
Blender 2.80 - harperlee
https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-80/
======
dingus
The interface overhaul is a huge accomplishment.

I suspect adoption will grow considerably. The previous interface conventions
were unusual and clumsy, and were the primary barrier for those curious about
switching packages.

I switched to Blender after using the beta for several months. I have put
thousands of dollars into licenses for Modo and Maya over the years. I would
much rather put that into Blender donations, now that I can actually use it.
The things a good user interface team can do.

~~~
bogwog
> The previous interface conventions were unusual and clumsy

Unusual, sure. Clumsy? not at all. It was extremely efficient and hyper-
organized. The real problem was that it was different, and people just don't
like change.

This new interface is great because it's easy to use for Maya/Max people, and
it's still similar-enough to the 2.7 era so as not to alienate long-time
users.

~~~
echelon
> Unusual, sure. Clumsy? not at all.

It was clunky, kind of like Gimp's UI, and felt like a remnant of the 90's.
Usable, sure. Aesthetically pleasant? Absolutely not. Our tools should feel
nice.

Major kudos to Blender on this.

~~~
bogwog
You must have not learned how to use it then. That, or we have different
definitions of the word "clumsy". It has absolutely nothing in common with
Gimp, so that makes me wonder if you used it at all.

> Aesthetically pleasant? Absolutely not

That's subjective, but it did support themes and DPI scaling.

~~~
lone_haxx0r
You could justify any ugly design under the "subjective" premise, even pink
buttons on a #FF0000 background. But to anyone with good taste, it looks
better now.

------
deltron3030
Their integrated renderers don't work on newer macOS versions with AMD cards
unfortunately, no metal support. macOS id really a bad place right now if
you're into 3D and want GPU rendering, not only because of Blender, but others
like Cinema 4D aren't there yet either.

It's a big fail of the Apple management to not support the metal development
for apps like Blender, they gonna lose a generation of creatives.

~~~
chewyland
Doesn't anyone think that MacOS is pretty much abandonware at this point? I
don't want to stir anything up but I don't believe Apple is putting too much
effort into the OS at this time. When I boot my MacBook into MacOS (once a
year, if that) I feel like I'm 10 years back in time (yes, I have the absolute
latest version).

I think they're focusing most of their resources on ARM.

Or, I'm probably just crazy.

~~~
skrowl
Anyone who listens to their quarter earnings calls knows that macOS is pretty
far down the priority list.

#1 is billed services (iCloud, Apple Music, etc)

#2 is iOS devices (mostly iPhone)

a very distant #3 is laptops and desktops

macOS is nowhere on the list because it doesn't make them any money.

~~~
mwfunk
It makes them tons of money, their problem is that other things make even more
money. Sadly their organizational structure is such that walking and gum-
chewing is almost impossible for them, so even colossally profitable and
beloved products can wither away from neglect.

~~~
nitrogen
This is why large companies need to be split at some point -- a $x billion
market is enough to sustain a great company, but a $100x billion company will
try hard to ignore it.

------
cabaalis
"The Blender Game Engine was removed." It's been a very, very long time since
I played with Blender, but I think this is good news? The game engine thing
never quite made sense to me.

Edit: This quote is from a different link,
[https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-80/](https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-80/)

~~~
reilly3000
Godot has done a great job in this space. The Blender team is wise to not try
to be great at everything, especially when they are great at so much.

~~~
lasagnaphil
Note that Godot is still not great at high-end 3D games because of various
performance issues and missing features. (The reddit link explains how the
Godot third-person demo is showing its weaknesses)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/9n53ij/wha](https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/9n53ij/wha)
t_do_people_here_make_of_this_detailed_and/

Fortunately, the next expected release of Godot (4.0) might be able to solve a
lot of those problems. It's going to be ported to Vulkan, the renderer is
going to be multi-threaded and optimized, and a lot of the lighting related
functionality from major game engines is going to be implemented.

