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For those unfamiliar with Blender's versioning, the major number is effectively meaningless. The 8 is effectively the major number and the 2 the minor. Anyway

by dagmx 7y ago

For those unfamiliar with Blender's versioning, the major number is effectively meaningless. The 8 is effectively the major number and the 2 the minor. Anyway the big items in this release IMHO are: - preliminary support for the Pixar USD format ( https://graphics.pixar.com/usd/docs/index.html https://graphics.pixar.com/usd/docs/index.html ) which is gaining large traction in film studios, gradually in game engines and is the format of choice for Apple's AR ecosystem - coming in line with the VFX reference platform ( https://vfxplatform.com/ https://vfxplatform.com/ ) The combination of both which means that Blender will be easier to integrate in existing pipelines rather than being a very interesting curiosity for large studios with preexisting pipelines. Blender is certainly very powerful, and with the 2.8x releases, I think they're really opening up appeal to a larger set of artists and studios. Just recently been talking to some large studios that are actively considering adding it to their toolset. An overview of some of the major features in this release with accompanying videos can be found here : https://www.blendernation.com/2020/02/14/the-five-key-features-in-blender-2-82/ https://www.blendernation.com/2020/02/14/the-five-key-featur...

vadansky 7y ago
How is it compared to ZBrush? I’ve seen a lot of the sculpting tools they’re showing and I’m wondering if they’re up to par yet?
- dagmx 7y ago
  I don't sculpt much anymore but from talking to people who do it seems like zbrush is still more performant with better tools for sketching out ideas as well but with blender you get the convenience of not having to jump between applications.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    Though for really sketching , blender’s 3D grease pencil tool is pretty cool. That was in 2.8 I think.
    - snuxoll 7y ago
      The grease pencil has been around for longer than 2.8, but it got some serious love recently. The Blender Institute even made a 2D movie with it (Hero) as a showcase for the improvements.
- Arcanum-XIII 7y ago
  Zbrush is it’s own thing. Nearly all 3D package can (and have) produced the equivalent. What you have with Zbrush is another way of looking at how to do 3D illustration and as a side effect 3D sculpting. So, blender was on par already for quite a while. And since the version 2.8, it seems that they’re more than on par with the rest of the industry.
  - cma 7y ago
    2.81 is what brought it near zbrush, not 2.80: https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-81/ https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-81/ https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.81/Sculpt https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.81/S... It was almost all focused on sculpting improvements, adding a voxel remesh workflow.
    - Arcanum-XIII 7y ago
      Honnestly, it's mostly the UI revamp that put Blender up to big gun: a familiar interface mean that every artist trained on other software can "easily" transfer. Sculpting improvement, are, well, an open discussion. Poly modelling with subdiv is still better in Mirai, a software dead for nearly 20 year now for example, and lot of artist using nurbs still miss Softimage 3D 4.
    - nineteen999 7y ago
      Thanks for pointing these out; I've avoided using Blender for sculpting for a long time since the performance wasn't even close to ZBrush and it didn't have equivalents for Dynamesh/ZRemesher. Maybe it's time for another look.
- Daub 7y ago
  I have used it for minor sculpting jobs, and found it very agreeable. A bit buggy in the version I was using (problems with updating previews) but will definitely use again. Adaptive subdiv worked as advertised.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
fctorial 7y ago
What changed in version 2.00
- dagmx 7y ago
  Hard to find release notes as Blender 2.0 predates Blender being open sourced, where the company went under two decades ago now. An informal history can be found here https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/getting_started/about/history.html https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/getting_started/ab... But Blender 2 is where it eventually went open source so I tend to read the version as "Blender2 82" vs "Blender 2.82"
  - outadoc 7y ago
    From your link: "2.00 – August 2000: Interactive 3D and real-time engine."
    - dagmx 7y ago
      Yeah but I'm not sure that was all, or if it necessitated a major version bump.
  - spectramax 7y ago
    Why are software people so parsimonous when dealing with versioning? That "." in versioning scheme has a purpose, but it is completely useless here. You might as well make the version 82 (or even better 8.2) because the "2." is meaningless. The "." allows you to differentiate major, minor and patch versions. Blender should be using 8.2 instead of 2.82. That helps with legibility and understanding to the user. Remember, versioning and tagging your commit is for the user, not for the software developers. Let me make my point clear by exaggerating the issue at hand... Imagine if Blender treated version 2.8285218588190159 as "major" version 9, the last digit. The preceding 5 have a chance of changing may be once a decade. It's bad.
    - fctorial 7y ago
      Well, it is an end user application, not a library. As for 79 to 80 being a major change, it was probably a coincidence which had nothing to do with 7 and 8. We might see the next major update at version 87.
app4soft 7y ago
> For those unfamiliar with Blender's versioning, the major number is effectively meaningless. The 8 is effectively the major number and the 2 the minor. According to semantic versioning this would look like Blender v2.8.2. According web browsers versioning it will be Blender 28.2.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  No, semantic versioning applies a specific meaning (that’s what the ‘semantic’ bit means) to the major version number. If the 2 is meaningless then it isn’t a Semantic Versioning major version number.
- dagmx 7y ago
  According to semantic versioning it would be Blender2 8.2.x IMHO According to how browsers version it would be Blender2 82 Ideally the initial 2 would be dropped off since it only has a vestigial reason to be there
fsh 7y ago
Despite the dumb name, the new "AI"-Denoiser is also a huge improvement over 2.81.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
arminiusreturns 7y ago
Do you happen to have any thoughts on the relationship of gltf to USD? Are they complimentary or competitive?
- ykl 7y ago
  I think they are very much complimentary. This vastly oversimplifies things, but you can can almost think of gltf is to USD like PNG is to a Photoshop file. gltf is meant to be a 3D publishing format, whereas USD is meant to be an asset interchange format between DCC applications. gltf is very minimal in the amount of runtime processing required to interpret and display it (much of gltf can more or less be directly mapped into GL buffers), whereas USD includes an extremely powerful schema and composition system that is highly expressive but much more complex to interpret in its fullest form (meant for sending entire editable scenegraphs between, say, Maya and Houdini and Blender and Presto). Both formats are really great at what they’re meant to do. I was somewhat surprised that Apple picked USD as the basis for their AR stuff, since gltf would have seen like a more natural fit. Maybe the fact that USD has taken the animation/VFX world by storm (many studios are shifting from proprietary internal interchange formats to USD en masse) helped Apple pick.
  - arminiusreturns 7y ago
    Thank you for the response and also very cool that the industry is moving towards open source formats. FBX is such a nightmare I'm happy to have moved all my assets to gltf.
    - snuxoll 7y ago
      Would be nice if Epic included a proper gltf importer in UE4, there’s an open source one but it is functionally limited compared to Epic’s built-in importers. Blender does a good job of exporting FBX, but it’s nowhere near perfect since they can’t use Autodesk’s proprietary SDK.
      - naikrovek 7y ago

