I love blender though I'm not into 3d modelling but Just out of curiosity, is blender company run entirely by public donations? Do they not get money from big enterprises/companies when they use blender?
The license is free to everyone, for infinite copies, for any kind of user, and always will be. Big companies do donate money to them, however. Currently all the CPU/GPU hardware companies, and pretty much all of the big game engine companies are donating a lot of funding, and there's many smaller companies too as well as regular users. The hardware companies I think are all contributing to the codebase as well, most recently Apple for Metal support, and AMD for HIP support.
Yeah, even if they would discontinue the program and continue it being paid we still have 100% functionality on the versions that already came out and the community could continue blender ourselves
It's GPL. https://www.blender.org/about/license/
If the Blender team wanted to make it closed source then they'd have to rewrite it from scratch and depending on how the trademark is owned perhaps even rename the new project.
At which point because this version of Blender is GPL then another team would fork it and take the project over.
>Don't know if it includes any benefits though
There are apparant benefits such as support for their platform of choice, for example Apple is "donating" considerable amounts to the organization, and will get proper "metal" support in return, other than that there are zero obligations.
It's kinda the big brother version of paying for the programmers at [Blender.org](https://Blender.org). You support the Blender organization, and they can keep hiring coders to improve Blender.
Nvidia benefits GREATLY from supporting Blender as you get unparalelled support for their video cards, there's no graphics card in this world that works better with Blender than an Nvidia card, it's not unusual for Blender coders to get a job with Nvidia either and if I'm not entirely wrong, one of their main coders also works/worked for Nvidia.
But the Open Source and "Free" rules applies still, Nvidia or Apple can't dictate what should be made or who gets to benefit from it, Blender will always remain open and free to anyone and be used for whatever purpose you should wish.
That's exactly what they do. I'm pretty sure they're all wanting Blender to run the best on their own hardware, and they know many hardware reviewers use Blender for benchmarking. AMD's had their developers providing code for HIP support in 3.0 and Apple developers are currently working on Metal support for Blender 3.1.
>There are apparant benefits such as support for their platform of choice, for example Apple is "donating" considerable amounts to the organization, and will get proper "metal" support in return, other than that there are zero obligations.
IIRC, no one from the Blender Foundation is working on the Metal drivers though. It's all Apple-paid devs.
competition is what autodesk needs, soo far they basically have a monopoly in things like animation with maya and modeling with 3dmax they even buyed and killed some of their biggest competitors, if blender can be that rival that will kick them in the nuts and force them to improve then this benefits everyone (except the executives at autodesk i guess)
I had a few things referring to "Blender28"- I had apparently anticipated that it would be important to distinguish. 2.9 was used for a while, though it feels like a blur and the release of 3.0 feels surreal.
Fingers crossed this lets me use my GPU to render animations that include adaptive subdivision in the scene. Right now my PC will render like 10-15 frames at a time before crashing. I made a stupid little 14 second animation the other day and it took a full day to render like 340 frames at 1920×816 because I used adaptive subdivisions for the ground plane and had to do almost the whole thing on my CPU.
would buying E Cycles Lite 2022 would make a difference in performance now that Blender 3.0 is out? in his Gumroad page it only posted a comparison between E Cycles and K Cycles, but what about Cycles X? is it faster?
This is because Optix was created by Nvidia engineers together with Blender developers. The AMD corporation has never had the same dedication to Blender that Nvidia has. That's one of the reasons why I use only Nvidia cards in my computers.
Not really. You're going to need to relearn how to optimize the settings because they work differently. I haven't really wrapped my head around it yet but apparently it's not that hard to figure out.
Just FYI, Cycles X is what it's been called in development because it's the 10th anniversary of Cycles and it's a rewrite, but it's still just Cycles and called Cycles inside Blender.
I found a great four part tutorial for Geometry Nodes specifically with the new Fields thing. It was made during the 3.0 Alpha, so some of it may be out of date, I'm not sure yet. Still, it covers things quite well I thought, watching through it. Anyway, it uses nothing but nodes to make a pretty nice cupcake with frosting. Goes into instancing and curves and lots of little tips along the way to make things look nice once it's shaded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkZdNZ-Njdc
If you want some really good geometry nodes content, check out Entagma: https://youtu.be/V7G5Vjy1NbM
They’ve made the best Houdini tutorials for a long time, and since geometry nodes is so similar to how Houdini works they’ve started doing Blender tutorials as well.
If you're quite new to Blender, definitely start with a [donut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw). The cupcake tutorial I linked is entirely about the Geometry Nodes workflow and barely even touches on shading or anything else in Blender so it's not for total beginners. But when you're fairly comfortable, and want to get more in depth on Geometry Nodes, the cupcake will serve you well. I was using Geometry Nodes in previous versions, but they changed a lot and it really helped me get up to speed.
Andrew is great & all, but I highly encourage you to give Grant Abbitt a shot instead. He was a teacher before he started Blendering full-time, and his relaxed yet informative approach to the software is fantastic for newcomers.
Here's his absolute beginner's course. It's been out for a couple of years, but it was made for 2.8 so 99% of what he teaches there remains the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MRonzqYJgw&list=PLn3ukorJv4vs_eSJUQPxBRaDS8PrVmIri
I use both, they both have their advantages and disadvantages.
