Huge issue: Community split between 2.7 and 2.8

Archive User Feedback
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I’ve been talking with a lot of Blender users and I see a common pattern. Most can’t use blender 2.8 because it has changed too drastically. I think blender 2.8 needs to be more a like a transition to a new workflow. The Blender 2.7 workflow should be available + the new features. As in there should be an blender 2.7 interface/workflow and the 2.8 interface/workflow. Some examples: Collections are great but they do not work like layers. For those accustomed to working with layers they are too confusing. I personally would like it better like in photoshop/animate where you have both “Collections” and an infinite amount of layers. Then there is the new “n” toolbar, it looks slimmer and maybe is easier for beginners but it sucks compared to the old one. The old one had much more functionality, esp. when using custom brushes/tools. Now we have to use “active tool” which takes much longer then pressing “t”. There are much more issues but I’m going to limit myself to those 2.

What I’m trying to say is features need to be added instead of replaced. If this isn’t done blender will suffer from a community split where people will stay with blender 2.7. If it’s about making blender easier to use just make a beginner ui/theme that way old school blender users can work the way they are accustomed to and beginners have a less confusing way to get into blender and have the option to switch to the more detailed ui/theme later.

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I agreed with the quote above. It can help them learn much faster than before. Of course, Blender 2.79 is quite complicated and it is still difficult for beginners to learn a lot of things. One of my friends has some trouble with Blender. It is a good idea to have an option where a beginner can start with a simple Blender (starting with modelling or other subjects). Even experts can do this way as well. Just to practice to gain enough experiences then they can move to an advanced blender where they can do so much more. It is never a good idea to keep things so complicated. So Keep thing so simple making it easier to understand and will make one person motivated to learn more. A complication can kill motivation and that can make a person give up and move on.

For now. I would like to hear other users in here to see what they think of this “huge issue”?

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We’ve been talking a lot in chat and the main issue boils down to the ui and missing features. Other software has these flexible tabs that can be positioned and stacked freely. What blender needs is more ui flexibility without removing features. The only way I see blender working for both professionals and beginners is to have different ui layouts.

Another issue we noticed is that all old tutorials aren’t usable for beginners with 2.8 ui change anymore.

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not just different UI layouts… there’s also custom UI Layouts as well. for example, you can move tabs anywhere or in different orders you want.

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Why I’m staring use the blender ?

The top important reason is the 2.8 change to beautiful UI ( Make up by 2.79 , funny idea:joy:) . Other words, If the blender 2.8 continue to use 2.79 UI, I never use it , even I don’t want to take a look , looks like ugly girl. and even the most powerful function than other 3d software. but the function in 2.8 is not bad.

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I agree with you but we can’t have beauty only without functionality. Blender needs both a better looking less confusing ui but with the same functionality it always had. Otherwise we’ll have the “street fighter 2/3” syndrome where the community split in 2 because they replaced most of the original characters.

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Beautiful woman always catch your soul, in order to know her deep hearts. We are the human , we always use eyes to judge the things good or better before use it .

And the development always have a workflow. Usually is scrum iteration agile .
http://www.agilenutshell.com/scrum

Function is top priority. Because blender just have 10 devs. based on devs work, not like Apple around User Experience. Google , Microsoft, etc also based on developer work. not designer .

UI , UX is second priority.

Performance is 3rd.

I really understand much more complaints about blender . Do you ask yourself many more why question and try to find right answer ?

Right now, I think more is about workflow in blender . I’m not saying re-use the same workflow from other 3d software. I’m looking for the workflow of saving more time and higher quality than brunch of other software. the complete better workflow in blender 2.8x.

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IMO 2.8 UI is miles ahead of 2.79 the job that devs did is tremendous! By far it’s the sexiest UI in all 3d softwares as of date! That is the reason why I use it daily as of now compared to other packages. Sure it takes time to transition from 2.79(I started using blender from 2.79 all tuts watched for 2.79, yes it takes time to transition but it’s not that big of an effort, literally a week of practice and individual customization, it’s like that with every other 3d software transition), but I think people will appreciate new features and customization options in the long run. People generally don’t like mastering anything new and get out of their comfort zone, general mass is lazy and that’s okay, but if 3d is their bread and butter they WILL eventually transition and will objectively notice improvements and will appreciate the perspectives for further development and current improvements. 2.8 has way better viewport, hotkey customization options, more tools for modeling and the list goes on. I wont stop calling 2.79 fanatics luddites, I’m sorry, you can’t be fanatical about 2.79 without properly mastering what 2.80 is giving you and opportunities ahead. Just take the time to study all it’s functions once the stable version is out.

