You'll be happy to know that the UI really doesn't change between 2.9 and 3.0.  Only a few of the render features, modifiers, and geometry nodes are updated.  Olav3d has an excellent video where he talks about 2.8 and 2.9 tutorials vs. Blender 3.0.  Once you get comfortable with 2.9, moving to 3.x will be extremely easy compared to the jump from 2.79 to 2.8 or higher.

Miss B posted at 12:52 PM Sat, 12 February 2022 - #4434703

LuxXeon posted at 11:35 PM Fri, 11 February 2022 - #4434690

This technique will work exactly the same in any version of Blender.

Good to know Lux, as I downloaded 3.0.x, but haven't played with it at all, as I'm still trying to get used to the new UI in version 2.9. I'm so used to the 2.79 UI, it's taking a while to get comfortable with the newer UI.

Feel free to contact me if you need any tips or anything when you decide to jump into 3.0x officially.  I haven't actually done any scientific comparisons, but I'd be very confident in saying that the UI changes since the 2.7x days have really allowed me to work much faster without the need to memorize nearly as many hotkeys.  You might notice in this video, for example, I'm using maybe just a handful of hotkeys and the rest is menus and widgets.  I'd say I'm actually working faster with only about half the amount of hotkeys in my workflow that I used to need back with 2.7x.  I think it has to do with the ability now to just switch 3d views using the 3d axis widget and having context menus much more easily accessible than they were in previous UI configurations.  Hopefully, you will find the same workflow improvements for yourself too.

@Lobo3433  Thank you, my friend!  It's a super easy one this time, but I thought it might be appropriate for the occasion.  I was tempted to do this in Blender 3.1, because there has been a long-awaited update to the modeling tools in that version which would have been interesting to use on this model, but I decided to keep it as a 3.0 tutorial.  Blender 3.1 introduces Vertex Creasing for SubD surfaces.  (see here: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.1/Modeling).  This is a feature I'd been waiting patiently for since making the jump from 3dsMax to Blender as my primary modeling tool.  Vertex Creasing is such a simple but useful feature, I'm amazed it wasn't added until 3.1.  It allows you to create sharp points on subdivision surfaces while maintaining a beautifully smooth and clean topology.  No need to crease unnecessary edges just to achieve pointed corners anymore, and no need for support loops or triangles.  It's a godsend for certain types of hard surface objects that have points and curved surfaces together.  This would have been a good candidate for that, but I decided to keep it more universally accessible to people who haven't yet updated to the experimental builds.  This technique will work exactly the same in any version of Blender.

@Lobo3433 I'd be curious to see if you notice any improvement in speed with the experimental beta release of 3.1.   Some changes to nodes in 3.1 include memory usage improvements of up to 100x, which can improve overall performance by 3 to 4x what it was in v3.0.  Also, many of the nodes have been multi-threaded in the 3.1 version, which can also improve calculations by 4x what they were in 3.0.  For example, the "Realize Instances" node was extremely resource-intensive but has now been multi-threaded, which increases performance tremendously!

I would not have been able to complete this animation in 6 hours if I didn't switch to the experimental build for 3.1 to get the performance improvements.  Instances were just too slow in 3.0, especially when I needed to realize them.  Another thing is that now splines and primitives in Geometry Nodes have been multi-threaded.  I used both of those for the effects in this video, so using 3.1 for the final render really was the only option.  While everything was originally created using v3, my system just couldn't handle the load when it came time to render.  So on a whim, someone suggested trying 3.1 and that really helped.

@goofygrape  thank you!  Yeah I wasn't sure what I would do at the end there, but that idea seemed to fit. LOL

@Lobo3433  Yes, I've seen a few Ducky tutorials.  He's very popular so it's hard to miss his vids.  Geometry nodes are fantastic right now for motion graphics.  I've been making short animations with them for a while now.  But things are changing so fast, the tutorials out there for 2.9 geometry nodes are already obsolete with the introduction of fields in 3.0.  Some scene files created with geometry nodes in 2.93 seem to either break or behave differently now if loaded in 3.01 or higher.   I'm waiting for a few more updates before I really dive in seriously, but I'm definitely having some fun with them right now.

Lobo3433 posted at 8:52 AM Sat, 29 January 2022 - #4433962

Wow that is really great been playing with the geometry nodes from a few tutorials but they really bog my systems down since still only have a GTX 980 Ti and it still so damn hard trying to find RTX at reasonable prices. But that is impressive work thanks for sharing LuxXeon

Thanks, Lobo.  Yeah, geometry nodes still have a long way to go before they become truly efficient in my opinion.  I didn't start using them until 3.0 (when they added feilds) and I had to use daily experimental builds for certain things here.  They have improved instances and added some gpu optimizations but I feel like it's still a bit too convoluted to use for major projects. 

