ILikeFeet

DF Deet Master
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
61,987
5wiqx4.jpg


after 21 years, Blender has moved out of 2.xx and into the 3.xx era! Cycles X, Geometry Nodes, Asset Browser, and may new things about





www.blender.org

Download — blender.org

The Freedom to Create.
store.steampowered.com

Blender on Steam

Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. Free to use for everyone, for any purpose.
www.microsoft.com

Blender - Free download and install on Windows | Microsoft Store

Blender is the Free and Open Source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, sculpting, rigging, 3D and 2D animation, simulation, rendering, compositing, motion tracking and video editing. Support Blender development on https://fund.blender.org.

some things to note:
 

hanshen

Banned
Jun 24, 2018
4,091
Chicago, IL
I've been using 3.0 Alpha/Beta, it's great so far.
Just wish I opted for a 3090 instead of a 3080 when my firm asked what I wanted in my workstation though, I kept running out of VRAM when rendering.
 

Draper

The Fallen
Oct 28, 2017
4,385
Harrisburg, PA
I literally just started to try out Blender...it's confusing as hell, for me anyway.

Attempting to use a sidecar'd iPad with my iMac.

Do I need to reinstall for this?
 

najaschade

Alt-Account
Banned
Oct 13, 2021
123
Blender is a genuinely fantastic project and a lot of fun to try to learn. Just really makes me wish for a new computer, my i5-4690k and rx480 really do not make rendering particularly fun.
 

bill crystals

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,079
Just dipping my toe into Blender the last few years. You know it's a complex piece of software where I have to Google "how do I move around" lol
 
Oct 26, 2017
6,879
I am finishing up a game asset project on 2.91 and am keeping the project files on that version, but I am ecstatic to switch to 3.0 for every other project. I dabbled around with Cycles X already and the viewport performance is absolutely impressive.
I think for my use cases, the asset browser will be a godsend.
 

Tauntaun

Member
Oct 27, 2017
352
As an old (over 10 years of use) maya user seeing some of the stuff in blender makes me really jealous lol. I've tried time and time again to transition over, and I still can't get far in it. I genuinely think its a problem with me at this point, prob too old now to pick up new software like I could in the past.
 

modoversus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,905
México
As an old (over 10 years of use) maya user seeing some of the stuff in blender makes me really jealous lol. I've tried time and time again to transition over, and I still can't get far in it. I genuinely think its a problem with me at this point, prob too old now to pick up new software like I could in the past.

Just dipping my toe into Blender the last few years. You know it's a complex piece of software where I have to Google "how do I move around" lol

Is just that blender used to feel outright hostile with how weird things used to be. I too had a ton of issues, and it wasn't until very late 2.9 and after a few tutorials and an udemy course that it "clicked" with me.
 
OP
OP
ILikeFeet

ILikeFeet

DF Deet Master
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
61,987
As an old (over 10 years of use) maya user seeing some of the stuff in blender makes me really jealous lol. I've tried time and time again to transition over, and I still can't get far in it. I genuinely think its a problem with me at this point, prob too old now to pick up new software like I could in the past.
have you tried the Industry-Compliant keybinding? that's what I've been using since moving from Maya
 

Skyzar

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,539
Looks and sounds very impressive. Wish I knew how to make better use of the node systems...don't have the time to follow a million tutorials anymore! An amazing program for younger people to get into especially. Imagine having this, with youtube 15, 20 years ago.

Hoping for some modeling improvements next update. Especially surface constraints for scaling - and the knife tool. Been crossing my fingers a long time for those.
 

TrashHeap64

Member
Dec 7, 2017
1,796
Austin, TX
Blender is really the holy grail of open source software. It's feature rich, fairly stable, and packs so many features that even the most expensive 3d packages don't include. It's quite remarkable.
 

Siam Shade

Member
Jun 1, 2018
583
Completely unexpected to see a thread about Blender here. :)

I've been using professionaly for about 4-5 years. Great times ahead.
 

SaberVS7

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,885
I've been using 3.0 Alpha/Beta, it's great so far.
Just wish I opted for a 3090 instead of a 3080 when my firm asked what I wanted in my workstation though, I kept running out of VRAM when rendering.

They all called me a madman when I bought a 3090 instead of a 3080.

What are they to say now?
 
