15 April 2019

Homestretch Workshop

Last week was the Homestretch workshop in Amsterdam, where the main Blender 2.8 developers gathered. More reports from this will come out on code.blender.org.

The 2.80 release plan and timeline has been posted, aiming for the final release in July. The bugs and todo tasks on that we require to be fixed for this release have been marked as high priority in the tracker.

A number of user interface design decisions were made as well, those can be found in the tasks on developer.blender.org.

New Features and Changes

  • A new Industry Compatible keymap was added, based on typical shortcuts in other 3D apps. For those familiar with other software or who want similar shortcuts when working in multiple applications. (task) (William Reynish)

  • Transform gizmos can now be enabled in the 3D viewport independent of active tools, from a popover menu in the header. The same popover also has controls for display of other gizmos. The Transform tool was removed as it is now redundant. (Campbell Barton)

  • The material preview was updated to work with Eevee and has new shader ball, cloth and liquid shapes. The shape is now also used for the link/append preview, so that for example hair materials can be displayed on hair. (commit) (William Reynish, Brecht Van Lommel)

  • Bendy bones improved deformation quality. (commit) (Alexander Gavrilov, Sam)

  • Grease pencil (Antonio Vazquez)
    • Opacity of control points can now be interactively modified in edit mode with Shift+F.
    • Layers in the dopesheet can now have a custom color, similar to bones.
    • Improved drawing performance in big files.
  • The text editor now has a footer, showing the file name. (George Vogiatzis)
  • The file browser now remembers the last display mode. (Sharan Ranjit)
  • Nodes UI: match collapsed and uncollapsed nodes width. (patch) (Robert Guetzkow)

Development

Weekly Reports

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