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Blender 2.8 released!

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by aer0ace, Jul 31, 2019.

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  1. aer0ace

    aer0ace

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    Last edited: Jul 31, 2019
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  2. mgear

    mgear

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    is it getting similar to 3ds max/maya in general usage?

    (i've tried to start using blender so many times, but cannot get over how the windows and picking system works..and just end up with 10 windows/panels that i cannot close, and a cube that i cannot pick : )
     
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  3. Ryiah

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    Yes, at least according to my memories of older 3ds max releases.
     
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  4. aer0ace

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    I would check it out for yourself, but for those that couldn't get past the right mouse button selection hurdle, it's been changed by default. (It never really was a valid argument though, considering the option to change it has been in well ever since I started back in 2013 or so, at least. The real problem is that most tutorials out there need to stick to defaults, or else people get lost so easily.)

    Just check out the link, and there are loads of images of examples of what has been changed.
     
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  5. HiggsB

    HiggsB

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    I use it now as my main 3D App.
     
  6. MadeFromPolygons

    MadeFromPolygons

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    Swapped from full maya to this and its genuinely better in every way. I cant even begin to describe how much better than old blender it is. Its like its an entirely different program.
     
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  7. aer0ace

    aer0ace

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    This puts Blender into a more competitive position in 3D content authoring than ever before. I'm excited about it. Especially knowing the backing that Epic and Ubisoft are providing.

    This reminds me of the times when Visual Studio went to free Community editions after IDEs/compilers were way too expensive to afford for decades. And the time Unity went free after charging $1500 for so many years. And the time Krita came out and threatened Photoshop as a paint tool.

    To me, it feels like 3D DCCs have been the very last professional gamedev tools to go free and/or open source, and I'll be interested to see how Autodesk reacts to this movement.
     
  8. kdgalla

    kdgalla

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    I recently started using Blender on Steam, so I just opened Blender last night and it's "Surprise! Everything's different today!"

    One of the most obvious things that I noticed is that they eliminated a lot of the huge redundancy in the UI. It seemed like in 2.79 half the features had duplicate places you could access them at- at least one roll-out, one tab, one drop-down menu, one context menu. etc. For every feature, I'm sure every one has there favorite place that they learned to access that feature, but then the rest of the UI becomes a lot of wasted space (sprawling and disorganized too). A lot of people recommended ignoring the UI and just memorize all the keyboard short cuts.

    Now it's more like there's just one place for each thing in the UI. It's not necessarily the place I'm used to, but I think once I start to remember where everything is then I'll be a lot faster then before. I'm sure it will be less intimidating to new users too, since the new UI is tiny compared to before.
     
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  9. MadeFromPolygons

    MadeFromPolygons

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    Hopefully autodesk will eventually go under, they are one of the main reasons 3D programs are so expensive. Look at how much a single program license costs from Autodesk compared to a full Adobe CC license. Its just nuts, and its not like adobe are not a megacorporation too so they really have no excuse to be charging so much .

    What I find funny is that autodesk continually talk about how they have a very high % of pirate users yet dont seem to do anything to address the reason behind it - price.

    And finally only because blender has forced them have they released an indie option for maya and 3ds max. A little too late, the ship has already sailed for many out there.
     
  10. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    I've encountered some issues with visibility of "collections" (formerly "layers") when opening old 2.79 files in 2.8. Does anyone happen to know the fix, or a list of common transition issues and their fixes? I didn't have time to search yet.
     
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  11. aer0ace

    aer0ace

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    Yes, this was annoying. It really does originate from the fact that one of the original design tenets of the software was to make ALL features ALWAYS visible, so development went against dialogs and popups for years. Over time, the design has eventually changed to a more context-based UI, only showing what's needed for operations at hand. I think there's still a long way to go in this regard, but they're making progress.

    Ultimately, once users spend enough time with Blender, they migrate to using keyboard shortcuts for a majority of their commands. It's by far the fastest method for using Blender, and the intermediate, fancy UI becomes less important to getting things done.
     