Happy belated Holidays to all.  Sorry for the late reply.  Hope everyone is doing well!

I think it's always important to include Andrew's ubiquitous doughnut tutorial, updated for Blender 3.0.  It's basically the same tutorial it's always been, except now he includes some features specific to 3.0, such as Geometry Nodes for the sprinkles.

Just curious if you ever got this solved.  I'm 99% confident it's due to a display issue, probably from lack of Vram or drivers or both.

Lobo3433 posted at 9:30 PM Sun, 5 December 2021 - #4431317

LuxXeon posted at 9:16 PM Sun, 5 December 2021 - #4431314

Lobo, has Renderosity removed our ability to embed videos directly in the forum threads?  I tried to embed a video in a reply the other day and it didn't work the way it had always done before.

I have had hit or miss with it if you see your buttons above when your writing a thread the last one is suppose to take you into HTML mode we did away with the markup a couple of months back as far as I know should be able to embed video using the HTML mode but like I said it has been hit or miss for me so I do not know if they have taken that feature away I will try to find out when I go into Slack tomorrow and ask in there. 

Interesting.  I don't see the HTML mode in my buttons anymore either.  This is how my button panel looks now. 

Whenever I try to add the embedded iframe code from Youtube, the post simply returns the code in code form instead of embedding the player.  Here's an example:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7wKnPclzYY8" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Sorry for interrupting the thread, BTW.  If you want to delete this conversation and just contact me in private, its' ok.  Thanks.

Lobo, has Renderosity removed our ability to embed videos directly in the forum threads?  I tried to embed a video in a reply the other day and it didn't work the way it had always done before.

Optix requires a GPU with compute capability 5.0 and higher, and a driver version of at least 470, according to the Blender specs.  Optix is currently ONLY supported by the RTX cards in Blender.  There is speculation it may become available for other Turing-based cards like the GTX 1660 Ti, but currently, Optix requires the RT cores found in the RTX cards to use Optix.  The GTX 1660, although it may have the Turing architecture, does not have the RT cores.

Optix is much faster than the Cuda backend in Blender, and Cuda was much faster than the OpenCL.  However, now AMD users have a new option for GPU enhanced rendering, so that speed has been much improved.  I don't know how much speed improvement Cycles X will offer to Cuda-based cards, but Lobo has suggested it is significant as well.  Still, if you can get an Optix-enabled RTX card, you should see the greatest speed enhancements because of the extra RT cores.

Cycles X is really fantastic for both Nvidia and AMD GPU now.  It really shines for Optix-enabled cards (RTX), but they've also improved CUDA.  Moreover, they've really made an effort toward supporting AMD cards as well, with HIP framework support for RDNA architecture and Radeon Pro drivers.  It's a massive leap forward in GPU rendering capability in Blender.

That looks great, Lobo!  Yeah, the Instant Mesh app is good, but I'm not a huge fan of it for lower poly results.  It can provide a useable geometry for static models or some objects that aren't too complex with large flat surface areas.  I haven't found it very good for more organic or complex surfaces because it tends to produce strange edge loop terminations and ngons at lower resolutions.  It takes some work to get a good result from it at lower resolutions.  In some cases, I can just retopologize better geometry on a surface with 3dCoat in less time.

You are correct in that the Zremesher was created by the same person who developed the Exoside technology.  I've been using the Exoside or Zremesher solutions for a couple of years now and they really do a great job in most cases.  There are some objects that I made via boolean or high poly sculpting that I wanted to retopologize for distribution.  I tried to do it by hand but it was extremely difficult and time-consuming because of the various interlocking parts and curvature on each object.  The only thing that was capable of doing the job reasonably well was Zremesher/Exoside.  Well worth the money in my opinion if you do a lot of retopology.

The voxel and quad remesher options have been available in Blender for a while now, but they're really only useful in a sculpting workflow.  The results aren't actually that great for low poly retopology, although I guess you can use it for that purpose in some cases.  In my experience, the creme of the crop among these auto-topo options is the Exoside Quad Remesher addon.  The results which that addon can provide are nearly as good as some hand-modeled topology, if you use it correctly.  It's really the best solution on the market today.  It's so good, Pixologic have used the technology for their Zremesher in Zbrush.  I've actually been able to retopologize some very complex 3d shapes and designs with near hand-modeled results, in just a few seconds with Exoside.  Great tool.