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What is confusing is that there is no more little squares to represent layers.
You have to display collections panel in sidebar or use outliner.
That 1,2,3, etc… keys are no more available to manage collections visibility, except in object mode.
People using them in edit mode may be frustrated by that.
But when you want to move an object to another collection, you use exactly same shortcut as in 2.79 to move an object to another layer.
This not complicated to understand. That should be easier for a blender user to use than for a newbie.
Amount of collections is infinite. There is no 2.79 way to represent that.

2.79 have to adapt or if they have smart ideas to share them.
Just complaining that is not the same will not solve their issue with this huge improvement that will not be abandoned.
Your remark about photoshop is not pertinent.
What is the interest to keep an artificial separation between layers and groups ?
Take a look at physics settings and render settings in 2.79 and 2.8. But merging both in 2.8, you get rid of lots doubling restriction to groups and layer sets.
If he wants to keep such separation, a user can name collections used layers with a layer_ prefix and collections used as a group with group_ prefix instead.
Here again, that is not complicated at all to deal with it.

There are problems with collections. Lack of work on nested collections and bugs about relinking.
Stable 2.80 was not released, yet. Documentation and Tutorials should not be spread before changes to outliner will be completed.
That is unfortunate that 2.80 release is scheduled before the end of GSOC about that crucial element of UI. That is a little bit ridiculous. People will make tutorials about 2.80 and then, outliner will have another figure in 2.81.

That is not true. Exactly, same panels are there.
We just lost tabs to separate slots/ brushes/ mode options. They were fused.
Some options are now hidden into sub-panels.
But exactly, same functionality is there.
You may think that UI sucks in Texture Paint mode. That is slow and is a waste of space to repeat same Brush panel settings everywhere (Topbar, sidebar, properties editor and right click menu).

But if you losts something, say it. That is not supposed to happen. You should be able to have same functionality in paint mode and sculpt mode in 2.80 than in 2.79.
Although UI is not the same ; if it is not the case : that is a bug, not a UI design choice.

In theory, there is no major replacement without big improvements.
Blender Internal is replaced by EEVEE. EEVEE is a big improvement.
Layers and Groups are replaced by Collections. That is a big improvement.
File organization is now relative to names of collections instead of little squares sets, hard to remember.

There are assumed removals like BGE one.
https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.80/Removed_Features

There is lost of baking to vertex color that is not mentioned under Release Notes.
But except this one, you should be able to do exact same thing in 2.80 than in 2.79.

If you know something that is missing from 2.79, say it. Even if developers have no time to include it in 2.80, it should be mentioned into 2.80 Release Notes.

Target of 2.80 is to clean-up UI to be able to add lots of new features in future 2.8 & 2.9 releases.
2.79 UI is crowded. You can’t add more things to that and keep space for addons.
Target of 2.80 is to make blender usable by using only a graphical tablet without keyboard.
That is not just an UI theme that would solve 2.79 UI issues.

And if they neglict topbar and use 2.7x keymap, 2.79 users to be able to work immediately in 2.80.
I am not saying that is easy to adapt to a new release that have equivalent of 3 or 4 Blender release improvements and changes.
But seriously, there was a huge work done to help 2.79 users to make transition.
And that will be continued when 2.80 will be released.
Then , UI discussion will continue after until 2.81, and after 2.81, and after 2.82… that is a never-ending story.

If you want to criticize choice that have been done ; of course, you can do it, now or later.
But try to be fair and explain precisely what is not working.
Because if you stay vague, there is no chance that your opinion would be taken into account, seriously.

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I do not want to go into details since the details aren’t the problem. I just gave some examples, even if you perceive them as to be not correct/detailed enough. The point I make is still valid. All I’m doing here is giving a fair warning from experience. Many companies have been doing this over and over: They replaced instead of added and they lost most of their user base. This is especially evident in the gaming industry. The earliest example of this would be street fighter 2/3 and a more recent example would be how AAA studios are now abandoning the PC market and developing for mobile. Expecting everyone to play on mobile. They are actively splitting off their PC player base, which is gonna move to other products now. !!! I do not want this to happen to blender!!! In some cases the replacements make sense but in general anything that is removed is gonna piss off someone. You will have people on both sides with good valid argumentation BUT if the transitions isn’t done right the community -->will split<–. In my opinion the change is too drastical, it needs to be slower. Hardcore blender 2.7 users need a way to transition slowly into 2.8. Not everybody is so flexible that they can throw away a workflow they have been polishing for years. All I’ve suggested is to have blenders 2.8 design/ui from the get go, no changes there, but have an option to revert back to 2.7 design/ui for those that need it. This is what windows did with pretty much every version since windows XP.

