Blender 2.8!

The beta.

It's finally here after a long wait, a lot of talking about it.

It's finally here. So we've got a whole bunch of new features. We got a new interface,

we've got workspaces. We've got this new

real-time renderer.

Lots of features that

we've wanted in blender for a very long time, and...

and now it's all here. So, for a bit of backstory, Blender typically moves in incremental releases like, you know, 2.71,

2.72. And there's, you know, like, small features or bug fixes between them.

But this has been a milestone release.

Personally, I reckon they should have just called it "Version 3,"

because it's so big and different. It's basically new software, so I think they should just call it 3.

But, anyway, it's 2.8, and we're all very excited. So, the official version is going to be out in

like middle of next year; like June 2019.

But you can play with the beta now, and it's really stable!

Like you'd think the beta would mean that it's gonna be crashing every 5 seconds,

but it's not. I haven't really seen it crash and that often, honestly. Probably about as much as a stable release, so...

It's really–It's really solid.

I'm making this video to share some of my favorite features; what I'm most excited about,

and also to the existing users.

You know, what you can expect when you first open it and how to, sort of, orient yourself with the new interface and everything.

So, it's gonna be three parts, but let's start by getting into the interface. So the first thing to talk about is of course

left-click select; you can now select with the left mouse button.

That's right! No more right-click.

Which was previously the way you selected in blender. I made a video

5 years ago talking about why I think that having it as right-click select as a default

was uh... We were really shooting ourselves in the foot, because although there was

... some light benefits to having things as right, because then you could select other things with left, there was a few instances where that would work.

I felt like they were marginal and

the the loss that we were enduring by having write as select was that

newbies open blended for the first time and they couldn't even take that first step by selecting something without having to

Google how to do that, so I thought that was

pretty, you know, a pretty solid

reason why we should just make it left and be conventional with with the rest of the world, with the rest of the computer world!

So anyway,

so left is select and if you are a pro-user and you do actually like right,

no problem there. You can just change it in your settings up there.

You can also change your spacebar action,

which is now play, by default, to play an animation. If you prefer it as search, which is what it was before,

you can change that. If you're a crazy person, I guess you can make it tools

Somebody must like that, or else it wouldn't be there.

I actually don't mind it as play, and then search if you keep it on play, search is then just F3,

which I've actually gotten use to, because I've been using the beta for a while.

Yeah, as well as that, there is also, um...

When you've got something selected, you can now click off something and it will deselect it.

So I got that lamp there, just click into a blank area of the canvas, and it will now be deselected. You can also drag

(drag) select over everything. Look at that! You don't need to push "B" to know that's the box tool or whatever,

although you can still hit that.

Now you can just drag select. So it feels a lot like...

... just any other program that you use on the computer, even it feels like your operating system, right?

Because [in] the operating system, you left-click select, click off something into an empty space, and then drag select to select other things.

Right? So, now blender has those conventions, and

I've noticed myself like it's handy when you just when you're working with other software when you flip back to Blender,

you don't have to like reorient your brain to go like, "Oh,

I'm also–I gotta select with that and I can't use this button,

I gotta use this." Like, it just feels a lot smoother.

Like I'm a pro user, and I've–I've like I–I loved it straight away, pretty much.

It's uh–it's just been a phenomenal. Selecting everything is still "A",

but deselecting everything is now "Alt + A".

Previously, you just double tapped like "A" to select and then "A" again to deselect, so now it's a separate function; "Alt + A" to deselect,

"A" to select. Now, when I first saw this, I was like, "Oh no! That's a terrible idea!"

"Like why is we got another shortcut we've gotta add to the list?"

"Why don't just keep it all as 'A'?" But, then, I realized, like previously in Blender,

when I've–you know–when you've got a whole bunch of things...

selected, and then deselecting them, you end up doing it like three or four times, just to, like, verify that you actually are in a deselected state,

so it's actually nice now, because now I know when I hit "Alt + A", I know for sure that it is deselected and "A" is selected.

You can actually double tap "A", and that will deselect everything.

I don't know if you find that that handy, because sometimes it's like, you hit it at the wrong timing or whatever and it doesn't...

... doesn't recognize it.

But anyways,

If you do actually like it being just like "A" to

toggle, just check that little box there, and then it'll go back to the way it was in Blender.

But, I actually like it as "Alt + A".

So that's pretty cool. There's also a tool section over here on the left hand bar.

Now that was previously in Blender; didn't have any symbols,

it was called things like "translate", which nobody would know meant move.

And also when you clicked it, it was like curses over here, but your object's moving. It was–it was a little janky.

Now, you've just got buttons like this. So, a newbie that opens blender for the first time,

they don't need to learn, like, I gotta hit "G" to move an object.

They can click the button that they're most familiar with, and go, "that looks like a move tool", they click it and then they go,

"Oh look!"

"I can move!" Right? And then later, they can learn that "G" will actually be the the shortcut which will

which will do it for them. So that's the mark of good user interface–usability

is when you've got you've got the the shortcuts for the pro-users so that they can move and operate fast,

but you've also got visual indicators

for beginners who don't want to have to Google everything before they can, you know, do something very basic.

Speaking of which, there is also these up here, in the top right these, little gizmo-ee things.

This one to... I guess move that view.