3.0 Benchmarks, including HIP
OP
OP
ILikeFeet

ILikeFeet

DF Deet Master
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
61,987
Blender-3.0.0-Cycles-GPU-Render-Performance-Sprite-Fright.jpg

Blender-3.0.0-vs-2.93-Cycles-GPU-Performance-BMW.jpg

Blender-3.0.0-EEVEE-Render-Performance-Splash-Fox.jpg


many more bench results here
techgage.com

Blender 3.0 – How Fast Are GPUs in Cycles X, EEVEE & Viewport?

Blender has just released its latest major update, pushing the software to new 3.0 versioning. As always, we've dug into the latest update to take a look at it from a performance perspective. Join us as we throw all of the current-gen GPUs from GeForce and Radeon at Cycles X, EEVEE, and the...
 

LazyLain

Member
Jan 17, 2019
7,009
It's been a while since I messed around with Blender, so I don't know if this feature is new or improved in 3.0... but damn that denoiser is some black magic. My impatient ass is over here getting away with 32 sample renders, lol.
 

Jay Shadow

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,845
It's been a while since I messed around with Blender, so I don't know if this feature is new or improved in 3.0... but damn that denoiser is some black magic. My impatient ass is over here getting away with 32 sample renders, lol.
It's been around for a while but it did get a big upgrade with this update so it preserves details better than it used to.
 

Mandos

Member
Nov 27, 2017
35,099
I'm still just messing around some models and allow poly concepts… anyone have a good ref/guide for doing animated surface textures? I know what I'm after but no idea how to start(unlike animating where I know the basic idea even if I suck at it). Always loved the N64/PS1 era texture animated faces like Goemon. Had a thought for something small I could try in unity
 

Dice

Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,264
Canada
So...odd question, but I find I work better with a teacher than watching a bunch of crummy YouTube reviews.

Is there a good training book or any way to learn from a teacher of sorts? I'd love I need to get into Blender, but I can't stand half the YouTube tutorial videos I find.
 
Last edited:

Dave.

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,507
So...odd question, but I find I work better with a teacher than watching a bunch of crummy YouTube reviews.

Is there a good training book or any way to learn from a teacher of sorts? I'd love I need to get into Blender, but I can't stand half the YouTube tutorial videos I find.
Might be helpful to say which you've found and disliked... I can't imagine anyone hating on Grant Abbit!
 
OP
OP
ILikeFeet

ILikeFeet

DF Deet Master
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
61,987
Intel is throwing more money into Blender. makes sense as they'll want good performance on their Arc gpus

Blender Foundation is delighted to announce Intel Corporation as the latest Patron Member of the Foundation's Development Fund. By upgrading its membership to a top-level contributor, Intel's support helps Blender provide creators an optimal experience on modern CPUs and GPUs.

"Intel is extending its collaboration and commitment to the Blender open-source community. We are already incorporating the oneAPI cross-architecture, CPU- and GPU-driven features and performance of Intel® oneAPI Rendering Toolkit libraries into Blender to benefit creators of all kinds. We share the Blender Foundation's mindset to make world-class visual technologies available to everyone through open-source software and open standards." said Raja Koduri, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics (AXG) Group.

With Intel signing up as Patron, Blender now has top level support from all major CPU and GPU manufacturers. We look forward to further work with Intel's open source initiatives such as Embree and Open Image Denoise to accelerate computing for creative purposes.

www.blender.org

Intel signs up as Corporate Patron — blender.org

Blender Foundation is delighted to announce Intel Corporation is now a Patron Member of the Foundation’s Development Fund.
 

Jay Shadow

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,845
3.1 released. Mostly performance and quality of life improvements.



www.blender.org

3.1 — blender.org

Blender Foundation and the online developers community are proud to present Blender 3.1, a solid update to an already outstanding release.
 
Oct 27, 2017
5,550
Love Blender. Been trying to get into 3D for like 20 years now and Blender is the software to finally make it click for me.
 

HommePomme

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,077
Cycles in 3.1 absolutely screams on my MacBook Pro M1 machine, really excited for the future of Mac rendering
 

Jedi2016

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,767
My problem (and I think I bring this up in every thread) is that I'm so used to my old program's interface that I feel like a bumbling idiot trying to navigate around in Blender. I know what I want to do, I just don't know what buttons I have to press to actually do it.
 