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I think you’re exaggerating and making a bigger deal out of it than it really is. It’s not that big of a transition for an experienced user and instruments for transition are there, you can always remap everything to your liking to get back to your old workflow, it will take literally couple of days of individualizing 2.8. Also your comparisons are way too dramatic and out of place. Arguably, I noticed that 2.8 development and further improvement roadmap through the years brought way more people back to using blender more often, especially disappointed users of other software packages and drastically expanded it’s user base. I don’t think there is a split you can always contribute to development with your suggestions and if they will prove to be objectively efficient and better then there’s a huge chance that someone will pick your ideas up and implement them.

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What I am trying to explain to you is that is not possible in the real world.
In most of cases, if design is not changed, additions of new improvements are not possible.

All changes that are possible without UI changes have been added to 2.7 branch.
So, users that can’t change their workflow right now, will be able to continue to use 2.79 and this branch during 1 or 2 years.

Nobody is forced to jump to 2.80 when it will be released. If they don’t like it, they could continue to ask for fixes that will happen in 2.81 or 2.82.
They can take all time they need to lean new stuff.
Blender Foundation is not forcing anybody to abandon 2.79, now.

They did all they could do to involve community into design choices. They opened this new forum. They communicated a lot with videos and pablo’s weekly livestream. They released 2 alpha, 1 beta and even after 2.80, discussion will continue to be open.
They redirected users of BGE to Godot or Armory with a new gltf exporter support.
Freestyle is still usable with EEVEE and Cycles.
You may not like using pie menus -> they can be disabled.
You may not like using nodes -> there are 3 principled shader to avoid making nodetrees.
And “everything nodes” project is not there, yet.

Although UI is different, most of time, almost identical workflow can be followed in 2 releases.
You can’t find new stuff closest to Blender 2.79 than Blender 2.80.

So basically, except the lost of baking to vertex paint, the lack of overrides, UDIM and other things that are planned to be restored or added in future releases, there is no serious reason to skip that release.

That would be stupid to leave this community without trying to do a little bit of effort to test 2.8 design and understand it by following some future tutorials that will flourish after 2.80 release.

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Updating the whole UI and base functionality of a Software and then offering an option to use the old UI and workflow, while also having to support two different workflows for every feature in the future. Great idea, I can’t imagine how that could go wrong.

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I’ve never seen a complete overhaul in any professional software that didn’t backfire when things were disregarded. There is one schematic that every professional software uses and that is an flexible ui. If the UI isn’t flexible then even if blender 2.8 changes its UI it’s not going to have the wanted effect of generating more users. I don’t know one professional software that doesn’t have moveable tabs. I’m not a blender pro, I do gamedev and thus have to use many different programs but by doing so I can compare well. Maybe it’s not as bad as I think it is but from my perspective as an advanced blender beginner it looks bad. I like blender 2.8s new features but I do not like how I have to use it and I always hated how blender forced me to use it’s static clunky UI. An UI overhaul without adding flexibility is useless. You do not have to teach me how to do everything correctly in blender 2.8 I’m just talking about perspective here. I’m currently using blender 2.7 and 2.8 at the same time.
I’m not using the “t” toolbar in 2.8 at all and the “n” toolbar with its tabs is horrible to use. If I could drag & drop the tabs this would be different but I can’t. Blender 2.8 is even more static than blender 2.7 was. I also get the impression that blender is gonna keep its static use of tabs. Which I see as a huge problem. There are 2 reasons I do not use the “n” toolbar the symbols all look the same (esp. the sculpting brushes), it’s hard to distinguish between them. + I can’t add my custom tools/brushes in there. Next thing I’ve noticed since I’m learning animation and there aren’t many advanced tutorials esp. for rigs: The tutorials that exist use the layers, they split everything like meshes, bones, “those selfmade tools to move everything” etc. onto those layers and the workflow seems very fluent to me (not accustomed to it yet). Now how do I translate this to blender 2.8 where those layers do not exist anymore? I can’t, I have to experiment with collections until I find a way or somebody makes tutorials on this. This is a bad transition, instead the layout could still have those small boxes for layers and use collections instead of layers. This creates the same workflow but with updated functionality. This is what I’ve been talking about the whole time updating is good and replacing is bad. If blender can’t support different users workflows then there is already a problem with the core design of the software. Again an UI change makes only sense if it’s a change from a static ui to a dynamic one. It’s core principle of programming, you can’t work with static variables alone. Rendering the tutorials useless for a visual UI change has a ton of drawbacks. And so far I’ve only seen visual changes to the UI with less functionality compared to blender 2.7.

