Hey everyone, I just found this link on the forum for the Blender class I'm taking, and though I haven't watched it all yet, it's looking AWESOME!!

Blender 2.90 Released

Looks quite interesting!

Thanks for the share Miss B I thought it was going to be delayed for another week will have to download it and start feeling it out

And to think I haven't even played with 2.8x yet! ~ROFL~

Well seems the UI is still the same some of the new features really look interesting especially the region extrude and bevel profiles

Thank you for the heads-up, MissB. :)

I only just upgraded to 2.8.5. LOL Oh well, on Linux, it's trivial. I've even kept 2.79b around, just in case. Blender Foundation is going from strength to strength... this promises to be a significant upgrade. For someone new to this version (like ME, for example) I think a good thing to have is a cheatsheet, just until the steps to do stuff comes a bit more naturally.

The nicest thing about blender is that we can run multiple versions side by side. I still have 2.81 installed, I'm using 2.83.5 now with all my addons, but I'm going to install this 2.9 just to see how it works and have all of them on the same machine. If 2.9 works good and I can install all my usual and paid addons without any problems then I might use it in place of 2.83.5. They will probably release 2.9.1 in a few weeks anyway.

All I have to say at this point in time about the 2.9 release is that I'm very disappointed. I'm sure it's just a bug or something, but rendering the default scene with default cube on my RTX 2070 GPU in 2.83.5 takes less than 1 second with 32 samples. The same scene, on the same machine, using the same amount of samples takes 28 seconds. Clearly, there's an issue here.

Also, it must have something to do with Optix, because I usually use the Intel OpenImage Denoiser anyway, but when I switch to Optix denoiser in 2.9, it spits back an error that the values in the denoiser are incorrect? Very strange.

I think I'll wait for the stable version of the stable release before using 2.9.

Ok, I think it's just an issue when using the Intel OpenImage Denoiser from the Denoise UI Interface, which is using the CPU to denoise while the render is in progress. Typically, I use the Denoise node in the Composite module, which takes data information from various render passes and uses those to denoise the rendered image. Doing it that way, in the compositor, only takes a fraction of a second to get a clean render. However, because the Intel OpenImage Denoiser in the UI is denoising the render with CPU while the render itself is using the GPU, it really has an enormous bottleneck on the system and slows down the render by an incredible amount!

I still get the OPTIX_ERROR_INVALID_VALUE when I try to use the Optix Denoiser in the viewport or in the render itself, so there's still a problem with using Optix, but I always use the Denoise Composite Node instead anyway. It's better and faster.

I'll probably post this error over at BlenderArtists and see if anyone knows how that can be fixed or if it's a bug.

RobynsVeil posted at 7:20PM Tue, 01 September 2020 - #4398350

Thank you for the heads-up, MissB. :)

I only just upgraded to 2.8.5. LOL Oh well, on Linux, it's trivial. I've even kept 2.79b around, just in case.

Oh I ALWAYS keep the version I've been using when I update to a new version of ANY software, 2D or 3D. It just makes sense, especially in this case because the 2 UIs are soooo different.

I am currently running so many multiple versions lol I have from 2.49 to now will be setting up 2.9 going to be doing a System re-image soon to migrate to a new SSD and going to use the old SSD to migrate all my Blender installs to see if I get a speed boost currently they are all on a mechanical HDD I did do a tutorial that is available in my store here at Rendo on how to set this up LuxXeon contribute some useful info that is incorporated in the tutorial it does help me be able to answer the variety of questions we cover here in our forum

@Lobo3433 WOW! That's awesome. I still have 2.79b, 2.81, and 2.83.4, but once I'm sure 2.9 is going to work without problems and some of the useful addons I have work with it, then I might finally get rid of 2.79 to save some disk space.

BTW, just a quick update regarding the GPU error I was getting with Optix denoising. I started a thread about it over at BlenderArtists, and at least one other person was having the same issue. No one seemed to know why it was happening, and the few suggestions I had been given didn't seem to work.

The one thing that did work, however, was updating the GPU driver to the absolute latest gaming driver for RTX 20x series. My driver was only a month old to begin with, but apparently, that was still too old for Blender 2.9. The driver that was released on August 17th seemed to correct the errors with Optix so far.

