Blender 2.80 Review

My Review on Blender 2.80

By Alex Antuna
August 8,2019

What is Blender?

Now your probably asking what is Blender? It is a free and open source 3d software that is free to use, free to share, free to change and free to sell your work, as it says on their website. As you dig deeper into this version of Blender I think you will find it is a very solid and well rounded 3d software package.


1st Impressions

Over the past month I had fun getting to know this new updated version of Blender. Now I'm a 3D Max user for over 20 years now and have jumped in Blender a few times over the course of those years. The 1st thing I think you will noticed in Blender right before you even open the program is how small the file size it. It is only an 84MB download off their website to install it to your computer. It supports Windows, MacOS and Linux to run Blender 2.80. So right out of the gate it is already light on the file size needed to download it.

If you have used Blender before I think you too will see that the program is different on start up. The interface looks a lot like other 3d programs and is less alien to someone who has used other 3D programs before. I really like this direction that Blender is taking in making it more comfortable new users to jump in and start creating. As you can see in Fig.1 that they now have an XYZ world gizmo at the top right of the viewport. This really helps with laptops that don't have a number pad to the side given that Blender's viewport navigation is based on those hotkeys.

Fig.1

The other thing I think you will notice is the left side is the model controls as you can see in fig.2. You now have a Move, Rotate and Scale to the side of the viewport allowing you to use the gizmo for the selected models in your scene. This is really helpful for new users who are getting use to Blenders 3d navigation. 

Fig.2

The other big improvement I noticed was the Outliner inside of Blender see fig.3. Now if you remember what the last version of Blender looked like, well this is a big improvement from that. This alone is a major factor on me looking more and more at Blender. For a big project you want an easier way to manage bigger scenes and models. 

Fig.3

What can you do with Blender?

Your probably asking this question and curious of how this program compares to any other 3d programs. Well for one if you read my post on a movie called Next Gen , that was made by Netflix, from my understanding it was created using Blender. If Next Gen was created using an open source program like Blender then anything is possible. Anything from motion graphics to particle simulation. There is also a way to do 2D animations in Blender. The possibilities seem endless and the ever growing direction the program is headed.

Final Thoughts

There are so many new things inside Blender on the interface I feel I can go on and on about them. My suggestion is to just try it out and see what you think. I will post a link at the bottom of this Blog and also a few resources I found useful for learning Blender. So if your are new to 3D and are looking to start learning a program,Blender isn't a bad option with this newer version. I know some people still don't think of Blender as an industry standard but reading this article on Ubisoft it looks like things are changing. And change is a good thing.


Resources

Blender Download Link

Blender Guru Youtube Channel - I Really suggest looking at some of his tutorials on Blender.

Blender Tutorials - Path on the main site to tutorials.