CG Masters put out this very informative video that I am sure will be of interest to all about Blender 2.8

Thank you for posting this Lobo, as I'm sure everyone who hasn't seen any of the nightly builds will be interested in what's coming with version 2.8.

Edited to Add: Wish he wasn't talking so fast so I could follow along a little easier.

Anyone know if there are conflicts with AMD video cards?

Boni posted at 8:31PM Wed, 19 September 2018 - #4336407

Anyone know if there are conflicts with AMD video cards?

To answer your question Boni at this time this is the only info I can find most current cards already support OpenGL 4 doing a search for OpenGL viewer will give you a download of a small app that can tell you what version of OpenGL your current card supports

Blender 2.7x should run on all systems that support OpenGL 2.1 and above, with recent graphics drivers. For Windows users, in case of problems try installing the latest drivers from the graphics card manufacturer website (Intel, NVIDIA or AMD).

Note: These requirements are valid for Blender 2.77 up to 2.79b. However, Blender 2.76 and earlier still supports Windows XP and OpenGL 1.4 graphics cards. Blender 2.8 requires OpenGL 3.3 or above.

Mine is OpenGL 3.1, so I'm going to need an upgrade.

Thank you so much ... this really helps!

Miss B posted at 7:30AM Thu, 20 September 2018 - #4336427

Mine is OpenGL 3.1, so I'm going to need an upgrade.

If you have an older nvidia card, you might be able to update your OpenGL driver .

Miss B posted at 8:49AM Thu, 20 September 2018 - #4336427

Mine is OpenGL 3.1, so I'm going to need an upgrade.

Like Torquinox mentioned a driver update might resolve that or a video card upgrade might be needed now that card prices have started to come down might be able to find a quality card for a reasonable price and since a full stable release of 2.8 might not happen till the beginning of the year with holidays coming up newegg.com will have many sales and deals my OpenGL is 4.4 and I am running a NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti

Thanks, lobo!

Lobo3433 posted at 9:12PM Thu, 20 September 2018 - #4336438

Miss B posted at 8:49AM Thu, 20 September 2018 - #4336427

Mine is OpenGL 3.1, so I'm going to need an upgrade.

Like Torquinox mentioned a driver update might resolve that or a video card upgrade might be needed now that card prices have started to come down might be able to find a quality card for a reasonable price and since a full stable release of 2.8 might not happen till the beginning of the year with holidays coming up newegg.com will have many sales and deals my OpenGL is 4.4 and I am running a NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti

Unfortunately this puppy doesn't have an nVidia card. It was the one thing I wanted, but my old laptop died suddenly, so I bought this laptop in a tech store near here, and it only has an embedded Intel CPU. Whether I could upgrade that is the question. Besides this puppy's 5 1/2 years old, so it's time to look for something newer.

Miss B posted at 9:09AM Fri, 21 September 2018 - #4336464

Unfortunately this puppy doesn't have an nVidia card. It was the one thing I wanted, but my old laptop died suddenly, so I bought this laptop in a tech store near here, and it only has an embedded Intel CPU. Whether I could upgrade that is the question. Besides this puppy's 5 1/2 years old, so it's time to look for something newer.

I have been looking at replacing my old laptop as well and been sort of watching for a sale on the Lenovo Yoga 730 or 930, 2 in 1 series laptops or their Legion gaming laptops with built in GTX 1050 or 1060 TI GPU but mainly the 2 in 1 for they can also double as a graphic tablet similar to a wacom

I'm not really interested in 2 in 1 laptops, as I already have a tablet I like, but I'll check out the Legion for sure.

I check Costco for the current Dell 8900 series. Look for a sale where you get the thing for several hundred dollars. The case is cheap, but you can't buy the parts for the money. This is what they're showing now

I would only suggest stay away from HP I had a HP laptop and have to say it was the worse if it wasn't to slow or giving me Blue screens it had to be the worse investment I ever made

I agree with Lobo about HP products. I've seen a lot of problems with them.