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  12. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    2.8 seems to have removed some of the old shortcuts to make space on the keyboard for adding more of your own. Also there is a quick menu that you can add functions to. I accessed most things via search and hotkeys in the past. The switch to 2.8 will take some getting used to for me. But Eevee makes it worth it I think and long term there's no point for me in sticking to 2.79 I think. There are shortcut settings for the old 2.79 hotkeys iirc, but I feel like fighting the way 2.8 is meant to be used would be short sighted, so I'll try to adapt.
     
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  13. aer0ace

    aer0ace

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    Not sure about them going under. Although game studios are probably a large chunk of the userbase, there are still other industries that use their tools. Well, AutoCAD, really, and I don't know much about that industry. Also, I know EA uses Maya at a lot of studios. That would mean they'd have to rewrite all their tools and scripts that sit on top of Maya, and retrain their workforce. That's a lot of coin.

    The irony here is that all of us aspiring 3D artists grew up knowing and coveting 3DS Max or Maya, and writing off Blender as a train wreck. Blender fought and fought, and is incrementally succeeding at swaying converts. Blender is truly the tortoise to Autodesk's hare.

    I guess I'm passionate about this topic, to the point of crazy.:D
     
  14. RichardKain

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    I started off learning in 3DS Max and Maya, but I honestly never liked them. I also constantly encountered bugs and instability when using them, especially when rendering video. It's insanely frustrating to have the program crash in the middle of rendering a video. When the video in question takes several minutes to render a single frame, you can be looking at hours worth of rendering ruined through an unexpected program crash.

    When I discovered Blender and started using it, I encountered the usual learning curve. But it didn't take me long to get over that particular hump. And once I got my feet under me in using Blender, I never looked back. Even in the earlier versions, Blender was extremely stable and reliable. I could push it as hard as I pleased, and it would always keep on working.

    Even then, I was interested in programming, and I honestly think that my affinity for programming heavily influences how positively I respond to Blender. Blender is a 3D program that wasn't built for artists, but for programmers and developers. It comes from that kind of mindset, which is why there is often a disconnect when artists familiar with using commercial 3D programs try to learn it. The interface is rigged up in a way that makes it more clear to developers familiar with object-oriented design. Your average artist just doesn't approach projects in that manner.

    I fired up 2.80 and the new interface is looking pretty slick. I was able to confirm that most of what I "need" in the standard Blender interface was still there, so I have no fear of not being able to adjust my workflow. I can still tell what's going on just fine. I kind of want to play around with some of the animation workflow. I need to brush up on track manipulation and audio syncing.
     
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  15. aer0ace

    aer0ace

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    @RichardKain Thanks for that. I remember rendering frames and have those programs crash too. It actually reminds me of the first time I used 3DS R4. I built some complex boolean subtracted mesh, and it'd always crash. Hell, I didn't know what I was doing! But yeah, with Max and Maya, I'd typically have to render a sequence, and then go back and re-render some frames that were messed up.

    I haven't actually done any rendering with Blender, since I've just been using it as an editor for Unity export. I did use the Video Editor a month ago, and while it wasn't Premiere, it was pretty functional for my purposes, and I was pretty amazed about the results. I just used it for resurrecting some old project videos, not any 3D rendering though.

    As much as I'm thrilled about 2.8, I actually haven't upgraded yet. lol. Because I use a lot of my Python tools that I've written for 2.77, and I read that you'll most likely have to update them.
     
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  16. Joe-Censored

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    Blender's UI has been the biggest issue holding it back. Excited to try this out.

    True, but that only benefits the users who are making or updating models all the time. It really hurts people like me who make a few models as needed. I make a few models, code for a few months, come back to Blender to make something else and I need to relearn all the keyboard shortcuts again because the UI is garbage.
     
  17. Martin_H

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    Try using the search function more. Since you already are used to typing and probably can remember how most the functions that you use are called, it's simple to just pop up that search bar and type the thing you want to do. If you need it often enough, learn or re-learn the shortcut that is displayed next to it. Or add it to the quick menu in 2.8.. For me this has been the most intuitive way to use such a tool, that I've ever seen.
     
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  18. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    Using the search function is still bad. Modern UI's are built so whatever you need are easily accessible and fairly obvious. If the team who designed the earlier Blender UI designed a car you'd turn the wheel to the right to turn the car left, there would be 5 different controls for activating the windshield wipers, the controls for the car stereo would only be accessible from the back seats, and the brake peddle would be hidden inside a closed utility box.

