The Blender Foundation has released a release candidate for Blender 2.80, signaling that the final release is nearing. Assuming everything goes well, this should be the final version, or at least very close to it.
A Fresh Start
Blender 2.80 has a redesigned user interface, putting your artwork front and center. It introduces a new dark theme and a modern icon set. Keyboard, mouse, and tablet interactions have been refreshed, with left-click select now being the default. Quick Favorites menus provide rapid access to the tools you use most.
A Whole New Workspace
Templates and workspaces let you quickly get started with tasks like sculpting, texture painting, or motion tracking. You can customize them to create your own efficient working environment.
What You See Is What You Need
Thanks to the new modern 3D viewport, you can display a scene optimized for the task you’re performing. A new Workbench render engine has been designed for getting work done in the viewport, supporting tasks like scene layout, modeling, and sculpting. The engine also features overlays, giving you fine control over which utilities are visible on top of the render.
Overlays also work on top of Eevee and Cycles render previews, allowing you to edit and paint the scene with full shading.
Tools & Gizmos
The 3D viewport and UV editor have new interactive tools and gizmos, along with a new toolbar. This makes it easier for new users to start using Blender, and for existing users to discover and use tools that previously required obscure key combinations.
Besides gizmos for tools, various elements like lights, cameras, and the compositing backdrop image now have handles to adjust their shape or other attributes.
Real Time
Eevee is a new physically based real-time renderer. It functions as both a renderer for final frames and as the engine driving Blender’s real-time viewport for creating assets.
It has advanced features such as volumetrics, screen-space reflections and refractions, subsurface scattering, soft and contact shadows, depth of field, camera motion blur, and bloom.
2D Animation
Grease Pencil is now a full 2D drawing and animation system. This unprecedented integration of 2D tools in a 3D environment will enable you to create next-level concept art, storyboards and animations.
Cycles
Cycles now provides industry-standard functionality such as Cryptomatte, BSDF hair and volume shading, and Random Walk Subsurface scattering. Many rendering optimizations were done, including combined CPU and GPU rendering, much-improved OpenCL start and render time, and CUDA support for scenes that don’t fit in GPU memory.
