Hey everyone

Hope everyone is doing great so like many of you looking forward to the coming release of Blender 2.78 and found this very informative video by CG Masters about the upcoming release of Blender 2.78 and there is allot to look forward to

Blender 2.78 Feature Overview

The real-time PBR material support and GPU speed improvements are the most attractive features to me. I'd been working with 3d-Coat quite often, and all my production models going forward will support PBR textures and materials, so that's a very welcome improvement.

Yes that is one of the new things I am looking forward to since I also got 3D Coat and starting to play around with it and the new ability to start using the old native Blender settings in cycles offer the chance of redoing some old render with in Cycle could offer some nice renders for old projects

My primary use for Blender has been video editing. It's quick, easy and clean. It runs equally well in Windows, Linux and (now my new love) Mac. Is the stable release out yet? heard there were some issues with specifically the Mac release.

Hi Robin as to stable release no from my last info they were on their 2nd release Candidate so a stable release should be around the corner very soon. So your now on a Mac think that might earn you the title of Queen tech geek windows linux and now mac we will have to bow to your knowledge and wisdom

Blender 2.78 Release Notes

LuxXeon posted at 9:55AM Wed, 21 September 2016 - #4284101

The real-time PBR material support and GPU speed improvements are the most attractive features to me. I'd been working with 3d-Coat quite often, and all my production models going forward will support PBR textures and materials, so that's a very welcome improvement.

I love 3Dcoat, especially for the automatic unwrapping. About physical based rendering,. Which PBR standard is Blender using? What i mean is, will it follow the Marmoset standard, or something different? I noticed in PBR software, like 3Dcoat, there are options when exporting the maps to use certain normal map types and different workflow preset types for other maps, like using Spec/Gloss workflow or the Metal/Roughness workflow. Which is the most common one, and what will Blender materials use? If I export my models to Octane render, I usually pick the Spec/Gloss combo, because Octane doesn't support a metal channel.

Actually, Octane uses the Metal/Roughness workflow. Your metal map would be used in the Specular/Reflection node channel, and since Octane uses a Roughness parameter instead of Glossiness, the Roughness map works just fine in that channel obviously. If you use the Specular/Glossiness map workflow, then the Glossiness map would need to be inverted before using it in Octane, because it contains the opposite values of a roughness map. It all depends on how the render engine supports specular and/or reflection parameters. That's how you'd decide which workflow to use. Some real-time engines that support PBR can use all of these maps together, like Marmoset. Real-time game engines almost always support metalness and roughness map workflows, and Blender will support metal and roughness channels in the PBR node too. To avoid confusion if you redistribute your scenes or maps, you can always simply rename the metal map as specular/metal, and supply both a glossy and roughness maps in your scene files too.

Brilliant heads-up. Thank you so much for posting, Lobo.

I did see a tutorial and add on for PBR textures but it was geared toward using substance painter not sure if the tutorial would help anyone who might be learning about PBR and how they can be used in Blender here is the link I thought it was well done and it covers allot of info https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRPrPfWt-pg

Lobo3433 posted at 9:31PM Fri, 30 September 2016 - #4284197

Hi Robin as to stable release no from my last info they were on their 2nd release Candidate so a stable release should be around the corner very soon. So your now on a Mac think that might earn you the title of Queen tech geek windows linux and now mac we will have to bow to your knowledge and wisdom

Blender 2.78 Release Notes

Well, if only simply messing about in this stuff would just go ahead and give me some knowledge and wisdom in it already! ... unfortunately, I read too little at the outset, content to just do stuff and see what happens. YouTube has been an amazing resource: problem is, it's so easy to just get stuck into watching tutorial after tutorial and ending up not actually trying anything. {{{ sigh }}}

RobynsVeil posted at 10:16AM Fri, 30 September 2016 - #4285219

Well, if only simply messing about in this stuff would just go ahead and give me some knowledge and wisdom in it already! ... unfortunately, I read too little at the outset, content to just do stuff and see what happens. YouTube has been an amazing resource: problem is, it's so easy to just get stuck into watching tutorial after tutorial and ending up not actually trying anything. {{{ sigh }}}

I have to agree I have so many tutorials and mentally gathered so much knowledge and do end up not actually trying anything and usually it comes down to a confidence issue of displaying anything I might have learned or put together sometimes I find it easier to share just the knowledge then take a chance and showing what I can do as well I hope to soon over come that barrier

Just for the record and to let everyone know, Blender 2.78 has already been released and is available for download.

Might be best to hold off on 2.78 as there will be a 2.78a release coming very soon. Blender Developers Meeting Notes October 2nd

keppel posted at 10:37PM Wed, 05 October 2016 - #4285773

Might be best to hold off on 2.78 as there will be a 2.78a release coming very soon. Blender Developers Meeting Notes October 2nd

Really? Geez, 2.78 hasn't even been out a full week yet.

Thanks for the heads-up Keppel. I downloaded 2.78, but haven't it installed yet, so will wait.

I have seen this happen often where a second release comes out pretty fast if they find major issues that were not found during beta releases but that is also one of Blenders advantages when you consider most major software's don't come out with fixes as fast as Blender does

Looks like 2.78a will be released this week: Blender Developers meeting notes 9 October

Thanks for the heads-up keppel.

Blender 2.78a has now been released. Full list of fixes here: Blender 2.78a fixes