[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Godot-4....](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Godot-4.0-Rendering-
Plans)

~~~
indolering
Sounds like they focused on making a small product for a specific niche and
(now that it's taking off like wildfire) they are fixing things.

------
lukebitts
I've been a Blender user since 2.48 and it's so nice to see open source
software getting so much better. Eevee is the biggest game changer for me, my
workflow is much faster now that I can actually preview what my assets will
look like in a PBR renderer, but even "small" stuff like workspaces made my
workflow better. All in all a great release! Congratulations to everyone
involved!

------
edgarvaldes
One thing I always loved about Blender is the installer size. It blows my mind
that a 3D modeling software is under 100 MB.

~~~
gregschlom
I think the same thing every time I download it. I hope the Blender foundation
is able to keep it that way, as things do tend to get more and more bloated
over time.

~~~
vanderZwan
Ton Roosendaal started out as a programmer on the Amiga. I'm probably somewhat
biased here, but I expect that he has strong feelings about avoiding bloatware

~~~
anchpop
I think it would be a good use of space to include some default assets
(models, textures, etc.) for beginners to play with, even if it doubled the
size of the download

~~~
amatecha
There are already tons of demo files you can mess around with and learn from:
[https://www.blender.org/download/demo-
files/](https://www.blender.org/download/demo-files/) :)

------
tombert
Has anyone here used the Blender video editor? How well does it work?

I've been looking to get back into video-production in my free time, but on
Linux the number decent video-editing solutions is limited. I'm looking into
Lightworks, but I'd prefer something FOSS if at all possible.

~~~
burk96
Not FOSS, but I can highly recommend Davinci Resolve. I actually have come to
prefer it over Premiere and Vegas which have been my favorites for over a
decade now. Compared to those two, it just feels like a much more modern, well
polished product. The stability is what has really sold me after having to
save Premiere and Vegas projects after nearly every edit because I never knew
when they would randomly crash. Its free license gives you just about
everything you will need and the multiplatform support is great. I really
recommend you give it a try and see how it suits you.

~~~
spsphulse
A newbie here who plans to learn basic video-editing. I am in a dilemma
whether to go for Davinci Resolve or Adobe Premiere. While the first is free,
I noticed there are very very few assets(LUTs, Lower-thirds, Transitions etc)
that are freely available for DR. Perhaps because it is still in its nascent
stage. Do you happen to know any resources to find such assets for Davinci
Resolve?

------
dman
In case someone from the Blender team is reading this could you share some
pointers on how the ui toolkit for blender 2.80 is implemented? Any files to
start reading / any design docs? Blender is one of the nicer opengl based guis
I have seen and am curious to learn more on how its implemented (fonts for
instance).

~~~
Jasper_
Looks like a custom glyph atlas cache based on top of FreeType [0].

These days I would use HarfBuzz/stb_truetype [1] for a lightweight thing. Use
FreeType if you need something even fancier.

[0]
[https://git.blender.org/gitweb/gitweb.cgi/blender.git/blob/H...](https://git.blender.org/gitweb/gitweb.cgi/blender.git/blob/HEAD:/source/blender/blenfont/intern/blf_glyph.c)
[1] like
[https://gist.github.com/rygorous/6f2779a451d2040371e3acb79e1...](https://gist.github.com/rygorous/6f2779a451d2040371e3acb79e16eaff)

------
pcurve
I used to do a lot of 3d in the 90s so I'm extremely familiar with 3d modeling
concepts. One day I decided to give blender a go after many years of hiatus
and oh boy was it difficult to use even after looking up documentation.
Nothing like maxon cinema 4d. Is blender built on preexisting 3d app UI
convention? Or is it its own animal?

~~~
bananaoomarang
This release is a pretty significant UI overhaul, as was 2.6 from memory but
that was a good few years back. Probably worth giving it another shot with
2.8!

~~~
Causality1
That in particular was my issue when I gave up learning to use Blender. There
are tons and tons of tutorials, but Blender hits a big "randomize" button for
its UI every time it updates. Nothing is ever where the tutorials tell you to
find it. It likely isn't even grouped under the same menu heading anymore.

~~~
wlesieutre
Stick to tutorials from the same 2.x line and there aren't many UI changes.
They've had betas and release candidates for 2.8 for a while now, so there's
already a pretty good body of tutorials available.

Outdated tutorials aren't totally useless, since they'll still give you an
idea of how to approach a modeling problem. But the UI won't match what you're
working in, so I certainly wouldn't recommend them for trying to learn the
software.

