I was playing around with the latest build for Mac, dated July 12. It has all the icons and dropdowns the UI naysayers have been clamoring for. It also appears very cluttered to me. I think many of the changes are very logical, bringing frequently accessed commands to the top with dedicated panels, but there will be some pain for longtime users. I’m not a longtime user but having just gotten comfortable with the interface it’s a bit uncomfortable knowing I’ll have to readjust.

On the other hand I think potential new users will have a much easier time picking up the program for the first time. Many of the criticisms aimed at the current UI should be put to rest. Plus there are some exciting upgrades and new tools being added.

I’m really looking forward to the new version but it seems almost like a whole new animal.

I agree many long time users may hit a few speed bumps but I think they will be minor and the goal in my opinion is to bring an even more user friendly UI I hated 2.4 series and did not really dive into Blender till the 2.5 release which made sense to me but once you start to grow with Blender as whole it even old timers will find the new improvements and tools worth a little relearning

I cut my teeth on the 4.xx series, so the change to 2.5x and upward was a bit of a switch. Got there, eventually, but yeah, took a bit. Now, with 2.8, it's more of a curiosity to see how they've moved the cheese. There were too many 2.4x hold-overs in 2.5x+ and cleaning all those up can only be an improvement. Besides which, I almost never rendered in BI - never could get materials to behave. Cycles changed everything, and now Eevee has some exciting characteristics I hope will take advantage of the recent Ryzen upgrade to my system.

I, too, cut my teeth on the old 2.4x series for a longtime before I got my hands on 2.52, and I thought it was a vast improvement. I'm looking forward to 2.8, and from what I've seen, though it hasn't been much since I'm not one to play with daily builds, there will still be a "default" mode, and I'm hoping it will be as similar to the 2.78/2.79 versions I'm used to.

I haven't mastered Cycles, though keep trying because I do all my rendering in Poser, and the latest version of Poser has the newer SuperFly render engine, which is based on Cycles. It should be interesting to see how the EEVEE render engine improves rendering, though I still probably wouldn't do final rendering in Blender in any case. I use it for modeling and UV mapping more than anything else.

I've never really noticed any 2.4x hold-overs, since the 2.5x UI was so drastically different.

I have render more in Cycles than Poser or Daz and what I am gathering is that the node editor and cycles go hand and hand the Principle Shader has made learning nodes a bit easier and learning more about lighting I hope will go along way that is where I am still cutting my teeth hope this becomes a bit easier in the upcoming release

I've been working with computers long enough to know that change is the only constant. I'm sure the new version will bring many more new users on board and eliminate many of the tedious parts that current users have gotten used to. Love the Principled shader, reminds me of Poser. The new Hair Shader and Volume Shader follow the same principle. Wish I heard more about Blender 101 though.

I know one place I have gotten allot of useful info and some great tutorials is from CGMasters and recently a new tutorial channel by blender Pascal Alt on Youtube the level of detail that they cover has really been helpful in my opinion

I remember picking up 2,4 and I still have the zip file stored on my old drive but couldn't get the hang of it at all. Tried again with 2.78 and not sure why but just fell into the way it worked straight away and easily. Strange as I came from working with Maya at an agency. the new 2.79.5 has a couple of 2.8 menu styles to it but nothing else. And 2.8 looks and feels totally different to me atm with the couple of builds I have looked at. With all things though will learn and grow with it even though some changes I dislike there are others that I do. And the tutorials that will be about will always be helpful to show how to do things in the new way.

Incantrix

I've been keeping my eye on the Blender site, awaiting the release of 2.8 before I spend any more time trying to learn Blender. But I just recently came across a fork of Blender that supposedly has a much more user-friendly interface (bforartists), and now I'm wondering how that version compares to what's coming in 2.8. Has anyone played with both bforartists and a recent beta of 2.8 who can comment?

I do all my 3D work on a MacBook Pro while sitting on a sofa (for ergonomic reasons), and I really appreciate that Blender can work with the trackpad-- no external mouse needed. That's surprisingly and frustratingly rare in 3D apps. But what has always driven me nuts in Blender is that there's no simple interface for controlling the camera, like the strip of camera controls at the top of Poser, DAZ Studio, and my favorite modeling app thus far, Cheetah3D (for Mac).I look forward to seeing how camera controls work in the next version of Blender!

perpetualrevision, I agree that camera selection in Blender is not as easy as it should be. I have my own particular set-up that I find makes camera selection much easier. I have started a new thread sharing the way that I do it. It works along the same principle as Poser and DAZ studio in that the scene cameras are set-up in defined positions like front, back, side etc. I also have a scene camera that will always look at my model no matter where I move the camera or model. I invite you to have a look at the thread and see if it can help you out. Camera Selection Thread

Reviewed, and commented, Keppel. Thanks muchly.