Sorry for the newbie question. Most software auto-updates these days, but Blender doesn’t unless it’s the Steam version. I haven’t checked to see if Steam does the beta Blender stuff, but when I was using that instead of the stand-alone install it was still on 2.79.
So, I guess I uninstall and reinstall Blender whenever significant new updates to 2.8 are released? I’m just an end-user and I’m not in on the developer chatter, so I was wondering where the best place was to find out that, yes, the download package is new and this is a good week to update my installation of Blender?
It’s always a good idea to keep Blender 2.8 updated because every day there are new fixes and sometimes even new features.
I think the easiest way to update (if you’re using Windows) is to use the (unofficial) Blender Updater app.
It downloads the latest Blender ZIP from the Buildbot and unpacks it to a location of your choice. No need to uninstall first because Blender runs from a single directory and doesn’t install any services or changes the registry (or needs a license server ).
Super easy.
P.S.: I think it was kind of “wrong” to call Blender 2.80 a “Beta release” because many people think that this is the one and only beta… and they wait for the next beta until the final is released. This is how it works with most other applications.
In the case of Blender 2.80 it’s kind of a rolling release. There’s a new build every day but the download page isn’t updated. So maybe there are people who downloaded the very first beta (when it was announced a few weeks ago) and are disappointed because something doesn’t work and uninstall it again. Maybe there should be a hint at the download page and / or the splash screen that reminds you to always update to the latest version.
Outstanding! Thank you very much Steffen, this looks like it will be of great help.
Yes - software releases don’t seem to mean what they used to mean 20 years ago. Take most modern video games for example. No one expects a game released on Steam today to be a final version without updates or even major modifications. It’s not like when we went out and bought Nintendo cartridges in the 1980s.
I’m personally against downloading the updates daily unless actively involved in bug squashing. That ~120mb download is over 3 gigs of bandwidth per month… per person… for probably hundreds if not thousands of people that DO download it daily. Somebody has to pay for all that bandwidth. I’d prefer more of it go to the developers.
And I don’t mean to come off as shaming anyone for doing so. It’s not like there’s a written rule, so no judgements here. It’s just a personal choice to minimize my own footprint.
Ah! I see where you’re coming from egCody. In my case, it would probably be once every couple of weeks. I think that Blender 2.79 is the most unintuitive graphics program I’ve ever used. 2.80 seems really nice so far and while I like to keep up with things, no one needs me to be on the bleeding-edge. I wouldn’t even have upgraded from 2.79 to 2.80 except for the fact that the UI underwent revolutionary changes.
Blender doesn’t need to be installed. You can just download the daily build and unzip it onto the desktop. Next day you just delete the folder and re-download the next version. You should be running the most recent version of 2.80; the need to constantly update is just the reality of using a piece of software at this phase of its development.
I build from source and once it’s setup it’s just two commands to update and rebuild.
I can almost guarantee that you know more about things like this than I do. Non-developers like me usually install software that’s already compiled, rather than compiling it ourselves. Obviously that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth me learning about, and I’m not trying to be dismissive of you.
Steffan’s link was perfect - the BlenderUpdater utility works very well for me. Thank you all for replying.
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