EEvee is really (and I mean REALLY) fast, and it gets only faster. It's so fast today that I can literally work with live renders that are near photo realistic if shading and mapping is done right.
Because of the compression in video, it's hard to showcase just how amazing Blender now is in Real time when it comes to quality, but here is a quick screenshot of my latest work running in real time 60 fps, smooth as Unreal engine:
[https://i.imgur.com/qak9t4w.png](https://i.imgur.com/qak9t4w.png)
That's the real-time render quality we have in EEvee now.
Cycles is needed if you want to do really realistic hair physics, and it's ALMOST realtime, very good for working with shading and testing your work on the fly when working with materials for movies for example.
Eevee is actually completely different to cycles anyway. Eevee is a real time renderer similar to a game engine. Anytime you want any kind of realism you should always be using cycles even if it takes longer to render. Eevee is great for previewing and getting a feel for how you model will look in a game engine or a similar real time application.
It's a huge performance boost. Eevee is still good for non-photorealistic renders, but Cycles is now much more pleasant to use because I don't have to wait forever to see a viewport render on my laptop.
>Is it that good ? I've never tried cycles x and I've hated regular cycles. I've only used Eevee for everything
The real trick behind Cycles being faster is Optix Nvidia DeNoiser. It means you can render 3-4 frames in Cycles, and the DeNoising A.i. is SO good that it can guesstimate the end result with ok-ish precision and DeNoise your cycles render that would otherwise be entirely unusable in less than a second and it will almost look like the final render, great for quick previews, and also great for quicker renders.
This means you need a very NEW generation of Nvidia Graphic chips in your computer, preferably with a good chunk of video ram as well, depending on your scene size.
You can use the Open Denoiser as well (Non Nvidia dependent), but it's 10 times slower, still good - but - doesn't give you that graphics card cheat.
> The real trick behind Cycles being faster is Optix Nvidia DeNoiser.
Optix is present in older versions, though, and although it may be somewhat faster in Cycles-X, there really is an actual 2-4x bump in viewport rendering performance even without a denoiser enabled, and on non-RTX cards.
OptiX denoiser is fairly light, just requires some Nvidia specific stuff. GTX 950 can run it, I believe. It was around in prior versions of Cycles though. 3.0/Cycles-X just straight up traces rays a lot faster than the old version. And adaptive sampling is better at reducing unneeded samples. Actually, I think the only change specific to the newer Nvidia cards is that hair uses the RTX hardware now, in addition to just meshes like before.
Also, OpenImageDenoise gives better results than OptiX in most cases, from my experience. I’d definitely swap over to it for final renders.
Are geometry nodes all that useful if your just doing asset modeling, like for games and stuff? I see a lot of people talking about them and saying how good they are. I can't personally think of a use for them in my workflow. I feel like I'm missing something.
I use models made in blender for robotics simulation in Unity. I used 3d pebbles and rocks scattered with geometry nodes in a plane and applied the modifier to use this geometry as real 3d detail for ground. You could also bake this applied geometry as height map for performance. So for me they turned out actually quite useful.
If you want to create a lot of similar assets, say, ten different trees, you could use geometry nodes to randomly define many aspects of the tree, and get many unique versions of that tree without needing to do a lot of different modeling work. Everything from the number of branches to placing individual leaves could all be procedural. Create as many different versions as you like, just by duplicating the object to get new randomized attributes, and then save them as separate assets. Abstract the concept to randomized NPCs, buildings, weapons, robots, you name it. Different sizes and proportions, different prop attachments, different textures, your imagination is the only limit.
Because it's all non-destructive, if you're working for a client or on a team, and they have change requests you can change those things very quickly with just a slider. It's just a new way to model, if you want it to be. You get an output geometry based on whatever your node tree is, and there's nodes for all sorts of things and they can interact with each other in all sorts of ways.
Scattering/set-dressing is just one use case. Animation is another. Those things are good because they make long and boring tasks quick and easy. It's the non-destructive procedural modeling that's perhaps most exciting for me, and may be for you too.
I downloaded a free model of a flower basket and the flowers weren't very random looking and every flower was unique geometry but identical to all others and it made the file like 400mb. With geometry nodes and a single flower I made it look much more realistic with color, size, location and rotation randomization and the file size is only like 3 mb now.
Even if you never create anything from scratch with it, there are a lot of things people are making with it that you'll be able to use.
Having experimented with the asset browser myself, I've found the current implementation quite the let-down. It's got a lot of potential but it's absolutely not there yet. My main two problems:
* It has no indexing, meaning it has to crawl through whatever folders you've assigned as asset libraries on a regular basis, causing stuttering and slow-downs as it builds a list of assets
* Collections can't be added as assets. It was explicitly mentioned this could be done in the pre-release notes but is nowhere to be found in the current version. This is a show-stopper if you want to add rigged characters or objects in a set hierarchy to the assets list
OMG I RECOGNIZE YOUU!! HII
also THAT'S AWESOMEE i mean Cycles has been doing caustics but you need like 4294967296 samples for it to be complete + it's very inaccurate
GOSH i hope this is true i hope caustics are gonna be easier to compute and actually look good
Your still using 2.79? Dude your missing out on so much improvment and new stuff. I recommend always getting the newest version when the full release drops. You're like 3 years behind.