~~~
TylerE
There should be a lot of great tutorial content coming out now/soon. I know a
lot of the big training vendors (e.g. cgcookie) have basically been building
for 2.8...lots of new courses and old stuff getting redone and updated.

------
dgellow
Quite excited by the 2D rendering features!
[https://www.blender.org/features/grease-
pencil/](https://www.blender.org/features/grease-pencil/)

------
severine
And they're hiring:
[https://www.blender.org/jobs/](https://www.blender.org/jobs/)

------
xtracerx
Used Maya and cinema 4d for years.. just started switching to Blender because
I heard the buzz around it.. and it is legitimately the biggest win for
consumer open source software by a huge margin. Absolutely great product, I
think I can get workflows as good or better than Maya out of this.. and Maya
costs thousands of dollars a year.

------
danellis
I love Blender. I'm not an artist, even though I've made a few little things
in it, but I still think it's an incredible piece of software and a shining
example of what open source software can be.

------
micah_chatt
One of the things about blender that was frustrating for me when I last tried
it ~3 years ago was the inability to use a different python REPL (ex: iPython)
or easily import the blender python libraries in a non-blender python process.
Can anyone say if this has gotten better?

~~~
UncleEntity
Almost all of bpy is a simple generated wrapper around builtin C functions but
you can (or could, dunno how well its been maintained?) build blender as a
python module to import into CPython. Some experimental CMake setting IIRC.

------
hutzlibu
Does anyone know, what is still missing, to wide professional adoption of
blender in the industry?

Is it at this point mostly momentum of Maya etc. or are there still many small
things, that a professional designer miss in blender?

Or is it bigger? Some time ago, I heard the renderer of blender did not hold
up to the rest, but that has changed?

Some time ago, the blender ren

~~~
atoav
Depends entirely on how you use it. But for many many things it is already
used professionally.

I used Maya as a 3D freelancer for some while and switched to Blender when
Cycles got introduced. I never really regreted that decision. Odly enough the
one point that I liked the most about Blender was its user interface – yeah it
was _weird_ , but it was _consistent_. If "g" moves things in the 3D window it
moves things also in a timeline and in a compositor.

What does Blender need? I think 2.80 has done a lot of what the industry
needs, especially in terms of 2D animation and performance improvements. My
major caveat is, that Compositing with video sources is just slow.

------
darkwater
When I see new releases of art/design/drawing creation products I always envy
the artists that are capable of using them and create beautiful things. I've
always been incapable of anything related to drawing.

I wonder if it is something you can learn by working on it or you just have to
be gifted...

~~~
hapsam
Art is a profession which can be learned, you dont need to be gifted or have
any talent to start. But like with many professions, art takes time and people
underestimate the amount of time which is required to get to a decent level
(multiple years of practise and exercise).

------
Mobius01
I’m really happy to see this. There are so many segments that could benefit
from Blender’s non-existing cost of entry that were running into too much
friction with the user interface and general oddities of it’s interaction
models, and this may help bridge that gap.

------
billfruit
They have done amazing work in building their own UI framework. Perhaps one
day they can make it available as a standalone library, for use as a
crossplatform UI toolkit.

------
ohazi
Congratulations to the Blender developers! This massive release has been years
in the making. I remember watching an interview with Ton Roosendaal just
before the 2.7 release (so 5 years ago? Back then they still thought the next
version was going to be 3.0), and they were talking excitedly about this UI
refresh as if it were just around the corner.

------
smcnally
> Templates > When starting a new file, there is now a choice between multiple
> application templates: ... > Video Editing: for using Blender as a video
> editor.

Video’s a reason I’ve spent time with multiple previous Blender versions. Be
great if this UI refresh + templated defaults create more traction for me and
other video editors.

------
zowanet
I don't suppose there's a torrent/magnet link?

My http download is glacially slow right now...

~~~
nybble41
You can install and run Blender through Steam. There's even a beta channel for
the release candidates. That might get around the slow download issue.

~~~
mottosso
Indeed it did! Barely pressed the download button before it finished, and it's
2.80 as well, as opposed to the previous RC. Already updated on Steam too,
that's quick!

------
ilaksh
Really hopeful for the UI changes.

Crazy question. Is anyone working on a VR interface for Blender?

