How are we feeling about Blender 4.0?

With Blender 4.0 on the very near horizon, I’m curious about how it’s going to be received. I’ll add my opinion in a reply, so as not to bias these polls :slight_smile:

Are you excited about Blender 4.0?
  • Yes!!!
  • Yes
  • Neutral
  • No
  • No!!!

0 voters

When Blender 4.0 is officially released, what version are you going to use?
  • Blender 3.6 LTS
  • Blender 4.0

0 voters

5 Likes

Please vote before reading replies to keep that data pure!

That aside, I personally think Blender 4.0 is shaping up to be a disaster- tons of massively breaking changes, entirely new paradigms, and half-finished new features. I think it’s going to be very off-putting to new users, because no existing tutorials will be compatible with it, and I think the download and usage numbers are going to be historically low for 4.0.

Don’t get me wrong, the new features are awesome conceptually, but the attitude of “move fast and break things” isn’t, IMO, going to work out well

10 Likes

My computer is too potato like to run 4.0 lately, so I will have to spend around 800 quid to use it… :frowning:

3 Likes

That has been the attitude with every Blender feature, but hasn’t affected downloads yet. New Curves type is still half finished. When first released it didn’t even have Edit Mode, but that didn’t stop people from getting excited about it. Node Tools will be same. I’d rather have it at limited capacity and start getting used to it now, then wait until its 100% ready and swallow whole bunch of information at once.

As for the tutorials, Bone Collections yes, and maybe some sculpt shortcuts will not be the same, but what else did change that would break tutorials? Nothing specific comes to mind.

With Eevee and GP3 postponed there isn’t actually that many breaking changes. Renders will look different because of Principled V2, but that’s about it I think. Lot of addons will be broken, that is only worrying part, but nothing we can’t survive with a little help.

I am most excited about UI changes. So many little tweaks that save me countless time already. It feels ancient to open 3.6 now, and not have canvas in the header, highlighted enums, panels in Principled, etc.

19 Likes

You might be underestimating the amount of tutorials and the speed these creators have at making tutorials for Blender users, especially for beginners :sweat_smile:.
I don’t think this will be a problem. There’s probably already tutorials for 4.0 right now.

And the AgX colorspace as a default. New users might watch past tutorials and hear them say that Filmic is the most physically accurate colorspace in Blender and take it at face value without knowing why Agx is better and more accurate.

I hope they don’t do another geometry node fields thing, where they change how it works in the next update. I’m glad I didn’t get used to it in the beginning and started experimenting after they change it.

5 Likes

It feels like “3.7” tbh…
But hey, it’s not a big deal for me, I’m always on the latest alpha… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

6 Likes

uhm…actually i am already using Blender 4.1 alpha :wink:

12 Likes

i’m mainly looking forward to the repeat zones this go around. i’m sure there’ll be other stuff i’ll like, once they stabilize. i’ll keep the latest 3.x LTS around as well, just in case, but am hoping i won’t need to revert to it (i don’t do anything ‘professional,’ so things that don’t work the same won’t affect me as it will some)

3 Likes

I am allways a fan of breaking releases because it gives developers the chance to get rid of old baggage.

12 Likes

Which version am I going to use? I’m already on 4.1! :wink:

3 Likes

I voted Yes!!!
Light linking, the new voronoi and noise, the new principled shader, Agx, Panels for node groups (just need to get them on the main madifier inputs for GN)

I am biased I have been using 4.0 since alpha.

4.1 :rofl: you need to add that choice so I did not vote :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

3 Likes

oohh… forgotted about the fractal voronoi … that’ll be quite useful as well. but i want MOAR noise! all the noizes!! :smiley:

5 Likes

OHHH just read that bit.

I do not think the attitude is

They are making breaking changes to accommodate new awesome features and optimizations for the the future.
You can use 3.6 as an export to the older versions.

Vulkan?
Cycles spectral render?

The future is golden.

Have faith!

5 Likes

They are great for crashing. :rofl: (you just have to be careful what you repeat and how many iterations).

My only gripe is the “search” thing, that they already half reverted, instead of just type it is now space bar and type. For me fine but I would love the dedicated search box back, they could keep the space-bar short cut too.

Edit
Now gone back to just type!

3 Likes

oh, i’m sure i’ll have my cases of runaway loops. :smiley:

and yeah, i’ll miss the search box too, but since i’m still really a ‘noob’ with blender, i’m sure i’ll adjust. for you peeps who have been on Blender for a long time though, i feel you. :slight_smile:

I don’t think it was always there
:thinking:

For the most part I feel that 4.0 is just a stepping stone to 4.1 or 4.2 that I’ll really want.

While at the same time, I have some fears, that even tho 4.0 is missing a number of the big main update features, there’s a chance it could break a hell of a lot of stuff, Rigify being one of my first concerns.

I’m actually starting to think it maybe safer/wiser to grab the portable version on final release first and test a few things out before doing a full update replacement.

5 Likes

That should be least of your worries. Not only did they already updated Rigify, but it’s officially supported addon, that means you can report bugs on it to animation module and they’ll fix it like regular blender bugs.

3 Likes

O, I’m sure its been updated and working from a ‘new’ state. My worry is what happens when you open up an existing file with a full Rigify setup, some custom additions, etc using the system and the like.

Yes, one of the main reasons I picked that and not some other rigging tool, so hopefully it will be fully tested before final release or quickly bug fixed if need be.

1 Like

I’m kinda positive, but that’s my feeling with the changes over time in general. I really wish they delayed 4.0 to make it more relevant (with EEVEE Next at least), and have a big launch like 2.8, but they seem adamant on the idea that release numbers are irrelevant. :man_shrugging:

I’m far from a professional user, so most changes don’t affect me much. But I understand that some breaking ones can be a pain.

Light linking seems interesting, with a not so intuitive setup (something many things in Blender have, in my opinion). The new BSDF might take a while to get used to, but seems nice and better.

Viewport/realtime compositor is nice, never wrapped my head around the normal workflow (but that’s mostly my fault). I know it’s already in 3.5/3.6, but the evolution is good. Having a kind of “what you see is what you get” feels like a good idea for beginners and intermediate users, even if it’s not as powerful as a proper compositor.

Asset management/browser still feels cumbersome. Maybe I need to try it further, in more complex scenes. Linking/appending is another thing that I feel it’s not as intuitive as it could be.

Not too sold in the idea of making too many things node based, but I’m waiting to see where things go.

The animation changes feels like they will be more impactful in the long term, that’s an area where I see many people getting a bit lost with the new changes.

6 Likes