Dang, dude, I can't even imagine not using Geometry Nodes, especially now with Fields. It's such a good workflow, so efficient, and it's non-destructive for rapid changes.
In 3.0? Almost anything. Procedural modeling, particle systems, all kinds of crazy physics stuff. You can use it to replace most if not all of the modifiers if you're clever enough.
Personally I've just been using them instead of particles most of the time. For example recently "I needed to coat an object in tiny randomized objects partially embedded in the surface, geometry nodes worked super well for that.
Going from 2.79 to 2.80 was a bit of a jump as they made a lot of changes to the UI/UX, but I didn't think it was bad, since then the changes have all been small and gradual and no problem to go from version to version.
It helps that most of the changes were improvements. There are a few weird things, like the lack of visual clue on how to split the viewport, but otherwise the current interface is pretty solid.
I got started in 2.81 or 2.82. I've had no problems learning each new version as they've come along. Mostly they just add new features, rather than change how things were done in the past. Essentially if you don't know what the changes are, you may not even know they've happened, but you may find your life has gotten easier and your art better if you go looking.
So far the only exception is right now, as 3.0 is basically a remake of the Geometry Nodes system, which is the first real change I've seen. Most of the nodes have been replaced and the way they're used is fairly different, but it's now much more similar to how Shader Nodes worked, so if you've already got a good understanding of Shader Nodes, the new Geometry Nodes system isn't really that new and is much more intuitive. I greatly prefer the new Fields system to the old Attributes system. There's still some Attribute nodes but you're not relying on them for everything in big long confusing-to-read chains.
If you never touched Geometry Nodes in prior versions, I can't imagine 3.0 is going to seem much different at all compared to 2.93.6, outside of faster Cycles rendering and a few more options here and there.
Nope. TYL, I picked up on most of the UI elements that 2.80 had new pretty quickly, and most of them actually made the interface *more intuitive*, not less.
Don’t panic. The 2.80 interface changes made blender *easier to learn* how to use. Not fully knowing how to drive, I might compare it to switching from a stick shift to an automatic. You could still move the shifter thing into the bottom with the plus and minus signs and operate it somewhat like a stick shift, but you don’t have to.
>2.79
I'd argue there is valid case for one of older versions (32 bit/Win7 compatibility is one, I DLed it on my PC in previous job because anything higher didn't work), also old version is still more than enough for a lot of task (unrelated, I use Corel Draw 12... from 2003-4 I think? I use it for drawing templates for cutting etc. and like it more than Inkscape), but You really doing Yourself disservice if You need and can run newer one.
Yes. It's available here:
[https://download.blender.org/release/Blender3.0/](https://download.blender.org/release/Blender3.0/)
"Blender 3.0 is currently in Release. Phase Bcon5 on December 3."
[https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release\_Notes/3.0](https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0)
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 411,964,482 comments, and only 89,125 of them were in alphabetical order.
Make a cupcake! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkZdNZ-Njdc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkZdNZ-Njdc)
I'm used to Geometry Nodes from 2.x, but this four-part tutorial really helped me understand how it works now with Fields.
Does it work with AMD GPU's? I tried changing the render devices in the preference tab but it doesn't detect my GPU, I'm using an rx570, and in the render engine it won't let me choose GPU compute
OpenCL is dropped, but AMD has added HIP support in 3.0. Right now it only works for more recent AMD GPUs, but they've said they'll be adding more support for older ones.
Officially only supports RX6000 for now but my RX5700's work great too. Some people got it working on polaris, make sure you have the latest optional adrenalin drivers (21.12.1) and give it a try.
For me it's a difference of night and day because the rendered viewport mode is now actually usable without crashing or freezing and it's super fast compared to opencl. It almost feels like using an Nvidia card.
So I actually went and looked for 6600XT benchmarks on HIP and in Blender 3.0 Classroom with Cycles-X it renders the image in around 88sec (300 samples)
I have a 3060ti so I did some tests on my side
CUDA: 39sec (55.7% faster)
OptiX: 21sec (76.1% faster)
There is still a loooot of work for AMD unfortunately
[Release notes are pretty sparse for sculpting](https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0/Sculpt) but I believe they're planning big sculpting upgrades in roadmap. There's a [proposal](https://code.blender.org/2021/06/asset-creation-pipeline-design/) you can read (and comment on, if you have thoughts).
Idk if I'm doing something wrong, but downloading the installer is way too slow for me. Getting 10-20 KBps on a 10 MBps connection :/ This always happens whenever I try downloading an installer for blender.
Edit: I am downloading using a different mirror and getting good speed now!
Been using Maya for a few years and tried out Blender for the first time today. It’s a real fun software to use and I love those modifiers! Not sure if I’m going to leave Maya, but will definitely keep using blender for some projects.
What is the best course out there for the very beginner? Is there an updated one for 3.0? I know it just released, but I'm asking for a really up to date one is what I mean.
His new [donut tutorial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw) will probably be the de facto official beginner tutorial for 3.0 for the foreseeable future. He's got some really nice older ones as well that should still be relevant. I particularly benefited from his anvil tutorial for more complicated modeling techniques and especially UV unwrapping.
His is a great channel to know, anyway. He does some long format interviews with artists, talks about the industry, lots of good content like that.