If this is just temporary then there is no problem.

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I think that the main problem is the default. thanks to last changes Blender2.8 is basically the same that 2.79.

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Ui is as flexible as possible, it is open source and well documented even in beta. What was it about pressing t that was different in 2.7? Going to go get 2.7 to see for myself but it will be a few hours until I have the time.

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It was more frequent in Blender development years ago. When developers were less rigorous about freezing period, people ready to buy tutorials for blender were less numerous and people to make them, too.

Now, that is something that happens only once, every 10 years. When there is no way to avoid it.
And after one year, the problem will have disappeared.

Transition from 2.4 to 2.5 was worst, very less smoothly.
But it made UI less static and allowed to add interface of addons everywhere. If you take time to learn a little bit of python code, you can place any button or panel, anywhere in the interface.
You can suppress or add tabs.
In 2.4 UI amount of panels was restricted to 4 floating panels in 3DView.
In 2.5, panels became stuck to sidebars but their amount could reach several dozens.

2.8 does not change that. So, in that domain, it is not better but it is not worst than 2.7.
Maybe you are not perceiving it ; but here what you are asking for is a replacement of UI system

You mean in the T toolbar. Creation of custom brushes works as in 2.7.
But brushes are categorized by tools in 2.8.
So, they don’t show up under same condition and there is no way to call them or add them to toolbar intuitively, yet.
But William agreed that was a problem and solution should be found.
If it does not end-up in 2.80, a solution will probably be included in next releases.

Advanced tutorials are requiring a lot of work. Creators of such tutorials have to explain lots of things and they have to build on a reliable basis.
2.8 is a beta and its UI was still changing 2 weeks, ago. Nobody can have time to create advanced tutorials in such amount of time.
Professionals that are making such tutorials are still testing 2.8 and trying to help to debug it.

But seriously, if the only thing that is annoying you is the absence of layers, the tutorial should be easy to follow.
In 2.79, tutorial says move objects to layer 2 by pressing M key.
In 2.8, press M Key > click on New Collection instead of a little square and name it Layer 2.
Problem is solved.
Bone Layers were kept in 2.8. So, if you are referring to layers of armature : that is not a problem, either.

Where do you display small boxes and how when their amount can go from 1 to infinity ?
How do you satisfy people who were judging that 20 layers were not sufficient and that they wanted an hundred of layers ?
Obviously keeping them in header would mess up its button that are more numerous.
They did a Collections panel into sidebar . You can reduce sidebar width to display only eye icons of collections and sensation would be almost the same. (Clicking on a column of icons instead of row of small boxes)

Blender 2.8 design is not really changing workflows. It is forcing users to change their habits to follow same workflows. But it does not really break anything.
There are big removals. But there are substitutes that are more powerful than what we had before.
There will be small loss with 2.80. But they are supposed to be temporary.

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Ok finally had a look at 2.7, seems to me like you just have a problem with placement. You want tool settings underneath the toolbar. I was assuming that pressing t would do something wildly different like bring tool settings under mouse cursor the way quick favorites does. This is something I want to look into now that I am thinking about it

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I’ve just started in Blender in the last year and the only reason I started using it was because of 2.8 I think a lot of people are looking to pick up blender specifically because of 2.8. Personally I will never even look at 2.79 (made several attempts to learn it in the past but 2.8 just feels right to me where 2.79 didn’t) and I’m sure if there is missing functionality in 2.8 coming from 2.79, it will return or be even better in future versions.
Personally, having gone through other major software transitions in the past, for the most part I think 2.79 users will continue to use 2.79 if something it does works the way they expect it to but they will eventually move over to 2.8 when they see 2.8 + moving ahead and 2.7 looks more and more outdated.

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Yes. the key problem point is default. Most of people is not coder, don’t have time to learn to dev, even to find what they needs, it also takes time, much time…People like simple , not complex . And importance idea is <Don’t make user think >