Blender 2.8 has BEEN RELEASED! :)
Yeah, it’s all fine and all. I for one am waiting for the “everything nodes” project, and UDIM support. For now it looks quite ok. Especially compared with other open source projects.
I very short terms: the ability to add multiple images to one material. for example you can have one texture for the face, one for hands, one for torso, etc. For this you lay out the UV’s in a specific way, you distribute the uv’s outside the 0-1 uv range.
They started using this technique with layered shaders, but later most of the apps offered support for this.
They promissed for blender 2.80 too, but later postponed it.
Absolutely loving the new release. I don’t think I’ll be needing Max again, hopefully.
Although I do miss some plugins I had for Max as well as the Blender UI can still be a bit confusing at times (especially when dealing with UVs) but hopefully I’ll get fully used to it eventually.
Why is there no Blender subforum here? There seems to be one for other major programs.
Newspapers. Anybody remember them? 
Okay. Well, there’s a set of old newspaper terms: “above the fold” and “below the fold.”
Your top headlines, the stuff that mattered most, was placed “above the fold” and right near the masthead for all to see on the news stand. “27 Die in Apartment Fire” “The War is Over” “A Nation Mourns” That sort of thing. If it’s big… If it really mattered… it was “above the fold.”
The “below the fold stuff” was often considered less important, something that you could read later. “Local Girl Wins Race” “America’s Favorite Burger Chain Named” “Man Bites Dog” You get the point. Those are the sorts of headlines you read on the toilet. That’s why they’re put “below the fold.” It’s not necessarily that they matter less, but that they’re less earth shattering. They’re human interest, vox popoli (voice of the people) material.
The suggestion on CG Society’s part is that, because they fuel the larger industry, ADSK’s products somehow matter more and thus deserve more attention. It’s not a wholly unreasonable assumption, but this is the internet. Vox popoli matters much more. In laying out the forums thusly, they’ve prioritized corporations over people. It sounds like I’m reading too much into things, but forum layout matters.
Blender’s area isn’t just “below the fold” though. It’s on page 43 near the obituaries, want ads, and taco recipes - so to speak. Blender is considered “low priority” on this site and that’s a crying shame.
Love or hate it, a site like BlenderArtists has a current membership of 313k members and draws in nearly 24k posts each month. Again, I know that some people hate BlenderArtists with a passion. I get that. Those numbers are hard to ignore though. Harder to ignore are the millions of people who download it annually - 3.4M annually in 2009. Even if only 0.1% become active users, that means that Blender’s core user base has grown by 34k+ in 10 years. It’s actually more than that because BlenderArtists’ active membership has grown by 100k+ in that same 10 year period.
I’ve argued this point before. I’m not saying that Blender matters any more than any other app. I’m also not saying that BlenderArtists doesn’t sometimes have a bad rep. It really does; TBF, they’ve been trying to clean it up in recent memory. What I am saying, however, is that Blender is being buried pretty hard. Members shouldn’t have to dig or hunt for it. Not too hard to find, but still a pain in the ass.
That “Additional Software” area is problematic for me. Anybody here ever see old S1 episodes of “Gilligan’s Island” before? The lyrics are just a tiny bit different.
"The ship set ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle
With Gilligan
The Skipper too,
A millionaire and his wife,
A movie star
**And the rest**
Here on Gilligan's Isle."
They literally go through 5 of the 7 main cast members only to dump Mary Ann and the Professor into a trivial “and the rest” category. They and their stories mattered every bit as much, which is why the lyrics got changed S2. On CG Talk, Blender is in that “and the rest” category. It trivializes Blender’s growing membership and importance on the global stage. ADSK may be the big money draw, the “above the fold” headline, and the studio darling, but how much longer can CGS ignore the vox popoli? Where are the S2 lyrics for this song?
BTW, just to further argue the problem with the “Additional Software” category, look at how uneven it is:
- LW gets three (3) groups, yet it has been struggling to come back to life and find renewed relevance for the past 5 years.
- Silo has seen a major full point release in 13 years. It’s pretty much been zombieware for 10 of them
- E-on’s Vue app hasn’t been updated in 7 years.
- The Foundry challenge ended 5 years ago and should just be archived.
- Photoshop and Painter share a group, which also gets buried. PS is the most popular image editing app in the world.
- MODO gets buried.
- Blender gets buried.
On the flip side:
- ADSK’s apps get THIRTEEN (13) “above the fold” categories, many of which can be sub-grouped.
- Matte painting and anatomy each get front page categories, despite not having been posted to since 2018.
- Mari has its own group, which is fine, but it’s only ever been posted to 88 times in almost 4 years.
ETC and so on.
Blender’s area gets less traffic overall, but CG Talk’s forum is structured as to be uninviting to Blender users. How does LightWave warrant three (3) full sub-groups?
I don’t know what CGS’ logic is, beyond pandering to ADSK. How they could bury a Photoshop group when the word itself is a practically damned verb these days. Blender is in the same wasteland with apps that haven’t been updated in a decade and a competition that ended during the Obama era. 
None of it makes sense.
CG Talk needs major retooling and logical reorganization. If not, just give up the pretense. Kill off the non-ADSK boards. They’re clearly not a priority around these parts.