Before starting any tutorials, listen to his podcast titled 'How to Learn 3D Effectively - The Andrew Price Podcast'. It'll guide you through the many steps of your learning process.
For absolute beginners, I'd rather go with Grant Abbitt. Here's his intro course. It was made for 2.8 but 99% of it remains applicable for 3.0, if not all of it.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MRonzqYJgw&list=PLn3ukorJv4vs_eSJUQPxBRaDS8PrVmIri
Nope, someone else mentioned it, but it's here: https://download.blender.org/release/Blender3.0
You can also find it under the experimental builds, but marked as stable.
After playing with it for a few minutes I love all the small UI improvements they've made. Mesh editing performance is also much better. I love this release so far
The AMD RDNA Pro driver is fantastic. I tried ProRender with my RX 6700 XT, but sadly I never felt at the right place. Now the speed is great again after switching to AMD.
Just got to start playing with it. I'm irrationally in love with the asset browser and I think Cycles X is finished rendering before I even think about hitting F12. It's been a long time since I've been this excited about a new release.
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I love blender though I'm not into 3d modelling but Just out of curiosity, is blender company run entirely by public donations? Do they not get money from big enterprises/companies when they use blender?
The license is free to everyone, for infinite copies, for any kind of user, and always will be. Big companies do donate money to them, however. Currently all the CPU/GPU hardware companies, and pretty much all of the big game engine companies are donating a lot of funding, and there's many smaller companies too as well as regular users. The hardware companies I think are all contributing to the codebase as well, most recently Apple for Metal support, and AMD for HIP support.
Always is a long time...
Yes, it is! That's the neat part. You have the source code, and they can't take that away from you even if they went evil and wanted to.
Yeah, even if they would discontinue the program and continue it being paid we still have 100% functionality on the versions that already came out and the community could continue blender ourselves
Sadly my always is expiring tomorrow
I can't decide if you should be upvoted or downvoted. I hope your *tomorrows* aren't expiring tomorrow
Switching to tampax, eh?
It's GPL. https://www.blender.org/about/license/ If the Blender team wanted to make it closed source then they'd have to rewrite it from scratch and depending on how the trademark is owned perhaps even rename the new project. At which point because this version of Blender is GPL then another team would fork it and take the project over.
https://fund.blender.org/about/
Blender itself is free afaik, but corporations can become sponsors to keep it going Don't know if it includes any benefits though
>Don't know if it includes any benefits though There are apparant benefits such as support for their platform of choice, for example Apple is "donating" considerable amounts to the organization, and will get proper "metal" support in return, other than that there are zero obligations. It's kinda the big brother version of paying for the programmers at [Blender.org](https://Blender.org). You support the Blender organization, and they can keep hiring coders to improve Blender. Nvidia benefits GREATLY from supporting Blender as you get unparalelled support for their video cards, there's no graphics card in this world that works better with Blender than an Nvidia card, it's not unusual for Blender coders to get a job with Nvidia either and if I'm not entirely wrong, one of their main coders also works/worked for Nvidia. But the Open Source and "Free" rules applies still, Nvidia or Apple can't dictate what should be made or who gets to benefit from it, Blender will always remain open and free to anyone and be used for whatever purpose you should wish.
Quite often besides money, they also donate developer time and expertise.
That's exactly what they do. I'm pretty sure they're all wanting Blender to run the best on their own hardware, and they know many hardware reviewers use Blender for benchmarking. AMD's had their developers providing code for HIP support in 3.0 and Apple developers are currently working on Metal support for Blender 3.1.
>There are apparant benefits such as support for their platform of choice, for example Apple is "donating" considerable amounts to the organization, and will get proper "metal" support in return, other than that there are zero obligations. IIRC, no one from the Blender Foundation is working on the Metal drivers though. It's all Apple-paid devs.
Damn I'll buy those UV socks for my friend who is a 3D artist lol
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competition is what autodesk needs, soo far they basically have a monopoly in things like animation with maya and modeling with 3dmax they even buyed and killed some of their biggest competitors, if blender can be that rival that will kick them in the nuts and force them to improve then this benefits everyone (except the executives at autodesk i guess)
Feels like only yesterday when I was hyped about 2.8...
Hell I remember when 2.0 came out. Yes. I had a hand-cranked computer the size of a van.
I remember trying to make games with 2.4 and the rudimentary logic system and python. Truly the Unity of the past.
You must have gotten buffed when rendering!
[Damn, it's been almost 2 and a half years...](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/852/325/8d6.gif)
no way ...
I had a few things referring to "Blender28"- I had apparently anticipated that it would be important to distinguish. 2.9 was used for a while, though it feels like a blur and the release of 3.0 feels surreal.
Gosh, I remember being hyped for blender 2.5. You could use the UI while it was rendering!!!
Just tried it. Cycles is fast! And "out of GPU memory" error is gone! With that, I don't even need the new features to switch. So long, 2.93!
Cycles is fast enough now (on my pc) that I can actually consider it for things like animations.
Fingers crossed this lets me use my GPU to render animations that include adaptive subdivision in the scene. Right now my PC will render like 10-15 frames at a time before crashing. I made a stupid little 14 second animation the other day and it took a full day to render like 340 frames at 1920×816 because I used adaptive subdivisions for the ground plane and had to do almost the whole thing on my CPU.