by dagmx 7y ago

vadansky 7y ago

How is it compared to ZBrush? I’ve seen a lot of the sculpting tools they’re showing and I’m wondering if they’re up to par yet?

dagmx 7y ago
I don't sculpt much anymore but from talking to people who do it seems like zbrush is still more performant with better tools for sketching out ideas as well but with blender you get the convenience of not having to jump between applications.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  Though for really sketching , blender’s 3D grease pencil tool is pretty cool. That was in 2.8 I think.
  - snuxoll 7y ago
    The grease pencil has been around for longer than 2.8, but it got some serious love recently. The Blender Institute even made a 2D movie with it (Hero) as a showcase for the improvements.
Arcanum-XIII 7y ago
Zbrush is it’s own thing. Nearly all 3D package can (and have) produced the equivalent. What you have with Zbrush is another way of looking at how to do 3D illustration and as a side effect 3D sculpting. So, blender was on par already for quite a while. And since the version 2.8, it seems that they’re more than on par with the rest of the industry.
- cma 7y ago
  2.81 is what brought it near zbrush, not 2.80: https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-81/ https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-81/ https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.81/Sculpt https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.81/S... It was almost all focused on sculpting improvements, adding a voxel remesh workflow.
  - Arcanum-XIII 7y ago
    Honnestly, it's mostly the UI revamp that put Blender up to big gun: a familiar interface mean that every artist trained on other software can "easily" transfer. Sculpting improvement, are, well, an open discussion. Poly modelling with subdiv is still better in Mirai, a software dead for nearly 20 year now for example, and lot of artist using nurbs still miss Softimage 3D 4.
  - nineteen999 7y ago
    Thanks for pointing these out; I've avoided using Blender for sculpting for a long time since the performance wasn't even close to ZBrush and it didn't have equivalents for Dynamesh/ZRemesher. Maybe it's time for another look.
Daub 7y ago
I have used it for minor sculpting jobs, and found it very agreeable. A bit buggy in the version I was using (problems with updating previews) but will definitely use again. Adaptive subdiv worked as advertised.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