I don’t even know why I’m arguing the point anyway. Forums are themselves struggling for relevance in the face of social media and sites like ArtStation. Dedicated CG forums hit their peak 8-10 years ago, right around the time of the Great Recession. I guess that I’m just saddened to see CG Talk in such a state of disarray. I’ve been a member here for about 17 or 18 years. Other “old timers” like me know that this forum has seen much better days. Like I said, it saddens me a little.
You’re ABSOLUTELY right. I’d love it if they put forums for GIMP and Krita as well, though I don’t use them myself. MODS!!!..? 
What exactly is wrong with BlenderArtists tho?
Maya user here. Been waiting to c if this new release fixes the UI and some other stuff. …well…I just started the transition from Maya to Blender. The company I work for, although we have ADSK lic, we also have Blender, Krita and other stuff available and their is a growing interest in these open source alternatives withing the media department.
Honestly? Nothing really.
However, the last time that I extolled the virtues of BlenderArtists here, some former member came in with a rant. IIRC, he claimed that they were trolling him (and others) pretty hard. Something along the lines of accusing him of being some sort of pervert, for no reason, I guess. I don’t disbelieve him, but I sorta have take his comments and disdain with BlenderArtists with a grain of salt. By and large, I haven’t seen that sort of behavior.
All told, I find BlenderArtists to be a great group in general. For those who think that it’s just a community of wannabe artists posting pics of default cubes or poorly rendered Suzanne heads, it is most definitely not. The quality of art on display there has always been great, but it’s especially out of this world in recent memory. Nothing amateurish about it. With Blender being more accessible than ever thanks to v2.80, I would imagine that we’re go to see even more amazing stuff posted there than ever.
That was me. And the threads still exists. Also the accusations. There was a reason. I pointed at the Blender flaws. And then i did the blasphemy to even fork it.
When this webpage wouldn’t reside in america then i would have sued them. Calling somebody a sex offender and pedophile to discredit him is a crime also in the united states. And they repeated that game until i finally gave up and have left. Every announcement about a new Bforartists version was trolled with those accusations. Supported by the mods and admins. I was told that i deserve it.
All is fine as long as you don’t disagree that Blender is the best software in the world. Disagree, and they will start to troll you. And not just the users. One of the devs once wanted to pay me a maya version when i finally shut up, and don’t point at the UI flaws anymore. Another dev suggested to cut my head off instead, since it is cheaper. Of course just all fun . And there was more stuff like this over the years.
That’s my personal experience with this oh so fine community. And i have seen this happen not just with me. I have watched dozens of other people quitting at BA because of exact this reason in my active time there. They scared everybody away who thinks different. And now imagine you have a serious question for your professional project, and this question looks like a attack at Blender.
Maybe things have changed meanwhile. It’s over four years now that i started the fork Bforartists to escape the Blender bubble and those trolls. And it’s always a bad idea to generalize. There are lots of nice and helpful people over there too, the very most i would say. And usually you get a good answer and help. But the last time i checked it was the same trolls pretty active, and dominating the discussions. So nope, the hell will freeze before i return to that place.
good luck, looks good
do i have time for both maya and blender,
would need to see more employers come on board.
overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyxWDHy4ppY
and older
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUrRu7CB6sE
my personal wants:
needs better spline implementation, hate starting with bendy arrows curve
sculpt mesh needs auto retopo, and sculpt layers
paint texture needs paint layers with masks
edit poly modifier like 3dsmax needed
nurbs with parametric history
uv unwrap like unfold 3d or 3dcoat
blender for
maybe young start ups will shake the old vfx tree.
olders left the industry due to short contracts in different
states and countries sick of the status quo looking for a fresh start.
I don’t get it - what does forking Blender have to do with being a sex offender???!!!
Nothing. Well, they tried everything, and i mean everything, to pick the fork apart. It was simply not enough to call me a clueless moron, a liar, an asshole and what else not. Or to declare that i can’t even compile Blender anyways, being as dumb as i am. And so they digged a bit deeper until they found something.
The whole story can be read here: https://www.reinerstilesets.de/stills/iamright.jpg
They did the same kind of trolling not just with me at BA. But also to the Upbge fork with the same passion. Disagree with the mastertrolls, and you are in trouble.
If it’s any consolation, this place used to be rotten with that sort of behavior too.
Speak ill of the Autodesk collective in any way, small or large, and you’d get flamed like a pig on a spit. It used to get very ugly around here. Libelous even. The mods had a very good way of diplomatically making people look stupid for even addressing the issue too. Naturally, they’d bury the evidence by either deleting the threads or leaving them, but deleting the offensive posts - theirs included. A few webcache sites mirrored them, but you have to dig. The whole thing really only stopped because there aren’t nearly as many people here now compared to the “good old days.” It’s been a ghost town, relatively speaking, since 2010.
Yeah, i remember. Honestly i prefer the current state over it ^^
This is sadly true for most online communities. There are always some folks around who has nothing else to do than to play the board king. And the bigger the bubble is, the more of this close minded people you will have. And as a mod you have a very hard time then.
Hey - are you going to continue doing BforArtists AFTER 2.8? Or is the whole thing dead and buried?
I already do. Bforartists 2 is still in development. We are currently at version 0.6.0. But it is fully functional. And version 0.6.0 is based at Blender 2.80 release version.
Bforartists is no mayfly. I work since 2015 now at Bforartists. And have no plans to stop the development any time soon.
I don’t get it - how is YOUR interface going to be different from the NEW 2.8’s??