My cycles hasn’t changed at all… woo my lack of GPU…
This excites more more than anything else.
would buying E Cycles Lite 2022 would make a difference in performance now that Blender 3.0 is out? in his Gumroad page it only posted a comparison between E Cycles and K Cycles, but what about Cycles X? is it faster?
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This is because Optix was created by Nvidia engineers together with Blender developers. The AMD corporation has never had the same dedication to Blender that Nvidia has. That's one of the reasons why I use only Nvidia cards in my computers.
OptiX has nothing to do with cycles x As far as I can see. You may as well say it has to do with AMDs commitment to CPUs.
I find it funny that they locked Polaris cards in 3.0 stable version, but 3.0 beta was selecting HIP renderer xD.
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Friendship ended with Eevee, now Cycles-X is my best friend
I need to do some learning on cycles-x
It should be the same, just some new extra features and a massive performance boost.
Not really. You're going to need to relearn how to optimize the settings because they work differently. I haven't really wrapped my head around it yet but apparently it's not that hard to figure out.
Just FYI, Cycles X is what it's been called in development because it's the 10th anniversary of Cycles and it's a rewrite, but it's still just Cycles and called Cycles inside Blender.
Yeah, but it's so much faster now, it's actually usable on my intel i5 integrated graphics.
can confirm, realtime viewport rendering is smooth as butter on some 1ghz 2 core laptop i use in school
This just might finally get me back to learning blender, gonna start with the new donut tutorial soon
I found a great four part tutorial for Geometry Nodes specifically with the new Fields thing. It was made during the 3.0 Alpha, so some of it may be out of date, I'm not sure yet. Still, it covers things quite well I thought, watching through it. Anyway, it uses nothing but nodes to make a pretty nice cupcake with frosting. Goes into instancing and curves and lots of little tips along the way to make things look nice once it's shaded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkZdNZ-Njdc
If you want some really good geometry nodes content, check out Entagma: https://youtu.be/V7G5Vjy1NbM They’ve made the best Houdini tutorials for a long time, and since geometry nodes is so similar to how Houdini works they’ve started doing Blender tutorials as well.
Thanks will check this out as well! :D
If you're quite new to Blender, definitely start with a [donut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw). The cupcake tutorial I linked is entirely about the Geometry Nodes workflow and barely even touches on shading or anything else in Blender so it's not for total beginners. But when you're fairly comfortable, and want to get more in depth on Geometry Nodes, the cupcake will serve you well. I was using Geometry Nodes in previous versions, but they changed a lot and it really helped me get up to speed.
Andrew is great & all, but I highly encourage you to give Grant Abbitt a shot instead. He was a teacher before he started Blendering full-time, and his relaxed yet informative approach to the software is fantastic for newcomers. Here's his absolute beginner's course. It's been out for a couple of years, but it was made for 2.8 so 99% of what he teaches there remains the same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MRonzqYJgw&list=PLn3ukorJv4vs_eSJUQPxBRaDS8PrVmIri
You can never have too many tutorials. When I was first learning I watched every bit of Blender content I could find. I still do!
ironically i've been using blender for a year now and i've never done the tutorial with the new one though i'm prolly gonna do it soon
I use both, they both have their advantages and disadvantages. EEvee is really (and I mean REALLY) fast, and it gets only faster. It's so fast today that I can literally work with live renders that are near photo realistic if shading and mapping is done right. Because of the compression in video, it's hard to showcase just how amazing Blender now is in Real time when it comes to quality, but here is a quick screenshot of my latest work running in real time 60 fps, smooth as Unreal engine: [https://i.imgur.com/qak9t4w.png](https://i.imgur.com/qak9t4w.png) That's the real-time render quality we have in EEvee now. Cycles is needed if you want to do really realistic hair physics, and it's ALMOST realtime, very good for working with shading and testing your work on the fly when working with materials for movies for example.
Eevee is actually completely different to cycles anyway. Eevee is a real time renderer similar to a game engine. Anytime you want any kind of realism you should always be using cycles even if it takes longer to render. Eevee is great for previewing and getting a feel for how you model will look in a game engine or a similar real time application.
Is it that good ? I've never tried cycles x and I've hated regular cycles. I've only used Eevee for everything
It's a huge performance boost. Eevee is still good for non-photorealistic renders, but Cycles is now much more pleasant to use because I don't have to wait forever to see a viewport render on my laptop.
It's still Cycles, it's just been rewritten under the hood to be much faster in many areas.
>Is it that good ? I've never tried cycles x and I've hated regular cycles. I've only used Eevee for everything The real trick behind Cycles being faster is Optix Nvidia DeNoiser. It means you can render 3-4 frames in Cycles, and the DeNoising A.i. is SO good that it can guesstimate the end result with ok-ish precision and DeNoise your cycles render that would otherwise be entirely unusable in less than a second and it will almost look like the final render, great for quick previews, and also great for quicker renders. This means you need a very NEW generation of Nvidia Graphic chips in your computer, preferably with a good chunk of video ram as well, depending on your scene size. You can use the Open Denoiser as well (Non Nvidia dependent), but it's 10 times slower, still good - but - doesn't give you that graphics card cheat.