fctorial 7y ago

What changed in version 2.00

dagmx 7y ago
Hard to find release notes as Blender 2.0 predates Blender being open sourced, where the company went under two decades ago now. An informal history can be found here https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/getting_started/about/history.html https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/getting_started/ab... But Blender 2 is where it eventually went open source so I tend to read the version as "Blender2 82" vs "Blender 2.82"
- outadoc 7y ago
  From your link: "2.00 – August 2000: Interactive 3D and real-time engine."
  - dagmx 7y ago
    Yeah but I'm not sure that was all, or if it necessitated a major version bump.
- spectramax 7y ago
  Why are software people so parsimonous when dealing with versioning? That "." in versioning scheme has a purpose, but it is completely useless here. You might as well make the version 82 (or even better 8.2) because the "2." is meaningless. The "." allows you to differentiate major, minor and patch versions. Blender should be using 8.2 instead of 2.82. That helps with legibility and understanding to the user. Remember, versioning and tagging your commit is for the user, not for the software developers. Let me make my point clear by exaggerating the issue at hand... Imagine if Blender treated version 2.8285218588190159 as "major" version 9, the last digit. The preceding 5 have a chance of changing may be once a decade. It's bad.
  - fctorial 7y ago
    Well, it is an end user application, not a library. As for 79 to 80 being a major change, it was probably a coincidence which had nothing to do with 7 and 8. We might see the next major update at version 87.

app4soft 7y ago

> For those unfamiliar with Blender's versioning, the major number is effectively meaningless. The 8 is effectively the major number and the 2 the minor. According to semantic versioning this would look like Blender v2.8.2. According web browsers versioning it will be Blender 28.2.

chrisseaton 7y ago
No, semantic versioning applies a specific meaning (that’s what the ‘semantic’ bit means) to the major version number. If the 2 is meaningless then it isn’t a Semantic Versioning major version number.
dagmx 7y ago
According to semantic versioning it would be Blender2 8.2.x IMHO According to how browsers version it would be Blender2 82 Ideally the initial 2 would be dropped off since it only has a vestigial reason to be there

fsh 7y ago

Despite the dumb name, the new "AI"-Denoiser is also a huge improvement over 2.81.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

arminiusreturns 7y ago

Do you happen to have any thoughts on the relationship of gltf to USD? Are they complimentary or competitive?

ykl 7y ago
I think they are very much complimentary. This vastly oversimplifies things, but you can can almost think of gltf is to USD like PNG is to a Photoshop file. gltf is meant to be a 3D publishing format, whereas USD is meant to be an asset interchange format between DCC applications. gltf is very minimal in the amount of runtime processing required to interpret and display it (much of gltf can more or less be directly mapped into GL buffers), whereas USD includes an extremely powerful schema and composition system that is highly expressive but much more complex to interpret in its fullest form (meant for sending entire editable scenegraphs between, say, Maya and Houdini and Blender and Presto). Both formats are really great at what they’re meant to do. I was somewhat surprised that Apple picked USD as the basis for their AR stuff, since gltf would have seen like a more natural fit. Maybe the fact that USD has taken the animation/VFX world by storm (many studios are shifting from proprietary internal interchange formats to USD en masse) helped Apple pick.
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  Thank you for the response and also very cool that the industry is moving towards open source formats. FBX is such a nightmare I'm happy to have moved all my assets to gltf.
  - snuxoll 7y ago
    Would be nice if Epic included a proper gltf importer in UE4, there’s an open source one but it is functionally limited compared to Epic’s built-in importers. Blender does a good job of exporting FBX, but it’s nowhere near perfect since they can’t use Autodesk’s proprietary SDK.
    - naikrovek 7y ago