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You can run the Steam version without Steam as well, so in the end it's personal preference. As far as updates are concerned: it took some time until Blender was updated on Steam in the past, so you always had the new version earlier than Steam users if you downloaded it from the website.
There are some little things worth mentioning. With STEAM, updates are mandatory once you want to run the program it will update. So you are either forced to use the latest blender STEAM version or use BETA tab to roll back a previous version. Especially with the release of 2.8 that caused some irritation among some folks.
On a side note: If you close STEAM, it will actually terminate the blender process aswell. Kind of a crap choice for productivity software.
Final verdict...STEAM version has these little gimmicks going for it. But as blender is so slim, portable and runs without installation one can have as much blender versions around as they fancy. If you are into daily builds, experimental branches and such..you won't find that on STEAM but either on blender.org or graphicall.
As a fairly frequent user the STEAM version works fine for me, for some older projects i still keep some legacy versions around. (mostly only for import/ export reasons)
I think its the only program that lets you open out of Steam directly and that is an absolute advantage since in my case I usually use PC Tower and Laptop to work and sometimes I leave one rendering while I advance in another project, with that I can run blender directly to the that renders or vice versa, with which I want to work.
Steam lets you open as many games and programs as you want and will add hours in everything open, however you cannot open games or programs in two different sessions.
I currently have version 2.79b non-steam and 2.80 Steam. The reason is for compatibility, almost all the projects I have are from version 2.78 updated to 2.79 and for some reason it doesn't seem to work in 2.80.
On the other hand I use the stable versions that are in Steam because the developing versions fail a lot and almost a few minutes the program is closed or the file is damaged.
As far as adding the executable as a NON STEAM game is a bad idea, Steam overlay conflicts with Blender so that the program seems to stay locked when you actually have the Steam menu open but its not shown on screen, so blender is completely blocked and you have to lose what you have not saved. Apparently Steam interprets the keys slowly, for example, in my case it happens to me whenever I use the Shift key to scroll through the scene and then press Tab to enter the edit mode, although there are a few seconds between the pressed, Steam interprets I have pressed Shift + Tab at same time, nothing is shown but it leaves blender locked.
Counting the hours is fine to calculate how much you dedicate to a job, then there is the topic of the forum, it is fast and you always get an answer and do not waste time looking for a forum and have to register and other problems and then the artwork, upload, share , you do not need a domain, server or whatever is your own to show your work.
So, I currently use non steam 2.79b for old projects (I don't use Steam because it's 2.79a, I don't think anything happens but just in case I don't use it) and verisón 2.8 (steam) for new projects, although I don't understand the interface, with 2.79 I make the models that I want in a few minutes, with 2.8 trying to do it or even after several hours I have not even managed to start xD
Could you describe some of the things which don't work when using a 2.7x project in 2.8?
There are some simple tweaks that might be helpful...when loading a 2.7x file...uncheck the box 'Load UI' so the old UI doesnt gets loaded into 2.8 for a start.
Also the Layers are a bit out of whack for 2.7x files, regarding their visibility and the fact that the layers are turned into collections 1-20 upon opening.
There are some things that changed but alot of stuff is still compatible, especially objects, meshes, etc. can conveniently be appended.
Anyhow if your PC has Open GL 3.3 and a nice GPU...2.8 is such a MASSIVE improvement in all regards: It is super stable; very smooth; handles big scenes much better; GPU ram limit is gone as it can now use your PCs RAM to buffer data once your GPU is full; the collections are so much more versatile; principled BSDF shader is pure gold since [one shader to rule them all ...even directly exportable to Unity and Unreal Engine]; edit multiple objects at the same time ....I could go on for hours.
Not to mention all the improvements to cycles and the amazing Eevee renderer.
The entire viewport drawing looks way better now, and you can get great results within mere seconds or in realtime where previously you'D have to render for minutes.
Seriously it is definetly worth the couple of hours getting used to.
Been using 2.8 for about 150 hrs now and never wanted to go back, it is just orders of magnitude of a better toolkit now.
Yes, I know, thanks equally.
Basically. Opening a file of 2.7X, in most cases doesn't give problems, EVERYTHING appears on the scene, rarely any material fails (nothing important).
What happens to me is that by pressing F12 to RENDER the models disappear. Its seen in the Viewport, its rendered in the viewport (eevee and cycles), its rendered in eevee (F12), but its NOT rendered in Cycles (F12). In some projects its the whole scenario, in others its almost everything, in others its only a few models.
I have looked for it but after trying everything, including the layers, I don't know why the objects or models don't appear when rendering in Cycles. Of course its faster, but I still don't like 2.80, what I do quickly in 2.79 I do not even after 10 hours in 2.80, I can't work as I want.
