hard-coded set of defaults, so that you can configure its definition of an
empty file (which IIRC also includes the default layout configuration). To
make it quick+easy to change, you can set with menu option [File]+[Save
Startup File].

\- Windows can be broken out and dragged to a separate monitor

\- Lots of highly-specialized UI widgets. e.g. inline ranged slider that
captures the mouse on click and adjusts the value as you move the cursor, has
a "progress bar" to visualize the percentage, allows keyboard entry if you
single-click instead of click+drag, has arrows on left and right that can be
clicked to step forward/backward, has label inline with widget, and has
description on mouseover

\- Generalized interactive timeline for animation and sequencing

\- Powerful node-based editors for shaders, textures, etc., with nodes for
each stage of the pipeline and utility nodes to apply transformations (e.g.
add a node for a source image, draw a line from the image's color output to
the input of a "brightness" node, etc.)

And not only can you use it for the obvious 3D tasks, but it can be used as a
non-linear video editor (including things like cross-fade of audio and/or
video, video superimposition, textual overlaying, cropping, stretching,
mirroring, color manipulation, option to use 3D scene output as video input,
etc.), shadeless 2D raster/vector animator, 3D printing, and probably other
things I don't know about.

~~~
spectramax
I prefer Cinema4D UI over Blender. It does all the things you listed and then
some.

Blender UI is great, but Cinema4D UI is arguably better. I've used both for 10
years.

I think most engineers and designers forget that they're just tools. Vim or
emacs? PyCharm. Whatever works for you. Stop letting tools define your
craftsmanship. This comment reminds me of pixel peeping that most enthusiast
photographers do...comparing MTF curves for days. How about going out and
taking pictures, learning composition and narrative, story telling and
photographic experimentation? But they're too enslaved to their tools.

I guess that too can be a hobby?

~~~
lisk1
You may be right but keep in mind that there are a lot of talented people that
cant afford paying for software such as Cinema4D and that's the beauty of
Blender you have access to 3D software with good amount of possibilities
without paying anything and the community is pretty huge and getting a
momentum

~~~
spectramax
Yep, I agree - Blender is a great tool and not wanting to take away anything
from it.

But I found this horn-tooting about Blender and saying that its superior to
every 3D software out there is a stretch if not flatout wrong.

Ever used Houdini? Yeah, it's not totally free but it's free for non-
commercial use. It will blow your mind what it can do:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIcUW9QFMLE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIcUW9QFMLE)

The Houdini UI is nothing short of absolute genius.

I don't see Blender ever competing with Houdini. Like...ever. Because, it is
fundamentally a different take on 3D content. It does the same thing at the
end (3D content), but the way it does it is different (procedural). Better
IMHO, but I could be biased.

Does that mean Blender has no place in the sofware ecosystem? No. Can we me a
bit more pragmatic, stop horn-tooting and objectively look at the 3D software
landscape as a whole? Yes.

~~~
lisk1
Houdini is nice peace of 3D software they are going for a lot of years now
leading to 90s good that they added some affordable licensing for indie
artists recent years but again for starter 3d artist Blender is best choice
after that its up to the person what direction he/she will choose.

------
bitxbit
2.8 was a game changer for Blender. I absolutely believe it will be a multi-
industry standard for years to come.