@LuxXeon Well I ran 2.90 last night for the first time and first run something weird happened I thought I was going to experience Microsoft's infamous blue screen death everything blinked off and then came back did a restart none the less second start was OK. had trouble with rendering ArchiPack thumbnails kept getting errors concerning vert orders which made no sense since when you first activate the Archipack add-on you find your saved material lib file and then render thumbnails. So thinking one of two things current add-ons may need to update to some new coding or more likely 2.9 is still buggy

Lobo3433 posted at 11:33AM Wed, 02 September 2020 - #4398453

@LuxXeon Well I ran 2.90 last night for the first time and first run something weird happened I thought I was going to experience Microsoft's infamous blue screen death everything blinked off and then came back did a restart none the less second start was OK. had trouble with rendering ArchiPack thumbnails kept getting errors concerning vert orders which made no sense since when you first activate the Archipack add-on you find your saved material lib file and then render thumbnails. So thinking one of two things current add-ons may need to update to some new coding or more likely 2.9 is still buggy

I think you're right. I haven't tried all the addons yet because I had been dealing with that viewport Optix issue, but I'll probably try them later today. Blender 2.9 is really on the bleeding edge of technology. The fact that I needed a two-week-old driver to operate the Optix denoiser is evidence of that. I'm sure they will need to release a point update to this release soon because we aren't the only ones to have some issues. Clearly, the minimum specs for running this new version will need to go up from the last version.

I know there are some people over at BA who are running Blender 2.91a already and suggested that the experimental builds have fewer bugs. That doesn't seem to make any sense, because if they are developing that far ahead and have fixed bug issues in those experimental builds then it wouldn't make any sense to release a stable version without those bug fixes. I think the first stable releases will always have some bugs just because there aren't as many people running the experimental builds for obvious reasons, so bug tracking can't really be done properly until the first official release is in the wild so to speak.

@LuxXeon I usually do not like running experimental builds since currently had a few issues with my current system which is why I am planning on swapping out to a new SSD and do a clean install it has been 5 years since I built this system and time for a few upgrades since I waited for the new RTX 30 series of cards to come out so bigger faster SSD and do a few mods to extend the longevity of this system. So will look forward to a patch release to this 2.9 because it really does seem buggy

Lobo3433 posted at 3:18PM Wed, 02 September 2020 - #4398391

I am currently running so many multiple versions lol I have from 2.49 to now

OMG! You were using Blender back in the days of 2.4x??? IIRC, I started with 2.45, then upgraded to 2.47, and eventually 2.49. I absolutely HATED that UI system, and was soooo glad when I got my hands on 2.52, the first UI version of 2.5x, 2.6x, and finally 2.7x, I never kept all those versions, as one was all that was necessary for me to transfer over to the latest version.

I usually keep about 2 or 3 versions of Blender on my system, just in case I come across something where I need an older addon or scene files where backward compatibility is an issue. It usually takes developers a while to update their addons for the latest versions of Blender, and some which I've found on GITHub may not get updated at all. It's rare, but it does happen that a very useful addon gets abandoned.

Once I have all my addons updated, I usually feel confident to remove the older versions to save space.

Miss B posted at 8:42PM Wed, 02 September 2020 - #4398475

Lobo3433 posted at 3:18PM Wed, 02 September 2020 - #4398391

I am currently running so many multiple versions lol I have from 2.49 to now

OMG! You were using Blender back in the days of 2.4x??? IIRC, I started with 2.45, then upgraded to 2.47, and eventually 2.49. I absolutely HATED that UI system, and was soooo glad when I got my hands on 2.52, the first UI version of 2.5x, 2.6x, and finally 2.7x, I never kept all those versions, as one was all that was necessary for me to transfer over to the latest version.

Well me and LuxXeon had talked about this previous but I have kept so many versions one because so many tutorials are done with such a variety of version and if I needed to try and duplicate an error someone was having issue with in the forum it just helped to have a mix of the most stable versions of Blender two when I wrote my tutorial on how to run multiple versions of Blender which can be done either on a HDD, SSD, External and Flash drives I wanted to show you could have as many as you like and my setup lets me be able to keep this many because I do have allot of space my system is a custom build so not running out of room any time soon. So this set up does have it's advantages

True, I wasn't thinking in terms of you being the Blender moderator. Having older versions that folks are still using, does help when trying to help solve whatever issues they are experiencing.