~~~
makx
[https://www.marui-plugin.com/blender-xr/](https://www.marui-
plugin.com/blender-xr/)

[https://github.com/MARUI-PlugIn/BlenderXR](https://github.com/MARUI-
PlugIn/BlenderXR)

------
vkaku
Whoa :o they made it, Amazing work by the devs.

It looks more like Max now. And I know they did some rework in the whole asset
organization thing.

And they removed the parts that weren't as core, so great job overall. :)

------
v-yadli
As a long time Vim user, the comments here actually encourage me to give it
another try. I once tried it on a tablet, but obviously I missed that it’s
about keystrokes.

------
dekhn
a while ago, before the North American Solar Eclipse, I needed to do some
simulation work on my code that processed eclipse images so I made a toy solar
system from spheres and used it to render views of the eclipse from locations
on earth. Lots of fun. Huge learning curve, but still lots of fun. The only
issue I had was I had to scale everything down 1/10th due to float precision
issues.

------
wy35
It looks so much better! When I tried using Blender it felt really awkward and
the learning curve was really steep. Glad to see this update.

------
TheRealPomax
Really wish I could run it on my my laptop with a Radeon HD 6750M, though.
Instead it's just a blank screen with a spinner for a cursor, which isn't the
greatest experience.

Sure, the minimum requirements are "GCN 1st gen and up", which came out after
the 6750M, but other apps with GPU acceleration work fine with it, and Blender
2.79 also worked fine, so it's kind of shitty to miss out on all the amazing
new stuff that got added to 2.80 =(

------
agumonkey
I think I need an opengl 1.3 laptop now

------
helb
2.8 release page with news & screenshots:
[https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-80/](https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-80/)

~~~
harperlee
Thanks! Unfortunately I can edit the title but not the url. Perhaps dang or
other admin can update to this one?

~~~
sctb
We've updated the link from the homepage. Thanks!

------
yodon
previous discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20563491](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20563491)

~~~
orev
That “previous discussion” is mostly people confused about what is going on
because that poster tried to steal their thunder by making the post before the
actual release was announced. That’s not a useful discussion thread.

~~~
Nullabillity
Nobody has a right to compel other people to follow their release schedule.

~~~
liability
No such supposed right was implied...

~~~
Nullabillity
> because that poster tried to steal their thunder by making the post before
> the actual release was announced.

~~~
liability
Saying that one _shouldn 't_ behave in some way is not the same as claiming
they have no right to behave in that way.

------
bla3
Encouraged by the "new, more intuitive UI" points I gave it another try.
Background: I did lots of 3d coding and have used several 3d modeling
packages, all a while ago. I've tried to learn Blender years ago and after
lots of RTFM I could do some things in it back then, but I forgot all about
that.

I still find the 2.80 UI unintuitive. Clicking now selects, which is great,
but it's weird to me that clicking on the background and then dragging doesn't
move the viewport but does a selection box. Neither ctrl-drag nor any other
modifier and drag moved the viewport either. After some more trial and error,
apparently swiping on the trackpad rotates the viewport and shift-drag moves
it, but I couldn't figure out how to dolly after some more trial and error.

IIRC Blender is the only program where I couldn't figure out basic actions
without RTFM. It's a bit better now, but that's still the case.

Don't get me wrong, it's really impressive that they're able to do such a big
UI overhaul! But at least for me, it feels there's still a ways to go.

~~~
avhon1
Middle-click and drag to rotate the viewport

Shift+middle-click to translate the viewport

If you're using a Mac, or a laptop without a three-button trackpad or mouse,
there is an option called "emulate three-button mouse" that lets you use
alt+left-click as an alternative to middle-click. A little clumsy, but
adequate for viewing files on-the-go.

In the new 2.80 UI, there is a set of colored axes in the top-right corner.
Clicking and dragging on those rotates the viewport, and clicking on the ends
of one of the axes aligns the viewport to that axis.

To the left of those axes is a hand-shaped icon. Clicking and dragging on this
icon translates the viewport.

(I'm curious which programs you've used before. This is definitely the same
way you navigate in all of Autodesk's products, and in SolidWorks.)