This one to toggle in and out of the camera.

This one to toggle orthographic and perspective mode, zoom in and out, and this little gizmo thing here to move around.

Which I think will be especially helpful whenever you're working on a laptop.

Because we've all had that moment where you bring up Blender, and then you're like, "Oh I got a trackpad!"

"How do I do that?"

So, now you've got this. So, it's, you know, gonna be handy for beginners but also for anybody that's on a...

... on a laptop. And by the way, if you want to disable this because you're not in any of those boats,

I just disable that right there and then they disappear. We also now have...

workspaces, so these little tabs at the top here, and we had workspaces before in Blender, but they were in a drop-down.

So it was another click to click them.

And also, the defaults weren't that great. I feel like they were kind of hastily put in there.

So, I don't know too many people that really used workspaces that often. I think I just used the compositor.

That was the one–I just went default, and then compositor whenever I did compositing.

Now, they're separate little tabs. And, when you click on them, it will actually enter the state

that you are–like so, it's modeling, so it's actually put me into edit mode. So I don't have to have to do that–

Sculpting will put me in sculpting mode. It's got the right Mac cap selected. It's got all the tools down there.

Animation...

It's very very cool. So that's nice. And most exciting of all, we now have proper layers.

So they're called "collections" in Blender. These are them up here in the in the outliner.

So, layers in Blender previously–and I say layers with

sarcasm–because, I mean, they were layers, technically, but weren't what anybody would know were layers.

They were these little squares at the bottom of the screen, right?

So, you would have an object selected, and then you go, "I'm gonna move it to the second layer." Right?

The second square in this weird grid.

You couldn't rename them,

so you would move things to a new layer, and then you just have to remember later on, when you've got hundreds of objects, and

trees and plants, and you build it in a huge environment, and you're like, "Which one had my trees in it? It was...

this one!" And you just had to cycle through it to find what you were looking for.

So it's very frustrating, and also it was restricted to 20 layers.

Which for large production work, that was a problem. So, now, thankfully, we have collections. So, this is a collection here.

We've got our three objects inside this collection. So, I can make a new collection just by right-clicking, saying "New,"

and then I'll call this one

"meshes." Put my cube inside the meshes, and now,

we've got two separate layers, or collections, right?

You can also move the collections inside other collections, which is handy as well.

And also, there are–there's another way you can add something to a collection, which is like if you just got an object

and select it in the viewport.

If you hit "M" on your keyboard, "M" for "Mary," you can move it to an existing collection, or make a new collection.

So I'll call this "lamp."

Lamps...

There we go.

Also, if you hold down CTRL, you can isolate the layer, which is handy, and "Alt + H" will bring everything back.

If you want to drag select, I feel like that will probably be in there eventually.

But currently, it's "B", the box tool select, which is not my favorite function.

But it was handy when I learned that–that it was "B". You can also,

using the plus and minus keys on your number pad, you can

expand them or shrink them. I'll put a link in the description to a video that discusses all this more on collection.

So you can go over that. A few other little interface changes; we've got some icons down here. They were previously...

they were up the top, which was very frustrating, because obviously when you got a lot of buttons at the top here,

I mean it actually–this is the first time that it's not off the side there,

maybe because I don't have anything selected.

Yeah, there you go.

Right? So you had to, like, pan along to actually see all your icons, which was frustrating.

So, now, they are vertical, which is nice.

Obviously, the one thing a lot of people talking about is the design of these icons is a little hard to see, or understand, currently.

I would agree with that; some of them–the icons, I feel like, aren't the greatest.

These ones at the top here, these are pretty good. I haven't, like, I've adapted to these. These ones,

like that one, I know that one,

I know that textures. That doesn't look like particles to me, and I think the worst of all though

is that the lamp–this icon actually changes depending on what type of lamp it is.

So, there's been plenty of cases where I've got a scene and I'm like,

"Wait, where's the–where's the lamp icon?" And then it's because it's changed, because it was an area light, not a point lamp.

I think it should definitely stay as a solid icon, in my opinion.

But you know, it's a beta. It's a beta. Things might change. I don't think print works for me,

I feel like every time I see it, I'm like, "I'm not printing anything!"

But anyways,

I think–and a lot of people said that they wish there was colors–which I definitely agree

was nice about the old one, it was easier to identify them.

I spoke to William Reynish at the Blender conference, and he said that the reason that they are now...

all the same color is because it now will adapt to the theme.

So, if you change a theme, previously in Blender,

you could change all your colors, and black and blue, and all that. These would always stay the same

So, apparently you can actually change these colors in your theme settings to give them different colors.

So I've heard–I haven't tried it myself, but that's an argument for that.

Maybe, I think, like, if that's the case, maybe the default should just have colors on them.

I don't know. That's for a long

thread somewhere in the internet where everyone can talk about it.

The next big changes are to do with the viewport. How this looks here, which is very cool, as well as the Eevee

rendering engine, which is super exciting as well.

I was going to put it in this video,

but I think this video has gone on long enough.

So, I'm gonna cut it, and I'm gonna put it in part two,

which you can watch by clicking now on your screen, that little box

and watch part two.

I'll just keep doing this until you click it.

Ugh.

So demeaning. All right, I'll see you in the next video.