Miss B posted at 4:15PM Thu, 03 September 2020 - #4398570

True, I wasn't thinking in terms of you being the Blender moderator. Having older versions that folks are still using, does help when trying to help solve whatever issues they are experiencing.

It does help but I always redo or look at older tutorials there was a good one on Gumroad by p2design that is one of his free ones on creating Stylised tileable textures in Blender - Tutorial and it is done in Blender 2.63 I think and it is a great tutorial introducing sculpting but I did it in 2.65 and because of a change in the sculpting brushes in 2.65 from 2.63 could not achieve the same results and when I contacted him thinking at the time if it was something I was missing and all it boiled down to was a change from one version to another so having the extra versions like I do was able to learn something and achieve a more acceptable result.

Yes, it definitely sounds like it came in handy.

It does help

I am finding 2.9 to be huge improvement as 2.83 LTS had some serious material preview problems with EEVEE where I was getting the dreaded "hot pink= texture missing" colors in material previews even with a base principled BSDF

I was "solving" the problem by switching to cycles to redraw the previews but with 2.9 the problem has vanished entirely.?

My entire pipeline is EEVEE based as I do animated films.

wolf359 posted at 1:28PM Tue, 15 September 2020 - #4398750

I am finding 2.9 to be huge improvement as 2.83 LTS had some serious material preview problems with EEVEE where I was getting the dreaded "hot pink= texture missing" colors in material previews even with a base principled BSDF

I was "solving" the problem by switching to cycles to redraw the previews but with 2.9 the problem has vanished entirely.?

My entire pipeline is EEVEE based as I do animated films.

I just got through my first longer animation using Blender 2.9 with some scenes that were previously created with 2.83.4. I really had a difficult time getting through some of the shots. Lots of crashes during the render, but we really wanted to use 2.9 for this specifically because of the object motion blur in Eevee. We had a few shots rendered with 2.83 already, but went back and re-rendered them with 2.9 just to take advantage of that object motion blur. However, it was a real headache. Most of the time renders would simply crash the app out to desktop over and over after about 300 frames. Did you experience any issues like this? This was happening mostly with workstations that had RTX 2070 gpu cards, even with the lastest drivers.

No , In the past week I have rendered a couple of animations both over 2000 frames in EEVEE with no problems.

2.9 is super stable for me for all of my usage thus far but I stll need to test some Mantaflow simulations

Here is a compilation video of some of my recent Lookdev tests for my animated web series in development

https://youtu.be/ZBjH4J-dNXo

@wolf359 I have a feeling it has to do with the object motion blur and OpenDenoiser node. Did you use object motion blur in your production? What about OpenDenoiser? I didn't notice it in the Lookdev tests.

This clip was rendered with motion blur & at a really low sample rate(12) and was cleaned up with the Denoise node.

I Dont have have an RTX card so that might be a variable in your case.

https://youtu.be/sFOEINAtbek

wolf359 posted at 5:35PM Tue, 15 September 2020 - #4399572

This clip was rendered with motion blur & at a really low sample rate(12) and was cleaned up with the Denoise node.

I Dont have have an RTX card so that might be a variable in your case.

https://youtu.be/sFOEINAtbek

That clip says "rendered in blender 2.83" at the end? Was that a typo? 2.83 only has camera motion blur. It's only 2.9 is giving us the crashes so far, and only with object motion blur enabled in Eevee. The quality is worth it though, and still so much faster than Cycles with only slight differences in the appearance. I think you're right about RTX. I'll have to see if we have the same problem in 2.9 with our GTX machines.

@MissB

Late to the party I know lol. I think Blender 2.9 is awesome. I made some heavy tests in my spare time and had no problems with crash or anything else annoying. Very exciting update in my opinion.

Hey there. I'm still using 2.79 mostly, but have downloaded 2.8 and 2.9, so I'll be playing with them eventually. I know a lot of folks who always found the earlier versions hard to get around in, are now having fun in 2.8 and/or 2.9. Since I never had problems with the older UI, I'll wait a while before trying out a new setup. I'm so used to what I've been using for years, that I don't relish the idea of having to learn everything again, but I'll get there at some point.