The Blender 2016 Conference, Mike Erwin gave a revealing presentation about the upcoming features of Blender, and where the software is headed in the near future. There will be a lot of improvements in the viewport rendering, particularly to do with PBR and realtime shading of course, but most interesting was the talk about "task-centric" viewport behavior. Supposedly, the viewports will intuitively know what you're trying to do and automatically adjust to help you accomplish your task more efficiently. The hardware and OS requirements, obviously, will be relatively steep to support these new features, particularly for Mac OS users, but it all seems quite interesting. My favorite feature will be the smooth -shaded, high-definition anti-aliased edge mesh display for selected objects in edit mode (finally). This had always been one of my personal peeves when doing detailed modeling in the viewport, so I'll certainly look forward to that.

2.8 is definitely going to be something else. And it certainly won't hurt to have one of the original developers of Maya aboard working with Tangent Animation, craeating Ozzy and other products. EXCITING future ahead for Blender!

Thanks for the heads-up LuxXeon. Very interesting indeed.

Thanks for the link, Lux. We already have a display all edges option for objects in Blender. I'm guessing that this is a major improvement of that feature? He said in the video that it was more difficult than he thought to make that happen, so I'm thinking it must be very much improved.

HMorton posted at 7:51PM Tue, 14 February 2017 - #4292298

Thanks for the link, Lux. We already have a display all edges option for objects in Blender. I'm guessing that this is a major improvement of that feature? He said in the video that it was more difficult than he thought to make that happen, so I'm thinking it must be very much improved.

I apologize for not replying to this sooner. I never got a notification that there were replies here for some reason. To answer your question, yes, it will be a major improvement over what Blender currently offers in the way of visible edges in the viewport (and I'm assuming for render as well). As a modeler, I find it extremely useful to visualize and work on topology when I can clearly and accurately see the visible edge lines of a mesh in the viewport. This is something Blender can do to some extent as it is now with Wire display and Draw All Edges, but when compared to other packages I work with, the given results of these display options are often less than favorable, and can not be bound to a hotkey that I'm aware of (I prefer to toggle visible edge lines off and on while working on a topology). The current location under Object > Display is less than convenient and only works on a per-object basis. This would be much better as an overall scene display option. I'm fairly certain improvements in this area, particularly in quality and easy access, will be most welcome by modelers and texture artists, and will also come in quite handy for everyday workflow.

I hate software that wants to anticipate me. I often end up adding more work than saving me any since I now have to go back and correct whatever it was anticipating. Maybe if they add a way to just cut it off when I don't want or need it.

Is or will ther be a way to switch of that sticky RBMouse click? It drives me mad and is one of the reasons I still avoid blender.

-Timberwolf- posted at 8:30AM Mon, 03 April 2017 - #4301358

Is or will ther be a way to switch of that sticky RBMouse click? It drives me mad and is one of the reasons I still avoid blender.

You can change button configuration and most other settings in the User Preferences.