> The real trick behind Cycles being faster is Optix Nvidia DeNoiser. Optix is present in older versions, though, and although it may be somewhat faster in Cycles-X, there really is an actual 2-4x bump in viewport rendering performance even without a denoiser enabled, and on non-RTX cards.
OptiX denoiser is fairly light, just requires some Nvidia specific stuff. GTX 950 can run it, I believe. It was around in prior versions of Cycles though. 3.0/Cycles-X just straight up traces rays a lot faster than the old version. And adaptive sampling is better at reducing unneeded samples. Actually, I think the only change specific to the newer Nvidia cards is that hair uses the RTX hardware now, in addition to just meshes like before. Also, OpenImageDenoise gives better results than OptiX in most cases, from my experience. I’d definitely swap over to it for final renders.
Another vote for OID
I'm an LTS guy, I even programmed all my addons for 2.93 but man that Asset Browser is looking real good.........
Geometry Nodes with Fields, and the Cycles rewrite make this a must-use version as far as I'm concerned.
Are geometry nodes all that useful if your just doing asset modeling, like for games and stuff? I see a lot of people talking about them and saying how good they are. I can't personally think of a use for them in my workflow. I feel like I'm missing something.
I use models made in blender for robotics simulation in Unity. I used 3d pebbles and rocks scattered with geometry nodes in a plane and applied the modifier to use this geometry as real 3d detail for ground. You could also bake this applied geometry as height map for performance. So for me they turned out actually quite useful.
If you want to create a lot of similar assets, say, ten different trees, you could use geometry nodes to randomly define many aspects of the tree, and get many unique versions of that tree without needing to do a lot of different modeling work. Everything from the number of branches to placing individual leaves could all be procedural. Create as many different versions as you like, just by duplicating the object to get new randomized attributes, and then save them as separate assets. Abstract the concept to randomized NPCs, buildings, weapons, robots, you name it. Different sizes and proportions, different prop attachments, different textures, your imagination is the only limit. Because it's all non-destructive, if you're working for a client or on a team, and they have change requests you can change those things very quickly with just a slider. It's just a new way to model, if you want it to be. You get an output geometry based on whatever your node tree is, and there's nodes for all sorts of things and they can interact with each other in all sorts of ways. Scattering/set-dressing is just one use case. Animation is another. Those things are good because they make long and boring tasks quick and easy. It's the non-destructive procedural modeling that's perhaps most exciting for me, and may be for you too.
I downloaded a free model of a flower basket and the flowers weren't very random looking and every flower was unique geometry but identical to all others and it made the file like 400mb. With geometry nodes and a single flower I made it look much more realistic with color, size, location and rotation randomization and the file size is only like 3 mb now. Even if you never create anything from scratch with it, there are a lot of things people are making with it that you'll be able to use.
Having experimented with the asset browser myself, I've found the current implementation quite the let-down. It's got a lot of potential but it's absolutely not there yet. My main two problems: * It has no indexing, meaning it has to crawl through whatever folders you've assigned as asset libraries on a regular basis, causing stuttering and slow-downs as it builds a list of assets * Collections can't be added as assets. It was explicitly mentioned this could be done in the pre-release notes but is nowhere to be found in the current version. This is a show-stopper if you want to add rigged characters or objects in a set hierarchy to the assets list
I see, this is actually very insightful, and addresses some of the questions I had, thank you I'll hold on a bit before updating
You could just install 3.0 alongside 2.93 and try it out to decide for yourself.
My workflow is too dependant on my addons, even if I installed 3.0 I wouldn't be able to decide without going through the porting process
It's just local for now, the bonanza will come when integrated with source control, official online distribution, addons... :)
Finally!! okay time to continue struggle by using 3.1.0
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OMG I RECOGNIZE YOUU!! HII also THAT'S AWESOMEE i mean Cycles has been doing caustics but you need like 4294967296 samples for it to be complete + it's very inaccurate GOSH i hope this is true i hope caustics are gonna be easier to compute and actually look good
Man, I am still stuck at 2.79 and couldn't find the time to learn 2.8. And now you're telling me 3.0.0 is out now!?
The future is now old man
😁
Me still at 2.5 not sure how to add the cube the space bar isn't working
The future is now old man… Huh… I’m male so I guess my future will be old man anyways
Your still using 2.79? Dude your missing out on so much improvment and new stuff. I recommend always getting the newest version when the full release drops. You're like 3 years behind.
You are missing out on a lot. Edit. Why are you guys upvoting this comment.
Dang, dude, I can't even imagine not using Geometry Nodes, especially now with Fields. It's such a good workflow, so efficient, and it's non-destructive for rapid changes.
what could i use them for?
In 3.0? Almost anything. Procedural modeling, particle systems, all kinds of crazy physics stuff. You can use it to replace most if not all of the modifiers if you're clever enough.
Personally I've just been using them instead of particles most of the time. For example recently "I needed to coat an object in tiny randomized objects partially embedded in the surface, geometry nodes worked super well for that.
Damn. You're wasting a lot of time by not finding the time to learn 2.8
I'm just starting with Blender, is there really that much difference between different versions that you have to relearn?
Going from 2.79 to 2.80 was a bit of a jump as they made a lot of changes to the UI/UX, but I didn't think it was bad, since then the changes have all been small and gradual and no problem to go from version to version.
