[ENDED] BC1-1808 - August 2018 Class Homepage - Getting Started with 3D Modeling & Blender 2.8

With 2.8 are there any drawbacks to importing a file created in 2.79? Just that I have a couple of personal projects that I'm working on and I can't see myself finishing both of them before class starts aka before I transition to 2.8 so I'd like to know whether I can safely transfer them with little to no hassle or if it'd be best to stop work on their current forms and restart in 2.8.

The other question I have - which is admittedly rather minor, but thought I'd sate my curiosity - is that it's been confirmed that working on your homework before that specific week begins is acceptable, however I'm just curious if this would negatively affect your grade? Considering you got a head start, of sorts? Just that I have an idea of what I *really* wanna do for my Week 4 homework but it's gonna take a while, to the point where the week allotted - even if I completely dedicate myself to Blender - won't be enough time to finish it. Even if it would negatively affect my grade I'd still do it, I'd just like to know what to expect.

Thanks for reading and thanks to any who can answer these! 

I am commenting here to test the "remembers your spot" feature because it keeps pulling me back to a previous spot when I've read farther ahead.

thecabbagedetective Loading files in 2.8 can be a bit of a hassle sometimes, as far as I've seen in the streams of Pablo Vasquez (Blender Today), but I suppose it will be better over time.

I myself have only loaded a couple of files, and at least one of them made blender crash.

It's advised to keep a backup of your 2.79 files before working on them in 2.8, because it's impossible to load the file back in 2.79 ones you edit them in 2.8. I managed to get a file from 2.8 to 2.79 by exporting to an Alembic file, and then importing that in 2.79. It wasn't a very clean import though. 

Also, modifiers in Blender 2.8 do not show up in edit mode.

Just in the mental preparation to the class found an inspiring way to complete the Week 1 exercise to model with primitives - it could be a fun practice to do that through a short Python programming. 

The idea is maybe a little bit for the advanced users, but you will see it is very simple and fast to run any Python code in Blender, so why not could be inspiring to show also for beginners.

Actually this code is able to select a random RGB color, switch the engine to Cycles, set the camera in the required distance and angle, then in a loop adding 25 cubes with assigning material to each with that random diffuse color. Look at this in five seconds:

Somehow finding this as very powerful, let me attach the code concretely, khmm such things could be used for a lot of automation:

import bpy
import random
from math import radians
def get_random_color():
 r, g, b = [random.random() for i in range(3)]
 return r, g, b

bpy.context.scene.render.engine = 'CYCLES'
obj_camera = bpy.data.objects["Camera"]
obj_camera.location = (25.0, -8.0, 17.0)
obj_camera.rotation_euler = (radians(51), 0.0, radians(53))
area = next(area for area in bpy.context.screen.areas if area.type == 'VIEW_3D')
area.spaces[0].region_3d.view_perspective = 'CAMERA'
for i in range (0, 5):
 for j in range (0, 5):
  x = i*3
  y = j*3
  z = 0
  bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location=(x, y, z))
  cube = bpy.context.object
  mat = bpy.data.materials.new('material')
  mat.diffuse_color = get_random_color()
  mesh = cube.data
  mesh.materials.append(mat)

It might be useful information yet if someone tries to paste Python code to the inside Python Console in Blender, that the indendation then should be with the space ' ' characters instead of the tabs. (you can see in the code above that in the for i in range and for j in range sections there are spaces, they are needed in Python). If you would like to reproduce it, after the paste I pressed two Enters for the running

csehz That's really neat!

ccarrotnl  Aha, cheers for the advice. Loaded  one of my files into 2.8 and it worked fine, but I think I'm gonna stick to 2.79 until I absolutely have to swap for the class.

Right, so I gotta cram studying of 2.8, rigging, Substance, anatomy. topology (still) and hair physics into this month. What could possibly go wrong? My brain's gonna melt haha.

thecabbagedetective Wow, you really have something big in mind, that's a lot! No doubt you can do it you're a good artist, can't wait to see it :)

csehz Wow, I knew you could build addons with Python but this blows my mind, didn't expect that! Awesome 😁

When it comes to the prercorded courses for week 4, are we talking about the whole learning flow? Isnt that abit much for a beginner class? Or are we talking about the first part or something?

aarev Hi Arev, as I understand it you can use the modeling learning flow as a guideline. So if you have a specific thing in mind you want to make, but you miss some knowledge on how to apporach this, then you can watch (part of) a course about this subject. Also, if you don't have any idea what to make, or you're not confident enough yet with your modeling skills to tackle your own thing, you can do one of the prerecorded courses and submit your finished model from that course as your final homework assignment. So it's totally up to you how much or how little you watch, it all depends on what your plans are and what your skill level is. Hope this helps :)