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chromas [soylentnews.org] writes:

If you've taken a look at Blender but were put off by its nonconformist UI and right-click-select paradigm, well, that's all gone now [blendernation.com]:

The longest-awaited – and, arguably, the most significant – release in Blender’s history has finally been released. Blender 2.80 is now available for download, bringing with it a new interface, a new core architecture for the software, a new render engine, a complete new 2D animation system, and scores of new features affecting everything from modeling to simulation.

[...] The Blender 2.80 documentation [blender.org] lists seven major areas of development, each comprising scores of changes, plus over 30 smaller new features.

[...] The 2.80 release makes Blender look and act much more like other DCC software, adopting industry conventions like a dark UI theme, flat icon design, and left-click being the default way to select objects.

[...] Blender 2.80 replaces the software’s old system of 3D layers and layer groups with Collections [blender.org], used to organise objects in a scene, instance groups of objects, and link groups across .blend files. The old system of render layers has also been expanded into a new system of View Layers [blender.org], making it possible to create multiple versions of a scene during look development or shot layout, as well as to split a render into multiple layers for compositing.

[...] It’s also worth noting that Blender 2.80 is an API-breaking release [blender.org], meaning that add-ons need to be updated before they will work with it. Many have already been updated: you can find community-compiled lists of compatible tools on BlenderArtists.org [blenderartists.org] and Blender Addons [blender-addons.org].

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