I’m just curious what people’s thoughts are on this new pace of development where we have 2.8 just released a couple months ago, we’re a month away from 2.81 and now 2.82 is already in alpha stage. I mean of course its good if these releases are stable and ready but i’m still getting a lot of crashes in 2.8(and can’t really pin down a specific thing) and hearing the same from others.
I’m just wondering if the developers and users need more time in the bug fixing stage to get to a stable and solid release.
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From my point of view I think that 2.81 is the 2.80 version fixed with something in addition. Consequently the 2.82 will have the same modus operandi.
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True, using 2.81 I have less crushes
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Hi, they change the release cycle, we are now on Bcon3 for 4 weeks and only small changes and bug fixing happen, then first Blender 2.81 Release Candidates start.
Before adding new features are on hold until release, now developer can add new features to master (2.82), user can test in daily builds and so forth.
I like it much more now.
Cheers, mib
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@Massivetree https://code.blender.org/2019/10/blender-release-cycle/
maybe this can help you and others to understand
AFAIK Blender 2.8 was named until first beta of Blender 2.80 was made public, so from past August no make sense to write Blender 2.8, it make more sense write 2.80(stable), 2.81beta or 2.82alpha
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Ok…
But I’ve just never heard of a situation in the other software I use where they say, don’t use the current version in production, use the beta version!
Exactly what version of Blender is considered to be production ready? I’m not interested in going back to version 2.79 as I started on version 2.8 specifically for the improvements it brought.
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Hard to not agree with Massivetree here.
Right now 2.79 is without doubt well more “production ready” than 2.8 is.
That’s pretty natural, since 2.79 has been in the hands of users for a very long time, which means more issues found and fixed, which translates into a very good reliablility in production.
My feeling is (I may be wrong, of course) that 2.8 release has been rushed a little bit due to upcoming Siggraph.
There are still things I miss a lot in 2.8, considering 2.79. The very first is OpenSubd speed. We’ve lost GPU support for those, and that’s not so good, since on my system I could have several subdivided characters on screen and still get an amazing frame rate. I’d love to have OpenSubd GPU support back in 2.8 as soon as possible.
Right now we have 2.8 which is not stable, a 2.81 in beta (which means not stable as well) and a 2.82 in alpha (which means…well, you know what!).
I can’t wait for the next Open Movie Animation project to start, since that’s for sure the best way to make a software stable and production ready.
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Blender 2.80 stable (eightY, not dot eight) today is the only Blender production ready. Blender 2.81 is not production ready yet, but it is usable for not critical project or for test new features. reminder: most file saved with 2.81 should have errors/problems to be re-open in 2.80 (stable). next 14th november 2.81 will be released as stable version
You make this all sound alot more complicated than it is.
2.80 has been released a couple of months ago and since then the developers have been working on Blender. This not only includes new features, but also fixes and improvements.
Blender 2.81 is therefore likely to be more stable, but also - since it’s beta - there may be some new bugs that have been introduced and not fixed yet.
There are two workflows that arise from this: Either stay on stable and live with the known bugs. Or use daily builds, and get the newest features and fixes, but live with the risk that there is some obvious bug in today’s release. (Therefore I would recommend you to have multiple daily builds around)
I prefer the latter, since there are rarely regressions with Blender and the new features like the improved nodes are really important to me
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Ok but again, this just flies in the face of convention.
Everyone knew that using 2.8 while it was in beta was to be at your own risk since changes were coming daily and could cause instability. The whole reason to use 2.8 once it was released was to have a stabilized version that could be used in production. of course no software is without bugs but I find 2.8 to be more unstable than maybe it should be.
What you’re saying is that people using 2.79 should have been using the beta of 2.8 since it would have fixes and improvements but no one was saying that. Why now?
Usually, the official releases of Blender are very stable. The 2.80 release was a huge update and it is quality wise clearly worse than many of the previous releases. As the developers are aware of that, they are focusing more on stability (and even feature completion) than it is usually necessary.
It is reasonable to assume that we are going to get continuous improvements in the coming versions. That’s why 2.8x users are in the unfortunate situation that it is sometimes better to use e.g. daily builds rather than official releases. Thanks to the openness of Blender, we have this opportunity.
But no matter what is going on during the development, you also have a responsibility as user. You can never blindly use the newest versions just for the sake of it. If you have specific requirements, it is your responsibility to make sure those are met in the version you are aiming for!
To make it very clear: If you switched to Blender 2.8x and you are facing unacceptable issues which did not exist in 2.79, you switched too early! What you should have done is to test your use cases in 2.80 and report issues and show stoppers and switch once it is good enough for you.
Having followed the blender 2.8x developing almost daily from the beginning I can say this:
Blender 2.80 is mostly crash free, but not ready production for more sophisticated projects.
Blender 2.81 many clear steps forward have been made, when the release comes out, you can venture a bit more challenging projects …
But I believe that the real production ready portal for large projects will probably be Blender 2.82 when known performance limitations from architectural structure will be fixed.
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@DeepBlender
I trust they’re working to improve the issues in 2.8, and I’m understanding of this. My intention was not to complain, but merely to make an observation that I’m still seeing a high number of crashes within the final 2.8 version.
And yes, of course the user has responsibility. But I never used 2.79, I’m a relatively new Blender user who only came to Blender because of the improvements in 2.8 so going back to version 2.79 is not really an option I can consider. I tried 2.79 before using the Blender 2.8 beta and can say it never really suited my tastes so its why I wanted to hear from other users. So its not a case of me switching too early when I never switched from 2.79.
Did you make sure all those crash bugs are properly reported?
So far I’ve been unable to pinpoint any one thing that is causing the crashes. I would love to find something repeatable I could point to.
@Massivetree
Sorry to hear your having so many issues but stick with it. I’m not sure what your use case is or why you’re having the issues you are but all I can say is that it is working well for me. I am currently using it on a production with somewhat demanding technical requirements ( 4k Anamorphic footage). So far so good.
I was forced to switch from Maya for somewhat similar reasons… tons of crashes and glitchy ui bugs on both linux and windows 
I’m just mentioning this because I empathize with you.
Do you get a crash.txt file when it happens (check the console window where you start blender). That can give some indication what is going wrong. Could be you’re seeing a GPU/driver related issue, which is where a lot changed in 2.80
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thanks for the comment, Paul. I will check it on future crashes.
I’m not sure where you got that from. The idea is that you use the latest official release, currently 2.80. But if you run into bugs that have been already fixed since 2.80 came out you could use the beta of 2.81.
The beta is is where the stabilizing work is done that will result in final 2.81 sometime mid-November. While the devs are working on 2.81 stabilization those who don’t have bugs assigned are free to work on new stuff in the master branch, which is what will result in 2.82 eventually. Since that is potentially unstable that is marked with the alpha bit. This is why in development there are now two version numbers available.
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This release cycle was a standart thing for blender since 2.6 version. And it was that way for all major upgrades. When they first release 2.5 it was very buggy and unstable. And users had to wait until version 2.5x to get consistent blender. They’ve stopped this release cycle due to major upgrade from 2.79 to 2.8 which took whole rewrite of the core. And now that they are back on track, relese cycles with 5-6 versions per year is common thing. with each new version you get old bugs fixed, and new features and possibly bugs introduced, with a hope they would be fixed on next release 
For me using daylis in production is not a big problem.
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