HP was my first laptop it was on sale during holiday and had not done research first only time I did not do research before buying a tech item learned my lesson good lol

Thanks Lobo.

Your welcome yarp

Wondering when the full release of 2.80 date.

Robo2010 posted at 8:55AM Thu, 11 October 2018 - #4337436

Wondering when the full release of 2.80 date.

From info I had gathered they were looking at a stable release later this year I think that has changed to a potential stable release either towards the end of the year of shortly after the new year it is still very much up in the air

A copy and paste from the dev meeting notes

"Blender developers meeting notes - 2018-10-08

Hi all,

Here are the notes from today’s developer meeting.

Next meeting is Monday, 15 October 18:00 CEST (16:00 UTC).

1. Blender 2.8

Work continues towards the beta, with lots of bugfixes and incremental improvements.

New features:

The unit system now supports fixed units for display and editing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrL0tbBTKus

New icon set by Andrzej Ambroz was added.

Initial tool system for UV editor.

Multi-object editing now works for armature edit mode.

New B-Bone Custom Handle type that uses the handle bone direction only.

Weight paint can now display isoline contours.

Weekly Reports:

Bastien: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Mont29/Foundation/2018#Week_264_-09.2F29_to_10.2F05 Brecht: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Brecht/Reports/2018#October_1-5 Campbell: http://download.blender.org/ftp/ideasman42/donelist/2018.html#week-294-october-1 Clément: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Hypersomniac/Foundation/2018#Week_91:1st-7th_Oct Dalai: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Dfelinto/Reports/2018#October_1-5 Jacques: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:JacquesLucke/Reports/2018 Philipp: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:PhilippOeser/Foundation/2018#Week_40.28Oct_1st_-_Oct_5th.29"

Going through a lot of the meeting notes and bug fixes and implementations etc. It appears to be a bit all over the place Although I am happy they finally got a dedicated wireframe mode. and the z hotkey brings up a shading menu rather than just switching between the 2 modes.

Lots of little things and a few cosmetic things, so the way its looking I would say early next year sometime.

Incantrix

Thanks for the updated info Incantrix it is much appreciated

Blender is on the right way by adding some icons to its UI, but I am not ready for blender and blender is not yet ready for me. Where is the render button? How to navigate the camera? E.g. I switched to the render camera and a weird black two arrowed gizmo appeared, that does not give me any help how to move my camera view. Imported an obj-file and tried to load textures for it - impossible by just guessing the UI. These are the first things I've tried and failed. Sorry, Blender is still a Nerd-Only app. Why can't they just do it as other apps do it? I was hoping 2.80 could be usable for me, but no it isn't.

-Timberwolf- posted at 1:17PM Tue, 23 October 2018 - #4338114

Blender is on the right way by adding some icons to its UI, but I am not ready for blender and blender is not yet ready for me. Where is the render button? How to navigate the camera? E.g. I switched to the render camera and a weird black two arrowed gizmo appeared, that does not give me any help how to move my camera view. Imported an obj-file and tried to load textures for it - impossible by just guessing the UI. These are the first things I've tried and failed. Sorry, Blender is still a Nerd-Only app. Why can't they just do it as other apps do it? I was hoping 2.80 could be usable for me, but no it isn't.

Hi Timberwolf

Navigation currently is still partially the same the new UI is more like other software than it has ever been before. But have to under it is still in Alpha stage no where near ready for a production environment. There are several tutorials and feature video on YouTube I would search for CGMasters, CG Geek, Jayanam to name a few who have done some tutorials for the new version. I know even me who is a long time Blender user will have to relearn a few things. I think if you watch and give it a real chance you will find the improvements will benefit new users like yourself

I was hoping they'd give us a choice as to which UI layout we'd prefer, because like you, I'm a long time Blender user, and I'm used to the current UI layout.

That said, I'm glad they're introducing options to make the UI easier for new users, because I've seen comments from many folks on several forums over the years who would use it, or at least try it out, if the UI was easier to get around in.

