Hey guys, just thought I’d check in here. I’ve been using Blender 2.49 forever and it still feels like the go-to version. I honestly haven’t even looked into whether they’ve released anything new because everything I need is already here. The interface is comfortable, my shortcuts work, and I can crank out a render whenever I want, so I don’t really see the point in switching.
Sometimes I wonder if people are still waiting for a “next version” to drop, but honestly I’m not in a rush. 2.49 gets the job done and I don’t feel like relearning everything from scratch just for a couple new buttons or whatever. I’m pretty happy just sticking with what I know. What do you guys think about this?
The vast majority have moved on, the oldest Blender versions that are commonly used now last I checked is Blender 3.x.
There was, many years ago, a proposed fork of Blender that would be based on the 2.49 source and go in a different direction that does not get rid of all of the legacy features, but it never got very far.
The earliest I go is Blender 2.93 and even then rarely. I use RenderMan quite frequently and Pixar updates a lot, as well as try to keep up to date with DCC’s, so I too have to update on a frequent basis. Right now I am using 4.2.12.
Thing is with Blender 2.49 there was so much changed after that, and I understand if it gets the job done why upgrade but wow that is a LONG time, to not upgrade. Not even to Blender 2.79? What exactly are you doing in 2.49 that you can’t do in later versions?
That’s like a few of the systems at my job still running WinXP, thankfully they are not connected to any network.
if it suits you needs… be happy… i guess for modeling mainly ??
I do hava e 2.49 version installed on my linux… because i have some very old files… so occasionally i fire it up… because sometimes there is something not loadable in 2.79 (which i do have also installed)… or it seem to be different and so i check. But this get’s rarer and rared… and i might not instal it anymore on my newer machine.
And then the newer versions have so many things… some i didn’t even tried very deeply… and also just learnt something a couple of days ago which is sooooo helpfull… but i never knew…
Also i do use some keyboard shortcuts even if there are some “fancy” new gadgets (for some years now…)
I haven’t used a version of Blender that old in ages. 2.46 was the first version I actually knew how to use. I have really good memories with it. Sometimes I want to download it again just to see if I can still make something cool. If you don’t see a reason to upgrade, I think that’s perfectly fine
Indeed, that does not make sense to be happy of render time of 2.49’s Blender Internal engine ; when there are EEVEE and Cycles available in recent releases.
That does not make sense not to be curious about Grease Pencil animation abilities, Sculpting improvements ( brushes and performance ), fastest Modeling tools, Ngons or Geometry Nodes.
That does not make sense to avoid all improvements done in all fields, just for an horizontal layout of properties.
Me, neither.
But except the mesh, converted to Bmesh, probably everything else is lost.
Not same UI, not same render engine or material management, not same animation system…
2.93 user here, occasionally using 3.3.1 just because some of the assets I need to append into my scene were made in > 3.x versions, so they won’t append into the earlier ones.
As for your main question: if it works for you — use it. I’m still using 2.93 in most cases and I feel pretty comfortable with it regardless of what anybody says.
Yeah maybe, not sure. It was about the RNA structure used in blendfiles, but if converters to upgrade outdated structures arent present in the loader then large parts will likely be skipped, yeah.
But its not that much of a realistic scenario to read from a 1.0 file today.
I use a combination of Blender 4.5.2, Blender 4.3.2, and Blender 3.0.1 . 4.5.2 is my main version but I have some ongoing projects that I am using 4.3.2 for so I want to finish them before I fully switch to 4.5.2. I use 3.0 for some old plugins that no longer work with newer versions.
Kinda mindblowing to me knowing that the representation of most of the stuff in this file changed. Like meshes are layed out completely differently nowadays.
I can comprehend that you could avoid recent releases, because of frequent compatibility changes. That is overwhelming.
That is ridiculous for 4.x series. Compatibility changes in each release of the series.
Because its purpose was to accumulate them before release of Blender 5.0 to be able to do the big jump. Blender 5.0 will have a lot of them, too. Some will probably be inevitable in following releases. But at some point of 5.x or 6.x series, a stability should be reached. And a new era of compatibility, similar to 2.6/2.7series or 2.3/2.4 series should begin.
3.3 is an LTS that had its support stopped last year. You probably should use 3.3.21 instead of 3.3.1.
That is a 1-3 years gap, between 3.3 and the most recent release.
The same gap between 2.93 and 3.3 was already an issue for you.
That is not comparable to a 15 years gap.
An human should have the curiosity about what he can benefit from improvements of the free software, he is using.
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