Excuse the noobish queston I am about to ask. If u want to download Blender 2.8, there is a Blender 2.8 and then a Blender 2.8 new compiler version. Whats the difference between the two? Is one more stable than the other, less likely to crash? Has more features? For the benefit of those who might want to try it out and are new to Blender. Which is the best to download or they are both the same?
In terms of functions, unless there is a bug, Blender is functionally identical on either version.
New compiler means it was compiled using a newer version of Visual Studio. There are some internal compiler optimizations in the newer version which is meant to reflect an increased performance, but today there’s nothing that indicates that it even affects the end-user. At least not anymore.
Does anyone know why the Windows builds are lagging behind? They’ve not been updated since 12th June.
Also - is there an absolute idiot’s guide to compiling Blender (for Windows) anywhere?
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I guess you know about the Wiki article?
If yes, you might also be interested in this guide, although it’s worth pointing out that step 8 and 9 are not the officially recommended way (that is to run “make full” in the source folder as described in the wiki). Also, if you go the Visual Studio GUI route, make sure to build the “INSTALL” target, not the “blender” target. Mixing that up is the source of probably like 80% of all “why doesn’t my Windows build work” questions.
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Cheers. I was looking at https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Main_Page and the Windows link goes to the Mac page for some reason.
I shall certainly look into that. Thanks again.