The current UI is quite good. I like it. But tech is a treadmill. Times change, interfaces change. All that said, I expect 2.79b is going to stay on my machine for at least another 9-12 months. Then we'll see.

Exactly what I was thinking as well Torquinox, mostly because I don't do final renders in Blender, but do like the old Blender Render engine for checking my model's mesh as I work on it, and from what I understand, they're doing away with it with version 2.8.

Yes, the dev team removed the Blender Render engine in 2.8. They say it's because the code base for that is 25 years old. I think 2.8 is a very ambitious update. I'll need to upgrade my system to run it. They indicate 2.8 won't have all its features until 2.82, which they predict for late next year.

I fully agree 2.79 will be my work horse for a while still and gradually move to 2.8 as it matures but for those newcomers I think 2.8 will be a good version to get your feet wet and take the Blender plunge plus we will be here to help them along the way

Lobo3433 posted at 10:02AM Fri, 26 October 2018 - #4338117

-Timberwolf- posted at 1:17PM Tue, 23 October 2018 - #4338114

Blender is on the right way by adding some icons to its UI, but I am not ready for blender and blender is not yet ready for me. Where is the render button? How to navigate the camera? E.g. I switched to the render camera and a weird black two arrowed gizmo appeared, that does not give me any help how to move my camera view. Imported an obj-file and tried to load textures for it - impossible by just guessing the UI. These are the first things I've tried and failed. Sorry, Blender is still a Nerd-Only app. Why can't they just do it as other apps do it? I was hoping 2.80 could be usable for me, but no it isn't.

Hi Timberwolf

Navigation currently is still partially the same the new UI is more like other software than it has ever been before. But have to under it is still in Alpha stage no where near ready for a production environment. There are several tutorials and feature video on YouTube I would search for CGMasters, CG Geek, Jayanam to name a few who have done some tutorials for the new version. I know even me who is a long time Blender user will have to relearn a few things. I think if you watch and give it a real chance you will find the improvements will benefit new users like yourself

Thx for answer. :-) So, what is it? Am I just not enough of a Blender user, to just simply rotate a camera, or is this an issue, that comes with the beta?

Hello Timberwolf

The Render button along the top tool bar third one in after the edit button see screen shot below. Understand I am still learning where things are as well with these builds. In camera view right clicking on mouse and holding moves camera but have yet to find all the controls. Clicking to the shading tab bring you a layout where textures can be added and a node view with the principle shader already set in the node editor. User preferences has been moved from the file menu to the edit menu and almost all basic and standard add on are disabled by default due to the Alpha nature of the build. Also now by default Blender starts up with Eevee as the render you have to switch over to cycles if that is what you want to use. CG Geeks recently this past week came out with a good walk thru on rendering with Eevee adding textures to a scene and think it might be very useful covering camera movements and CG Masters has a good 2.8 overview that runs 49 minutes that I also think would be helpful. I have just started playing around with this build since I know I will eventually have to answer allot of questions so trying to get as familiarized as possible. Also know they have pushed release date to earlier next year so there are still numerous bugs and glitches 2.79 should still be your main program for anything that you want to be production ready. I hope this helps more and again feel free to ask if it doesn't I will do my best to find answers

Came across this and thought it fit right into this thread I hope it helps

Blender 2.8 - Beginner Tutorial - Lesson 01 - Workspace Tour

Nice find Lobo. I just watched it, and it's definitely informative.

Miss B posted at 6:12PM Sat, 27 October 2018 - #4338317

Nice find Lobo. I just watched it, and it's definitely informative.

I am glad with the coming of 2.8 the more info that I can find the better

Very true.

I admit the Eevee render engine looks interesting. I still think Cycles is way better.

I am more excited about actually using this program( rather than just adoring it's potential) than I have been since ver 2.36. Some of the old stuff is new again. Just found out Function: Unsubdivide is back( or no longer hidden). I am stoked.