I have been really interested to migrate my work to Blender 2.80 as I can see how much work has gone into it.
So I played around with some beta versions and downloaded the product release when it became available. Trouble is when I ran the software it seemed totally different from the program shown in the videos on Youtube. Cycles rendering didn’t work at all in the viewport. All those workspace tabs were missing. I couldn’t interact with the outliner at all. Even the sculpting brushes seemed sluggish and unpredictable. It was all really disappointing and I decided that maybe I should wait until 2.8 was more stable.
In the meantime though I created a couple of posts on here asking for advice and had a number of helpful responses. Some of these hinted at the fact that I should do a clean install and not share any of the add-ons etc that were already around from 2.79. So I renamed all my old Blender directories (including those in the appData/Roaming area) and then did a clean install from a zip file version, fired it up and:
Wow, oh wow !!
Now, suddenly everything works and I am definitely going to move over to the new software.
There’s been some discussion already about how 2.8 is REALLY 3.0. That might have helped alert me to the fact that 2.8 is NOT AN UPGRADE.
The really weird thing is that my dirty install actually worked in a weird way. There were no crashes and it did quite a lot of what I expected it to do but in an awkward way. That’s what seems most strange in retrospect. I spent many years writing software in C and C++ and, in my experience, when you link in the wrong modules the result is usually some sort of crash.
This half-hearted sort of functionality was very misleading. It led me to think that the software was at fault. So don’t make the same mistake as me - DO A CLEAN INSTALL.
I still continue to use 2.79 because of several dated addons that don’t function on 2.8.
As a result, I simply use the zip/portable versions of 2.8 that don’t interfere with 2.79’s configuration.
I’m not ready to switch over as of yet. 2.8 is still in its infancy and there’s still some potential left in 2.79. In fact, I may wind up being the last person using this version later down the road because I’m still trying to see what else B.I.R.E. can do. So maybe when things get ironed out, I’ll visit the program.
2.79 and 2.80 are living peacefully side by side on my hard drive with the former hardly being used any more. No need to choose one over the other, though
In the end, I actually have four versions of Blender on my system. 2.78, 2.79b, 2.79.7 ecycles, and 2.8.
2.78 I use because I have a preconfigured “video assembler” blend that has all the settings just right for producing videos from frames. For some reason I haven’t taken time to create one that works for 2.79. I have 2.79b for actually building the scenes before sending to to either e-cycles 2.79 or 2.8 Eeevee quick renders.
I don’t do much actual work on 2.8 because I am getting used to the single “Collections” system rather than layers+groups and it would take time to move over my scenes thanks to how 2.8 handles the organization conversion.
With a little effort, this shows one can have an assortment of different Blender versions all working together.
But it does show that you can’t just slap Blender on top of Blender like OP. You could win up jinxing config.
I almost went bananas trying to open 2.80! 4 days I tried to open Blender. I just kept trying and then, somehow, I found your message here.
“and then did a clean install from a zip file version, fired it up and: Wow, oh wow !!”
Man it’s the little things that getcha! 4 freakin’ days…
Next?
Many Thanks
Yes, 2.80 has given me a reason to live! Hah! Maybe I’m lazy, distracted, or just plain old (64) but I have been putting off transporting my visions onto the screen - for some reason.
No more excuses not to lean into the curve now. Godspeed
