Maybe the Blender conference will unveil something exciting.
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I’ve been very meh on Blender updates since 3.12. Sometimes it’s starting to feel like they’re going down the “Windows/Word” path of updating/changing things not because it’s necessary, or even better, but just to be able to say they did it.
Some of the new feature are cool, and I always download the new full release and check it out, but so far I keep reverting back to 3.12 for my personal work. I do tend to keep the newest release around for checking out other people’s files.
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Personally, I don’t agree with that.
When it comes to the breaking changes, that’s pretty much by definition what 4.0 is for. They have been holding back a lot of breaking changes for 4.0 and now is the time for that.
That’s likely the “break things” part. Where is the “move fast” part in your view? Maybe I am just misunderstanding what you mean entirely.
There are a few parts where I am a little bit suspicious, where I got the impression that it was introduced because it is 4.0, but didn’t feel it was good enough or conceptually mature enough. But that was early on during 4.0 and I haven’t closely followed those topics to know whether they are even there anymore or if they were further developed or maybe I just didn’t properly understand the concepts behind them. But to be clear, I would call those minor in the overall picture.
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Out of curiosity, do you have examples for that?
Light linking is better than… no light linking
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I don’t feel that’s the attitude, at least not in the sense of “who cares, let’s just willy-nilly break things just to be going fast”. But one reason I am excited (minus the !!!; I’m rarely THAT excited) is that the BF isn’t afraid of moving decisively even if in the process they will be – inevitably – breaking things. It’s good for the code’s longevity, and so I always think that bodes well for the future, and I think it’s great both for developers (for getting feedback) and for adventurous users (to try out new stuff early and give feedback on it).
That said, I never use the most recent release for what I consider my “production” release, the version I work in most; I always wait until at least one major bug release has followed. In this case I might wait longer. I am also worried about it breaking add-ons I rely on. But if my computer can handle it, I’ll use 4.0 to try out what’s new. I use all portable releases anyway so I can reproduce problems people have in the support category, so this isn’t a big deal.
I’m most looking forward to the fractal Voronoi and the principled BSDF changes (and yay, AgX). If I did geonodes, the loops would have me possibly dancing.
I’m with you regarding tutorials, and I don’t think you overestimate those problems. The best teachers for beginners are not usually at the bleeding edge, because it takes time to develop a new series, and new users often don’t realize that the release a tutorial about basics is made under doesn’t really matter all that much. So it’ll be a confusing time for beginners, and that’ll continue because some of the major changes have been delayed.
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hmm… given that this will confuse new users, mebbe a thread in tutorials here on BA along the lines of
you do this in 3.x, if you’re using 4.x do this instead …
for the common questions we’ll probably see from new users using older tutorials?
(also at joseph, but since i know he’s reading this, not gonna ‘at’ him. 
)
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I still feel like this release should really be a 3.9 version. Like others have mentioned I’m way more excited about 4.1 and judging by the video topics on YouTube, 4.1 is receiving a lot of buzz and it’s growing.
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I am a little concerned with how quickly the releases seem to be coming, especially since I purchase and use a lot of addons. I always have to wait for addons to catch up when there’s compatibility issues; it used to feel like less of a problem, but it seems like the releases are going so fast now and with less robust and complete features.
I’d appreciate a little more space between them, with a little more completeness or robustness of features in each iteration to justify a new install and adjustment of methods and tools, and a little more breathing room for addon development and use of each iteration, etc.
I would certainly resent it if every time I needed to work in AutoCAD or Solidworks or Photoshop I had to think about file conversions, deprecation of (even recent) features, etc. I’m not sure the breakneck pace is something most developers or users have the capacity for? I certainly don’t.
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I’m sure Youtubers are drooling at the idea of new tutorial content. I’m sure anybody who pays even tiny bit of attention to Blender online will be made aware of those changes and new ways very quickly.
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I’ve tested 3-5 different builds of 4.X on my desktop in the past few days, so it’s not easy to categorize my 4.X thoughts in ways that are “feature done” and “feature in development”. I may have an observation that’s factually wrong, as there may be a particular build that XYZ actually works in, but I didn’t test a particular thing in XYZ. So having said that:
I initially voted “neutral” this morning, but 2 hours I’m changing to NO.
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The BSDF v2 shader appears broken; it does not match a diffuse/emission shader I’m using in 3.6. This means I may have a lot of materials to rebuild, yay?
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Bone Collections: Haven’t tried them in the beta yet. I’m optimistic they’ll be a good thing, as I think the old bone layers interface is … I don’t like it. I have issues with Collections; sometimes they’re fine, other times they are used as an “everything solution” and it’s not fine. I hope this time it’s a good thing.
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EDIT, updating above: So apparently bone collections aren’t collections. So far, the feature itself seems nice. Using the name “collections” for this feature was a probably not a good choice.
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Addons breaking: I understand why, but I’m not going to use 4.0 without all the tools I need. So until the ones I rely on daily are 100% compatible, that’s a NO. I’m not going to work in 2 different versions of Blender and try to manage things that need to be quarantined.
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GeoNodes REPEAT ZONE: Yeah, that one looks awesome.
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Cycles updates: Dont’ care at all, I don’t use Cycles.
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Lots of UI changes, including the timeline/dopesheet - most of those look like a good idea. Much better snapping.
Overall - right now, I’m not that excited about 4.0 because I just don’t know how much is NOT going to break… so it’s going to require a lot of time on my part to test lots of things individually, before I commit to replacing 3.6.