    Telling the car buyer to just search through the manual for how to operate the car, even though they already know how to operate every other car which conforms to the defacto standard in car UI design, doesn't make bad UI design any better.
     
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  19. konsic

    konsic

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    Eevee is amazing. I like the grey UI. My only wish is that Unity UI has that grey tone.

    I yet have to try it out if fbx import in Unity and Unreal works.

    c1.JPG
     
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  20. I think it's a bit dark. I like the new Unity grey more (darker than the old light theme, but lighter than the Blender grey)
    upload.PNG
     
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  21. konsic

    konsic

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    This is insane. You can see everything when you modeling in realtime. And they added SSR!
    c2.JPG
     
  22. Moonjump

    Moonjump

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    I've been using Wings 3D for years because the context sensitive UI is perfect for dipping in occasionally. I might give Blender another try if the UI has improved as much as discussed. Wings is missing animation, which hasn't been an issue for me, but will be for some ideas I am working on.
     
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  23. RockoDyne

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    Eh, they filed off a lot of the stupid. There's still tons of stuff that's buried in menus or otherwise are sub-optimal, but there's way fewer utterly baffling design choices (like making left click an operation that you'll actually want to use). A lot of it still needs to be fleshed out more, since much of it is just rearranged without being touched. The heavy use of the pie menus hammer the point. Use them enough and it'll probably become apparent they are way easier to use with the numpad than with the mouse. It's still a three armed application.
     
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  24. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    You just need every peripheral to have as many buttons as possible. :p

    G600.jpg
     
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  25. RockoDyne

    RockoDyne

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    Nah. I need my one input to rule them all. It's why I'm really hoping someone will figure out how to rig up a pipe organ console to Blender, stops and all.
     
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  26. Ony

    Ony

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  27. konsic

    konsic

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    Contact shadows in Eevee are great. Would it be possible to implement them in Unity ?
     
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  28. iamthwee

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    Impossible, it's like magic. Better than MSAA or SSAA
     
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  29. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Keep in mind performance isn't the primary goal with Eevee. Techgage benchmarked the performance back during beta and with their benchmark scene (which didn't seem that impressive to be honest) they needed an NVIDIA TITAN to achieve an average of 60 FPS at a resolution of 1080p.

     
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  30. iamthwee

    iamthwee

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    Damn so not even plausible to use for games!
     
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  31. iamthwee

    iamthwee

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    Ain't gonna lie, but 2.8 is pretty awesome. Even the viewport feels way more polished.

    Evee rig test

    elie.jpg

    Evee light probe test

    spidy-man.jpg

    Sculpt test

    scult.jpg

    T-rex rig and animation test

    t-rex.jpg
     
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2019
  32. iamthwee

    iamthwee

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    OMG I might be able to use eevee for archviz, who needs an rtx card.

    room.jpg
     
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2019
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  33. iamthwee

    iamthwee

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    Oh man this is sweet AF

    dude.jpg
     
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  34. aer0ace

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    @iamthwee Appreciate the updates. I haven't had a chance to dive in much beyond the basic box modeling and Armature controls, to make sure my most-used tools still work (they feel way more streamlined!). I have to admit that load time feels chunkier than previous releases, but I guess it's expected.
     
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  35. Peter77

    Peter77

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    I didn't know why blender 2.8 seems to be such a big deal, then I found the following video that explains why it is. If you're like me, the you might find it helpful...

     
  36. aer0ace

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    Andrew Price always breaks down Blender so well. That video showed a lot to get psyched about.
     
  37. iamthwee

    iamthwee

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    Andrew Price is king, tbh there's not that much difference under the hood apart from maybe eevee, but it seems way more polished and imports fbx's etc with better integrity.

    I'm finding it a little difficult to adjust to my usual workflow and some of the keys have changed but it shouldn't be too difficult. Rigging seems simple enough.
     
