Waiting for 2.8 makes me feel like a kid in front of the candy-store… 
- I’m happy to announce that Aleph Objects (makers of Lulzbot 3D printer) confirmed to support
two full time developers on blender 2.8 workflow and the “101” project.
The key developers for this will be Campbell Barton and Bastien Montagne.
This means that the Development Fund has room to support new developers, especially for 2.79 topics.
We only need a company supporting the modeling and FBX!!
We only need a company supporting the modeling and FBX!!
I don’t know if sponsored work for .fbx support will help much if Autodesk can just stomp all over it with a big round of small, but undocumented and breaking changes.
Right now, there is some renewed effort on the Collada front and Alembic was seeing some improvement in the last couple of months (interop can only improve if Blender ended up supporting the new USD and gitF formats, both of which are also open).
Autodesk cannot break the support for old formats of FBX because not all his users have the last exporter. And a lot of other programs like unreal or unity support some versions of FBX, but not the last.
buildbot builds for 2.8 are now being worked on
https://builder.blender.org/download/
I wouldn’t expect everything to be working right of the bat though (so I wouldn’t advise using them for production work yet, though they may be good enough to allow one to mess about with the new features).
Did not BF quit a lot of code and modules of Blender 2.8? why the size is the same? stupid question.
I don’t recall them saying they planned to get rid of a lot of modules and/or libraries at this stage in the project (it is the latter that forms the majority of Blender’s file-size). The only module that I know of that might be removed is the Blender Internal render engine (since the particle code is being brought back after the rewrite of that system got shelved until a later release). BI itself will possibly wind up being replaced by the new realtime viewport engine (since for one thing, game engines now can do nearly everything it was able to do and more).
At one point, it sounded like the BGE was going to be removed as well, then came the UPBGE fork (which their devs. are aiming for inclusion in master so as not only to save it, but make it far better).
I though that the will remove things like BGE, BI,… Well then the changes are not deeper like I think. Well, better, because I love the actual program.
There’s still a number of major changes, so don’t be mistaken (as I said, perhaps the only reason why BGE is still likely going to be around is because the UPBGE project managed to clean up and modernize that mess of a codebase).
BI is still more likely than not to be removed, but the way the BF develops things is that they won’t remove something until there is something just as good or better to take its place (that replacement for BI is already being worked on and the old particle code stays due to no replacement available, though there will be changes to it to help with the rewriting process when it comes time)
Does it render in windows? I can’t get a regular cube to render. I only see the background.
@Bigbad,
I managed to render with BI, and freestyle. Seems cycles is not working yet, also preview of materials is not working for cycles. Well, it’s very early.
Same on the 64bit windows version. Although I got it to render the cube on first opening but then something I did messed that up and just renders background now.
^same, same + can’t select objects via outliner
very just not ready yet 
Q: Anyone knows if it will be possible to have screens/layouts exported, saved separately, out of the file, in a folder, as presets? :spin:
There is an application template item in file menu to launch templates in master, now.
So a part of work will start in 2.79.
There is a dedicated branch named workspaces branch.
Currently, it has a temporary ugly topbar. But things should be useable when cool topbar will be ready.
Buildbot is here to help testing of work done in the branch : new viewport with collections, Clay engine and Eevee engine.
Cycles is already tested in master, experimental builds etc…
2.8 doesn’t work for me. It closes before loading the viewport 
On OS X 10.9.5, on opening ‘blender-2.80.0-git20170403.5884c9f-x86_64’ quits with error:
found bundled python: /Users/paolo/Downloads/blender-2.80.0-git20170403.5884c9f-x86_64/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/../Resources/2.80/pythondyld: lazy symbol binding failed: Symbol not found: _getentropy
Referenced from: /Users/paolo/Downloads/blender-2.80.0-git20170403.5884c9f-x86_64/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender
Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
dyld: Symbol not found: _getentropy
Referenced from: /Users/paolo/Downloads/blender-2.80.0-git20170403.5884c9f-x86_64/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/blender
Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
Trace/BPT trap: 5
logout
And Sergey just put up a nice big warning to not use the builds for production and only use for testing and giving feedback (don’t save your production files with it either).
Is there anything new related to the new viewport on this 2.8 branch?
Got curious, unfortunately Im on OSX and cant run it (same error as stated above by @sourvinos)
I checked the wire and outline select, that looks like the old code, not the stuff Erwin is working on. I am gonna check back when that is in Eevee didn’t crash with cube, but couldn’t create a material to check that out.
Excited though that builds are on buildbot!
Primitive for the moment, as expected, and the interface stuff (buttons resizing panels etc) seems laggish as hell. I hope this is going to improve (I imagine it is). However I had a glimpse at the new wireframe, and although it could use some polish (not using subd levels at the moment) it looks good, and more importantly it looks clear and readable. Real big improvement.