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For features that look to be be more or less finished, the pose library switching to the asset browser is my big one. The asset browser version is clunkier, and the extra options it offers just aren’t worth the extra hassle (IMO), and I gave it weeks to “get used to the new way”. But mostly I was referring to new features being announced/added, then removed, then put back in, but maybe it’s different now. Like was done with some of the geometry nodes a few times back in their early days. I like my software, no matter what that software is, to release new features when they’re ready to be released, even if that means waiting longer to get it, not learning how to work with one version, then having to relearn it because a better/newer/cooler/whateverer version was coded in the next release.
And this is a partially separate issue, but I use a few addons/geonode setups that are always at risk of breaking with new updates, especially the ones that look like they’re changing basic features, like I see the BSDF mentioned a few times. I have over a hundred characters at this point that I have to rework every time something is changed that breaks a feature I use, and that’s a massive time commitment that I prefer to avoid.
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Thanks for the reply.
I don’t agree, because all the mentioned changes were well justified in my view. But I understand your point of view.
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I wish I could pick and choose new features- a lot I want, a lot I don’t, ultimately I’ll probably stick with 3.6 for a while. I’m really excited for 5.0 and the 2025 Animation Project; that might be my next major upgrade, but we’ll see
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That about sums it up. 
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Could you give examples of what you mean by less robust and [less] complete features? That’s very different from my experience, but I obviously don’t use every feature in Blender 
Only couple of big features are being mentioned here, I’ll mention others ones I’m excited about.
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Node Tools are phenomenal feature in the making. The whole approach of Blender to change the add-on culture with Asset culture is welcomed one for me. Design-wise that means devs can only work on as they call it atomic features, and for asset creators it means that if you use nodes instead of python you almost never have to worry about your products breaking or needing updates, since if they break something in nodes they do backwards compartibility. Less reliance on addons also means faster Blender. I see people having dozens of addons loading on every start of Blender that just import node groups in scene and let you change modifier parameters from UI. That is terrible culture and kinda scam from some people. More popular node assets become more likely this culture will die.
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Snapping is so much better now. With icons, base points, ability to mix modes and some new toggles. Also ability to navigate while transforming isn’t too bad either.
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I’m very curious to see how Kuwahara filter node in compositor gets used in NPR works. I’m not familiar with it yet, but I see some work on twitter and can’t wait to implement it in my renders. Also almost every node is now supported in VIewport compositor. Not only is that cool itself, but that means they’ll now start working on supporting render passes and make it 100% ready in next release or two.
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Graph Editor saw whole bunch of blending operators added. Basically they recreated every operator from AnimAide add-on natively into Blender. They’re very useful for animation, especially for motion graphics and mocap cleaning. But blending with neighbours and such simple tasks are now much easier, and you also have more options about how you choose to ease between keyframes. F-curve drawing and playback got incredibly faster in Graph Editor as well.
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It’s kinda small but bevel weight and crease are now generic attributes. That means we can create modifiers that will allow us to simply change bevel weight or crease on edges and apply effect there. It sounds small enough, but it’s making selection in Geonodes soooo much easier, and gives custom modifiers more creative freedom.
As for this fear that you can’t trust Blender because they’ll change the feature, come on, it happened just once with Geometry Nodes, how long are we gonna use that boogyman?
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I don’t know if it was you, but I remember post on this forum that new pose library was not good enough to replace old one, and one of the reasons was that it was now difficult to tell poses apart. And example was that in older version you could save poses like that:
---------- HANDS ----------
- first_clutch
- middle_finger
- wave
---------- LEGS ----------- step walk
- step run
It was mindblowing for me. New asset browsers literally has categories, filters, searchable tags, THUMBNAILS, and somehow people agreed that separating text items in list with -------s was better UI.
I always remember that post when people start complaining about something being upgraded
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I think new principled bsdf, Agx, light linking, panels on nodes and new voronoi are the things I like the most, the three first are the bigger changes, but is not as exciting as 2.8 was when it came, which was around the time I was starting doing 3D as well, but the new UI and eevee were a pretty BIG deal back then
Yeah, if only eevee next would come for me, then it would feel as big as 2.8 once again, with the addition of the viewport compositor that has come this few past relases, it made me wanna use the compositor for once!
New users will see they have another option as default which the tutorial doesn’t have and if they’re curious enough google what is this new thing called Agx.
Most tutorials will be fine, since 2.81/2 days blender has been kept pretty stable in terms of old features changing.
EDIT: Also snapping is one of those useful features that you use a lot which aren’t very shiny but are very useful, also repeat zone in geonodes, but I’m always lagging behind in that area, I always have to wait to see tutorials and have an “aha” moment
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Yeah, 4.0/4.1 is a big animation push for Blender and a very welcome one. I know it seems like everyone is a sculptor here in this forum but us animators are finally getting animation 2020 promised back in 2017. Bone collections EEVEE Next for viewport while animating and the other things mentioned above already!
This is not a flame and I’ll even leave the name out, but lately having to use that other animation DCC for work makes me dread it. Sizing of windows, switching of windows, proper HOTKEYS to mouse slide for trans and rotation on an axis (I dont want to have to move a gizmo to rotate something). The play hotkey (spacebar) being the EVERY industry standard and even more so the same key in the graph editor as it is in the dope sheet (why are they different in that other DCC?) all make me love animation work with Blender comparatively.
So happy for the animation push.
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