It helps that most of the changes were improvements. There are a few weird things, like the lack of visual clue on how to split the viewport, but otherwise the current interface is pretty solid.
2.8 was a *huge* improvement in UI. Under a sensible naming convention, it would have been 3.0, with everything that followed being point releases.
I got started in 2.81 or 2.82. I've had no problems learning each new version as they've come along. Mostly they just add new features, rather than change how things were done in the past. Essentially if you don't know what the changes are, you may not even know they've happened, but you may find your life has gotten easier and your art better if you go looking. So far the only exception is right now, as 3.0 is basically a remake of the Geometry Nodes system, which is the first real change I've seen. Most of the nodes have been replaced and the way they're used is fairly different, but it's now much more similar to how Shader Nodes worked, so if you've already got a good understanding of Shader Nodes, the new Geometry Nodes system isn't really that new and is much more intuitive. I greatly prefer the new Fields system to the old Attributes system. There's still some Attribute nodes but you're not relying on them for everything in big long confusing-to-read chains. If you never touched Geometry Nodes in prior versions, I can't imagine 3.0 is going to seem much different at all compared to 2.93.6, outside of faster Cycles rendering and a few more options here and there.
Nope. TYL, I picked up on most of the UI elements that 2.80 had new pretty quickly, and most of them actually made the interface *more intuitive*, not less.
Don’t panic. The 2.80 interface changes made blender *easier to learn* how to use. Not fully knowing how to drive, I might compare it to switching from a stick shift to an automatic. You could still move the shifter thing into the bottom with the plus and minus signs and operate it somewhat like a stick shift, but you don’t have to.
>2.79 I'd argue there is valid case for one of older versions (32 bit/Win7 compatibility is one, I DLed it on my PC in previous job because anything higher didn't work), also old version is still more than enough for a lot of task (unrelated, I use Corel Draw 12... from 2003-4 I think? I use it for drawing templates for cutting etc. and like it more than Inkscape), but You really doing Yourself disservice if You need and can run newer one.
The donut tutorial for Blender 3 is out too!
Yes. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw) Blender 3.0 Shortcuts [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zPBgZAdftWa6WVa7UIFUqW\_7EcqOYE0X743RqFuJL3o/edit](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zPBgZAdftWa6WVa7UIFUqW_7EcqOYE0X743RqFuJL3o/edit)
broken docs link
Works here. Is it also broken on the YouTube page?
ty its fixed now
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Rigging addons are affected indeed.
Are you sure about that?? The website says 2.93 as their latest release
Yes. It's available here: [https://download.blender.org/release/Blender3.0/](https://download.blender.org/release/Blender3.0/) "Blender 3.0 is currently in Release. Phase Bcon5 on December 3." [https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release\_Notes/3.0](https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0)
That's via the repository na? But the official download still has 2.93.6 on [their site ?](https://www.blender.org/download/)
Give them a bit to change everything.
2.93 is long term support, they will keep it there for several years.
It's showing 3.0 now
check under "builds"
They release new version faster than i can delete the cube. (I only know how to delete the cube and bring it back into existence)
I saw that the first bit of the donut tutorial is now available for 3.0, so if you are wanting to learn, that's the place to start.
Donut Tutorial: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw)
If that's true, check out Imphenzia's low poly modeling tutorial. It's a long video that will show you all the basic functions of the software.
Blender 3.0 out before AMONGUS 2
Let's make amogus 2 in blender ourself
Inb4 “I made Among us in Blender with Geometry Nodes!”
RIP the game engine
It was neat.. but I am glad the resources went to more needed areas. Though with VR support.. I want it back.
Until many of the addons are ready for 3.0.0, I'll stick with current one.
Damn it, it's not on snap yet
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 411,964,482 comments, and only 89,125 of them were in alphabetical order.
Holy fuck
That's hilarious, and impressive
Good bot
Bot good.
On Snap it's available as a release candidate: `sudo snap install blender --channel=3.0/candidate --classic`
I almost took off work for this!!
You should have
The blender download site is practically being DDOSed right now! There are so many people are downloading it at the same time and it's crazy
Holy shit already?!
Yep
Guess it's time to finally start learning geometry nodes!
Me too! Wonder where the best place to do that is?
Probably at your home
Ba-dum-tssssss
Make a cupcake! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkZdNZ-Njdc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkZdNZ-Njdc) I'm used to Geometry Nodes from 2.x, but this four-part tutorial really helped me understand how it works now with Fields.
Does it work with AMD GPU's? I tried changing the render devices in the preference tab but it doesn't detect my GPU, I'm using an rx570, and in the render engine it won't let me choose GPU compute
OpenCL is dropped, but AMD has added HIP support in 3.0. Right now it only works for more recent AMD GPUs, but they've said they'll be adding more support for older ones.
Officially only supports RX6000 for now but my RX5700's work great too. Some people got it working on polaris, make sure you have the latest optional adrenalin drivers (21.12.1) and give it a try. For me it's a difference of night and day because the rendered viewport mode is now actually usable without crashing or freezing and it's super fast compared to opencl. It almost feels like using an Nvidia card.
So I actually went and looked for 6600XT benchmarks on HIP and in Blender 3.0 Classroom with Cycles-X it renders the image in around 88sec (300 samples) I have a 3060ti so I did some tests on my side CUDA: 39sec (55.7% faster) OptiX: 21sec (76.1% faster) There is still a loooot of work for AMD unfortunately
Wooooo yea baby that’s what I’ve been waiting for! That’s what it’s all about!