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  38. iamthwee

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    Specular map kinda works well too. Emissive materials not too great even with irradiance volume although to be expected.

    car.jpg
     
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  39. iamthwee

    iamthwee

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    @aer0ace still the best rigging / animation tut in my opinion should still be relevant for blender 2.8 comes with startup file (see vid description on youtube)

     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2019
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  40. iamthwee

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    Just testing classroom scene, seems to have slight issues with contact shadows but not bad for 2sec eevee render on my mac mini lol turned off volumetric lighting so it didn't crash.

    clsrm.jpg
     
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  41. iamthwee

    iamthwee

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    PBR test Woooooooah ok I think I'm done, might test hair dunno... back to some real work (studying)
    pbr.jpg
     
    Last edited: Aug 6, 2019
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  42. iamthwee

    iamthwee

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    Messing around with filmic and color grading

    troll.jpg
     
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  43. MadeFromPolygons

    MadeFromPolygons

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  44. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    Blender will never be compatible with gaming license, or you should publish your game with all your source code.
     
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  45. deliquescator

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    Coming from some experience in 3DS Max, Blender always felt so unwelcoming and clunky for some reason but this release looks very good! It looks way more user friendly. Might need to give this a spin :D
     
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  46. MadeFromPolygons

    MadeFromPolygons

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    What we have done is continue to use maya/max at work, and retrain at home to use blender. And now as we get more confident in it, will be slowly swapping out bits at work to use blender until our max/maya licenses are basically just there to allow us to open autodesk source files and convert files to ones more compatible with blender.

    We were never able to get to grips with blender 2.7x no matter how many times we tried, and even found the UI irritating at most times.


    But new blender? Beautiful to look at, fun to use, and wont leave you feeling like your the poor man eating soup in a fancy steak restaurant.
     
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  47. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Even so, it's got wings now. Big companies moving to it simply because the only real, measurable difference between autodesk's products and blender is that people aren't trained in blender.

    It's that simple. Capability wise there is nothing separating them. Nothing.

    In addition nobody actually wants to pay autodesk insane sums of money every year on subscriptions for a feature set that they don't use going forward. It's a money racket and a bad one.

    Seeing Ubisoft jump on board is the first proper game dev move from the big studios. Indies have always lurked there.

    The idea you pay so much per month for DCC is absurd and everyone knows it. It's a racket, nothing more. Because people do not need the fake little tweak and so-called features that Adobe and Autodesk pretend you need. We just need Photoshop from 10 years ago and 3DS Max from 10 years ago.

    Bizarre that people think they need to spend thousands a year for the small features that they do use, that have remained unchanged for a decade.

    Would rather spend thousands a year on something the whole world can benefit from, purely optionally.
     
  48. kdgalla

    kdgalla

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    One other difference, though- I would imagine that some big companies may be heavily invested in middleware or home-grown tools that run on top of Max or Maya. That may weigh on their decision to switch products.
     
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  49. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Yes... and Ubisoft clearly explained this.
     
  50. aer0ace

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    There's definitely a lot of "back to square one" ramp-up time as far as building in-house tools/plugins is concerned, but that's the beauty of scripting languages. It's fast and loose. As @GameDevCouple_I mentioned, there just needs to be a team to work on transition while the other team continues with the "legacy" tools. And for solo devs, you just have to eat that cost of ramp-up time. One of the reasons I jumped to Blender a few years ago is their Python support. While it's not as deeply integrated as Maya's Python support, the API is very functional and easy to understand as far as UI panel creation and geometry manipulation goes. There are some drawbacks though. Like, I doubt the API still has a way to create your own top-level editors. You're probably still limited to one of the existing panels. Hopefully they at least loosened up to support custom implementations of non-modal windows.

    One area that I hope they improved on (haven't tried yet) is their curve creation. I used to use Maya's EP/CV curve tool a lot for surface extrusions, and in Blender it's a little awkward. You have to "extrude" the curve, rather than add/edit points, and that takes some getting used to.

    Another change I'm looking forward to is unlimited and named layers. For the longest time, Blender was stuck with a group of about 20 layer "boxes" (which were made somewhat more usable by user plugins).

    Also, it looks like they may have finally gotten rid of the legacy texture/material system, in favor of the node system that Cycles uses (?). That's going to take some time to adapt my old scripts to.

    I'm also wondering if some of the other annoyances of Blender are either reworked or still exist, like the "mark for delete" paradigm for referenced images and animations, and the multi-select in the object hierarchy. These may still take some time, and could possibly get new adopters to still say, "Nope".

    Overall, Blender just seems to improve by leaps and bounds on every release, as proven by 2.8.
     
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