The last thing I tried was to use a video as texture and apparently in 2.80 the animated textures still don't work, the video advances at different speeds, frame breaks and then in eevee or cycles the video only shows a single random frame, but this doesn't I'm interested, I'm interested in knowing why the render is not shown in cycles when everything is correct in the viewport or in eevee. (not black or white screen, I have a scene that is a car on a racing circuit, only one car door and the skybox is rendered) or a K-next model and the ground is not rendered (I added a new ground manually but it still doesn't appear, in this case is in eevee).
There are other things that I don't like in 2.80 such as transparencies, shadows and the interface, no matter how hard I try, I don't like it. I have a project that excepting a material looks fancy in cycles and eevee, but it takes the same time in both 2.79 and 2.80 (cycles), its the only case, it also exceeded me with the details and a render of 800x600 at 64 samples takes more than 20 minutes with a GTX 1060.
It's just that, racing circuit and car, only one car door is rendered. That is why I continue in 2.79 with the projects that I had already started, when I finish what I have pending I will try to make the definitive leap to .... and to 2.81 since next month the new version will come out.
- are the objects disabled for rendering? Even if they are, you can see them in Cycles in the viewport, but not in the actual rendering. You can find the setting in the outliner, but you have to enable it in the outliner's filter first
- are all ray visibilities activated for those objects? You can find these settings in the Object properties under Visibility -> Ray Visibility
I don't know that much about rendering, so unfortunately those two things are the only I know about that can cause objects to disappear in renderings.
In fact, now looking at I have compared the parts that are seen and not seen and everything is the same, why can't it be seen? a mystery. But now is when testing the thing becomes even rarer, the only door of the car that is seen has the glass and is that through the glass you can see the inside of the car (from the outside of the car) and the circuit and mountains (from the inside of the car)..... What the.... O_o.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1890492090
In the end it was the biggest nonsense in the world.
I guess Blender 2.8 converts layers into collections (1,2,3,4,5,6 ...), is that?
The fact is that now I was preparing a file eliminating the unnecessary models since the file are 600MB of .blend (yes, as I said, I make too many details to the models), I had put the render cycles in the viewport and as I have been removing objects it still didn't appear, curiously, the shadow is projected in addition to being seen through the glass.
Then I have removed one collection what has left the models loose in the list and the models have begun to appear. I have tried to open the project (of screenshot) and remove the collections and the car and circuit appear in the render ... I have looked at the collections and are visible in render and viewport but appears in gray as if were not activated.
Thank you for requesting the file, by deleting the thousands of models (parts of the car) I have seen that it was that, so I don't bother you and waste your time. Is there any explanation?
The files created in 2.78 and 2.79 work, it only happens with those that started in 2.78 and ported to 2.79. Precisely because of lack of time and work all I have is since 2.78.
Seriously, this blender update didn't like anything, it is more a headache and annoy the user experience rather than improve it and make it easier, at least for me.
Make sure to activate all restriction toggles in the outliner so you can see what each items status is. The restriction toggles are found via the little funnel icon in the outliner (oddly enuff these are all turned off by default...kind of an oversight).
It still seems like your collection settings are off...either some of the layers were set to 'indirect only' (so they only appear in transmission and glossy passes) or it has to be the ray visibility settings or even mask layers maybe?
Did you open these files as .blend or appended your scene? (which I think would work better). Also never load the UI when using leggacy files, it can mess up your 2.8 render settings.
And I can't agree that 2.8 isnt a big improvement. Sure there are some inconveniences when using old 2.7x files. But getting rid of that poor Icecube tray style layer system is worth the hassle alone. The old 20 layers simply have been a limiting factor when it came to complex scenes.
I dont deny that 2.8 it has NOT improved, the fact of having groups instead of layers is much better, in fact I use an Empty Axys to group objects and the layers although they allow separating parts, I don't like it because of the fact that they must be active to render, apart from that Blender takes them into RAM even when they are deactivated and not visible.
I like the part of CPU + GPU that has greatly improved with respect to beta, accelerates (according to the project) the rendering time, and VRAM is good to know that now I will not have problems if I exceed that limit, I remember when I used a GTX 660 and when overcome the 2GB, Blender stopped rendering with an OUT of Memory.
An absurd question, in 2.80 if an object is not visible to render, does blender still load the object in ram as it happens in 2.7X and earlier? In cimema 4D when working with large models, it deactivated most of the models and thus reduced the use of RAM and render time, just as well it would be an option to render only what is visible by the camera for simple renders although with eevee I think its not necessary.
I appreciate the help and comments. Nor do I speak English well and its not clear to me some part of comments, what would I do without google?
http://puu.sh/EtgrW/2b2d093bf5.jpg
Can't say much about the technical details of the ram usage, i just noticed that it performs well with complex scenes with several million polygons compared to the previous versions. And yes it uses the PC RAM when you run out of VRAM. Works like a charm.