Blender 2.79 RC1 is out.

So 2.79 RC1 is out, get them and test them (will update with link soon)

But more importantly something Ton mentioned on Twitter, that in general they have issues of better communicating when RC’s are out which is quite true. got info yesterday, while the builds were out for almost 4-5 days.

Still back to news, are you excited? or is everyone hanging on to 2.8?

For myself, I’m eager to test it after I rebuild my system … wee

2.79 is awesome! So many improvements for my workflow.

Is it safe to use for my projects, or should I stick with 2.78c a while longer?

If you run into bugs, report them. The RC’s are designed to ensure that no major bug or regression sneaks into the official release.

Thanks for you, guys!

There are still nearly 300 bugs opened and new ones are coming. You can go through the tracker to know what kind of bugs you may encounter and judge by yourself if those bugs may be too annoying in your workflow. If it’s the case, you may want to wait for 2.79a or just use 2.79 only on project that have no tight deadline and 2.78 for the rest.

hi, for more information on what’s in 2.79 be sure to check out the release notes here:
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.79

for information on the addons, look here:
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.79/Add-ons

2.79 is an exceptional build with improvements across many levels. Please test the rc builds so devs can provide the most stable version ever, whilst we await 2.8.
Thanks.

One thing that (based on my opinion only) would be useful (though risk of abuse) would be to implement bug reporting directly from Blender. Using BlenderID that some of us have as part of the Blender cloud and such, it would be very effective if there was a way to do that.

Granted, crashing would be hard to report from the tool, but right now reporting a bug is a bit of a hidden aspect. Where does one go to do bug report. I kind of recall, but I do not recollect if there is any link from Blender to the bug reporting site.

Just as with Blender communication on new RC releases, bug reporting could be a challenge for many newer users.

@Meta-Androcto

Big thanks for the links. So much fun new stuff to read up on :slight_smile:

Honeslty it would be cool if Blender would have a site (like the blender download) for RC’s with the two links you have provided. This would give a good overview of new features and potentially pointers of what to test.

Right now just having a download folder just lacks a lot of details.

hey guys, in the new version for some reason a 3d gizmo functionality is not working anymore for me.
usually when scaling with shift LMB on a certain axis it scales the other 2 axes … but it seems this has been disabled.
can anyone confirm and maybe even tell how to turn it back on?

cheers chris

Help -> Report a Bug

I just downloaded the new RC build - but none of the new addons appear in the user preferences. Any ideas?

Likely a bug, the addons are showing up for me.

EDIT: They are there, just some were difficult to find (e.g “Mesh edit tools” results in nothing, while “Tools” or “edit tools” does)

Something so obvious I totally forgot about it. Will test it out.

While Blender itself has got some amazing new improvements - especially to Cycles, the new add-ons and updates are truly special this time around. Rigify has tons of new rigs and improvements, ANT tools seems way better now, Magic UV is really useful and Fabric is a ton of fun to play with. Some of the other things I’ve yet to try, but they look awesome.

Meta-Androcto, thank you once again. Your summary of the Addons was excellent and most helpful. You have continued to contribute to the community and for that I am grateful. I learned more about the possible tools and the options than I had any idea. Well done!!

Would like to echo these sentiments. So many great addons and structured documentation. The build of course is amazing as well! Thank you guys for the hard work!

Sorry for asking it here, but can Denoiser also be activated for viewport render as in this video? Tnx

I thought denoising was a 2.79 thing, but it isn’t there (Arch).

Back to the dev version for me.

Its called “custom scrambling distance”. And no, it doesnt here yet.