W-00

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,611
I've been working on learning Blender since 3.0 came out. Got a decent understanding of it from watching Blender Guru, TipTut, Royal Skies (more specialized, but in an area I'm interested in), Rainhet Chaneru, and a few others. Still haven't managed to make what I wanted when I began, but I'm making progress.
 

Masterz1337

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,520
Upgraded to 3.1 today on a M1 Max MacBook Pro.... the result is less than desirable. Fans kick in and machine gets hot for the first time ever to the point even plugged in I have lost battery at times... thinking of going back to 2.8.x.


Really disappointed as I was expecting things to get better with Apple Silicon support, not worse. Doesn't seem much faster for what I am doing anyway either.
 
Oct 26, 2017
6,879
Upgraded to 3.1 today on a M1 Max MacBook Pro.... the result is less than desirable. Fans kick in and machine gets hot for the first time ever to the point even plugged in I have lost battery at times... thinking of going back to 2.8.x.


Really disappointed as I was expecting things to get better with Apple Silicon support, not worse. Doesn't seem much faster for what I am doing anyway either.
You should probably report that behaviour to the Devs. I would assume this initial support for the new chips might have a few quirks to work out.
 

HommePomme

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,077
Upgraded to 3.1 today on a M1 Max MacBook Pro.... the result is less than desirable. Fans kick in and machine gets hot for the first time ever to the point even plugged in I have lost battery at times... thinking of going back to 2.8.x.


Really disappointed as I was expecting things to get better with Apple Silicon support, not worse. Doesn't seem much faster for what I am doing anyway either.

My M1 Max 14" MacBook now renders blender scenes 11x faster than my previous maxed out Intel 13" MBP…

I feel like fans kicking in when the CPU + GPU are fully saturated makes a lot of sense, my previous MBP kicked the fans up to max by just having Slack open…

Sounds like you're saying it's not much faster compared to the same MacBook running 2.8x just on the CPU? That would be pretty surprising, I'll have to run some more of my scenes and test it out
 

Masterz1337

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,520
You should probably report that behaviour to the Devs. I would assume this initial support for the new chips might have a few quirks to work out.
Not sure what I'd report, just using the freecam generates more heat than before.


My M1 Max 14" MacBook now renders blender scenes 11x faster than my previous maxed out Intel 13" MBP…

I feel like fans kicking in when the CPU + GPU are fully saturated makes a lot of sense, my previous MBP kicked the fans up to max by just having Slack open…

Sounds like you're saying it's not much faster compared to the same MacBook running 2.8x just on the CPU? That would be pretty surprising, I'll have to run some more of my scenes and test it out

See I never do renders, most of what I do is just designing environments to throw into games. I am sure renders would go faster, but the speed improvements for me are marginal at best, and my meshes with too many vertices still have trouble rendering smoothly when I do anything that involves moving vertices.
 

Masterz1337

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,520
they're pretty much all standard too, I don't do a lot with them since I have to recreate the shaders in game anyway.

Edit: I did just find out that half my geometry is storing its UV data in another channel, so another thing to learn to figure out in how to copy that data
 
Oct 26, 2017
6,879
they're pretty much all standard too, I don't do a lot with them since I have to recreate the shaders in game anyway.

Edit: I did just find out that half my geometry is storing its UV data in another channel, so another thing to learn to figure out in how to copy that data
Maybe try File/External Data/Pack into blend? Or am I misunderstanding your problem?
 

Masterz1337

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,520
Maybe try File/External Data/Pack into blend? Or am I misunderstanding your problem?
I think misunderstanding. I am still a bit of a scrub with blender but when importing a piece of geometry into my scene from a 2004 file built in max, the UV channel had a different name than the rest of my scene and created a whole different layer, so I had to re-import, change the name and merge.

Dropbox


Here's the file if interested.
 

TrashHeap64

Member
Dec 7, 2017
1,796
Austin, TX
My problem (and I think I bring this up in every thread) is that I'm so used to my old program's interface that I feel like a bumbling idiot trying to navigate around in Blender. I know what I want to do, I just don't know what buttons I have to press to actually do it.
Blender is very hotkey centric but I promise, once you get it down it's intuitive as hell. I came from 3dsMax back in the day and the thought of going back to that interface grosses me out (I'm sure it's better now than it was in 2004 but still). The hotkeys are just second nature now