Blender Developers are currently at the Blender Institute working towards the release of Blender 2.8, and a tentative release date (well, month) for Blender 2.80 has been announced!
Brecht writes:
The following release schedule was agreed on at the Homestretch workshop:
- Mid May: finish remaining features and polish user interface (list of tasks on developer.blender.org). These are relatively simple changes to the design, or additions to really complete the new functionality.
- First week of June: developers focuses on updating user manual in their areas of expertise.
- Mid June: fix all high priority bugs. Other bugs may be fixed as well, but bugs marked as high priority are the ones that we consider to block the final release.
- July: 2.80 release
The core development team will focus fully on the priorities for 2.80 in the coming months. Patches will have to wait, and we encourage developers working on new features to get them in a fully polished state so that they can go into the next release.
After 2.80 we will follow a fixed release schedule. That means 2.81 would be released 3 months later. There are many great patches under development or almost ready to be included (for example UDIM), but which would delay the 2.80 release too much.
11 Comments
I love it when a plan comes together.
way to go - tentative sounds a lot pleasing to my ears unlike that it'll-be-ready-when-it's-ready stuff they used to say
Yeah but you have to be careful, some people don't know what "tentative" means and start calling you a liar when your estimated date comes and goes. At least Blender is FOSS software, and isn't subject to legal actions like forced refunds.
Wow! I can't believe after literally years of waiting this is finally happening! I can't wait to see where Blender may go in the future. So exciting.
Having visited the site I think it pays to wait for 2.81. I started with 2.61 and hope it's gonna be the same experience of having many great possibilities.
Do we know yet if full motion blue will be in Eevee on release or if that is too follow? The current status is a bit limiting.
But fantastic news! The improvements in the move to 2.8 have been phenomenal!
*blur not blue
Oh my god the unappreciative rude comments on that development blog..
Anyway, I love this 2.80 update and love the Blender devs, they've done an amazing job on this absolutely huge update. Update? More like upgrade, Blender 2.80 is practically a different application to Blender 2.79, certainly feels like it. After working in it for a few days, it feels terrible going back to 2.79 for anything at all. Like a timewarp back to an ancient era.
Absolutely loving this progress and can't wait to see where things go from here. Vulkan support and real time raytracing perhaps for Eevee? Substance Painter style texture painting? More advanced sculpting tools? Who knows, but Blender is definitely 'winning' and the competition should be worried!
Watch out Autodesk, we're comin' for ya!
Does the new version have Maya mode of operation?
I don't think there is currently a Maya keybinding option as default however the 2.8 standard interface is far more in line with other applications and has significantly increased usibality, especially for new users.
The improvements in the move to 2.8 have been phenomenal!