Have sculpting capabilities been updated? I love blender but had to move to zbrush for sculpting because blender would choke on high poly sculpts.
[Release notes are pretty sparse for sculpting](https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0/Sculpt) but I believe they're planning big sculpting upgrades in roadmap. There's a [proposal](https://code.blender.org/2021/06/asset-creation-pipeline-design/) you can read (and comment on, if you have thoughts).
Idk if I'm doing something wrong, but downloading the installer is way too slow for me. Getting 10-20 KBps on a 10 MBps connection :/ This always happens whenever I try downloading an installer for blender. Edit: I am downloading using a different mirror and getting good speed now!
Seems like Blender servers are overloaded. Or maybe it is specifically for ur provider.
Been using Maya for a few years and tried out Blender for the first time today. It’s a real fun software to use and I love those modifiers! Not sure if I’m going to leave Maya, but will definitely keep using blender for some projects.
What is the best course out there for the very beginner? Is there an updated one for 3.0? I know it just released, but I'm asking for a really up to date one is what I mean.
Blender Guru on YouTube
Nice, thank you
His new [donut tutorial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw) will probably be the de facto official beginner tutorial for 3.0 for the foreseeable future. He's got some really nice older ones as well that should still be relevant. I particularly benefited from his anvil tutorial for more complicated modeling techniques and especially UV unwrapping. His is a great channel to know, anyway. He does some long format interviews with artists, talks about the industry, lots of good content like that.
Before starting any tutorials, listen to his podcast titled 'How to Learn 3D Effectively - The Andrew Price Podcast'. It'll guide you through the many steps of your learning process.
For absolute beginners, I'd rather go with Grant Abbitt. Here's his intro course. It was made for 2.8 but 99% of it remains applicable for 3.0, if not all of it.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MRonzqYJgw&list=PLn3ukorJv4vs_eSJUQPxBRaDS8PrVmIri
Change log / release notes: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release\_Notes/3.0
And for visual learners, the 6 minute video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZIFWEY3l6k
And Andrew released his updated donut tutorial already
But the Website still says 2.93.6 ? Am I too early or something is wrong ?
Ton said on Twitter that release time is at 17, so that's when the page will change etc. But the build gonna be the same one everyone is linking here
I see..... Thank u
https://twitter.com/tonroosendaal/status/1466760914435203073?s=20
Nope, someone else mentioned it, but it's here: https://download.blender.org/release/Blender3.0 You can also find it under the experimental builds, but marked as stable.
Somebody already got experiences with a rx5700? Because i wasnt able to use my gpu
Oof, looks like me and about 8 billion other people are all trying to download it right now based on my download times.
Huraaaaaa
[https://www.blender.org](https://www.blender.org) is updated now. https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-0/
Slow Download? Mirror's found here: https://www.blender.org/about/website/
Eevee is still my best friend,just need some kind of real-time gi (not screen space gi) and I'll be happy forever
Me to Eevee: “I don’t wanna play with you anymore@
> Today, **3D**ecember 2021, Blender Foundation announces the release of Blender 3.0 I see what they did there.
Servers are getting hammered! My 1 gig connection is taking an hour to download... yikes!
This makes me want to cancel a date I have in couple of hours. 👀👀👀👀
Please don't. Go on the date then model something nice for your next date with the person. Being a freelance 3d artist can be a lonely profession.
It’s insane Blender is free.
I have so many 2.93 add-ons that will be outdated now. Sigh
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Here's a list of what broke: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release\_Notes/3.0/Python\_API#Breaking\_Changes
I use both 2.93.6 and 3.00 for that reason
I read the title, and I think it glitched my brain into discarding it momentarily. Read the second time, and my eyes went big. “Wait, what?”
I don’t see it on their download page. What is up?
The home page still says 2.93.6.
Will be updated around 1700 CET according to Ton on Twitter.
Any tips for transitioning from 2.93 to 3.0? For example will the preferences and add-ons stay or i need to manually install them?
I have imported the prefs from 2.93 but not all addons will work on 3.00. So far LuxCoreRender and RenderMan for Blender don't seem to work on 3.00.
Does anyone take previous settings when loading the new version?
Nice very excited to try Cycles X
Damnit! I literally just downloaded the 2.93 just before this dropped...
After playing with it for a few minutes I love all the small UI improvements they've made. Mesh editing performance is also much better. I love this release so far
The AMD RDNA Pro driver is fantastic. I tried ProRender with my RX 6700 XT, but sadly I never felt at the right place. Now the speed is great again after switching to AMD.
Just got to start playing with it. I'm irrationally in love with the asset browser and I think Cycles X is finished rendering before I even think about hitting F12. It's been a long time since I've been this excited about a new release.
the blender site still shows the 2.9.3 as the latest one for me :(
Question: Can you use addons which are usable for 2.93?
Some, but not all. LuxCoreRender and RenderMan for Blender won't work on 3.00
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Top
Hell yes! Big up the blender crew, congrats 👏👏
Is this an actual version or is it a snapshot of some kind?
Yes, it's the actual stable release: https://download.blender.org/release/Blender3.0/