2.8 Hurdles and Roadblocks

Captains Log #3

Got myself into big doo doo today. Using Groups doesn't seem to be a thing anymore in 2.8. Shouldn't have made the Heli almost entirely out of groups in 2.79 then.

- I used to do Group Instancing. 

First take a mesh that had lots of parts that weren't going anywhere and secondly group them. Then get any low res mesh and group duplicate it so I can save on memory and performance.

- Can't find groups in 2.8 to do this. Is the Group system out of the picture now? Then how do we link assets into other files?

- The closest thing I found was this in in the "Context" tab:

- I thought that in the "Instancing" menu I was going to be able to do the "Group Duplication" but no, that doesn't seem to be it.

- It Says "High Flying Bird" up there but as you can see in the image below, there is no Collection named like that. So what is that menu all about? Is the Collection in the "Context" Tab separate form the actual Collections menu?

- I thought Collections menu was here:

- Some Collections are grayed out, the meshes are not visible in the viewport but the "Eye Icon" is set to On. Shouldn't they be visible if the Eye is not turned off?

- If I right click on a Collection Layer, a really big menu pops up with lots of options, I don'tknow what does do yet. Time to test and see.

- The View Layer has got me confused. I haven't got the slightest idea what that is. It shows that I have 2 but I don't know why.

- The Heli came better than I expected into 2.8, except for the Group Duplication, those parts are all missing. Only their simple meshes upon which the Duplication was on are visible.

I am very confused when it comes to this part because it seems it has to do with a totally new system with this Collections and stuff. 

I'm stuck here, this part has to be learned, not re-learned since it wasn't in Blender before.

dostovel in this video Ethan goes over the new collection system and instancing, might be useful 😊

Watch the whole course while you’re at it, lots of neat stuff about Eevee which might come in handy for learning 2.8!

dostovel As for “stuff not being visible but the eye icon is on”, maybe this issue @waylow pointing out in the thread description is the problem:

We're talking more like "My collection is hidden and greyed out but the eyeball icon says it visible - what's going on!?"

Turns out that you have the collection "disabled" in the viewport, but that toggle isn't visible in the outliner because that filter is not enabled.

ssmurfmier1985 No, no, no , nooooooooo! I have become one of those people. I should've read before I freaked out.

EDIT: Thanks Miranda, that video completely cleared up my Grouping doubt. It's all done now through Collections, there is no such thing as group now. Question is, how do you link assets into another file now? Lets do some experimenting and see. 

@waylow Lol proxified. 

Something is driving me crazy and it's that orange glow of selection that goes through objects. I can't find were to turn that off. I know I can toggle off "Outline Selected" but that is not it. I would like the selection not to phase through objects. Also the super thick orange stroke is making me hungry for some reason. Please tell me there's a way to change this. 

dostovel I believe X-ray IS enabled by default.  That's why I suggest restoring your settings to "factory"; if you've ever downloaded a 2.8 build any time in the past, the new build could inherit some of the old UI settings from that early build unless you reset.  In the very early days, wireframe was broken and strange, but more recently it's been fixed up to work more like it did in 2.7x.

dostovel You can change the thickness of the line in Preferences > Themes > 3D View > Outline Width, but 1px, which I think is the default, is as small as that line can get I'm afraid.  I don't know if it's possible to turn the x-rayed selection outline off.

jakeblended Nah this is the first time I've downloaded 2.8, I don't have any previous settings. I forget this is still on Beta, funky things must be going on. And I guess I'll just have to get used to selections feeling like cheese. If I find I'm eating more than usual, it's probably because of 2.8

dostovel It's okay, if your mother is anything like mine, she's always complaining that you're not eating enough anyway (no matter how much you eat).  

@waylow @theluthier I may have found a bug. 

I'm trying to understand Instancing and I've notice you can't use a mesh to instance, so unlucky me,  since that is exactly what I'm trying to achieve, to have a mesh instance a collection.

The thing is, this Cube is in Collection 2 and when I select it, in the Instancing Menu Collection is not there.

How ever if I select an empty, Collection appears in the Instancing Menu...

Which freaking sucks because in the Heli file I had meshes as instances, not empties. No I can't convert the meshes that are in places into their respective instances.

So anyways, since the Cube is in Collection 2, I select the Empty, select Collection and find Collection 2, and now the empty is instancing the cube.

If I tick off "Display Instancer" (which only is supposed to hide the empty) and try to select the instanced cube, blender goes crazy and for some reason starts selecting the camera and the instance cube gets lots in the ether. 

I have all this circle meshes that in 2.79 were instancing groups, they are parented to the bones in the rig and all.

 All I have to do is to get those meshes to instance their respective collections, but meshes wont accept instances, only empties. Any ideas? 

Captains Log #4

Saw a pigeon today, flying freely in the sky. Sometimes I wonder why I went into this line of work,with all its comings and goings... I could've had a Bakery, making delicious bread in a nice town. 

And the thoughts continue....

- There is something I don't know if it's a glitch or this is how it goes. Instanced objects selection feels wonky. Say you crate an Empty and Instance a Collection into it, when you select it, it behaves normally, the stroke of your selection is visible...

-But if you create more instances of the same thing, the selection highlight doesn't appear.

- The stroke highlight doesn't appear. It is hard to tell if you have anything selected this way. Why doesn't it just behave normally and highlight my selection?  

Funny thing, if I'm in wireframe mode and select the original one, they all appear selected, even though only the original one is selected.

If I select the 3 copies and leave the original un-selected, I get nothing, no highlight of selection. That is very uncomfortable when you're selection objects and you're not even sure what you have selected.

- Where are the Collections that are not in use? As long as is even possible. The Heli file in 2.79 had several groups that when I opened it in 2.8, those Groups got interpreted as Collections. When I SHIFT + A and at the bottom in Collection Instance, when the list pops up, I can see the names of all the groups that were in 2.79 that are now Collections

 Yet they don't appear in the Scene Collection Menu.

And when I go into the Blender File, it lists the Collections there with Geometry in them, yet they are nowhere to be seen, not even in the viewport.

- Is there transparency in the viewport for geometry? In 2.79 you could enable "Transparency" for an object and in the material lower the alpha to have transparency. I can't find how to get transparency in 2.8

- Ok ready to render, ready to render, aaaaaaand.... no big render button? or render animation button? Perhaps I'm in the wrong engine? How can this be? F12 just turns up the volume in the computer. Do I really have to go to Render --> Render Image, every time? I refuse to believe there is no Render Button. What am I doing wrong?

- Overlays and all kind of stuffs are visible during Viewport Cycles rendering now? In 2.79 when you kicked off the viewport render, non render-able went away and only the clean render was left. How come this is not the case now, feels very weird. Do I have to turn on and off the overlays every time? Is there a setting somewhere to get the old behavior back so Blender does it automatically for viewport renders?  

- Why when I select and object and Numpad / to view it on local mode, if I kick off a viewport render all the other elements suddenly pop back up again, as if it got out of local view, but then if I cancel the viewport render, everything goes away again and it's back to that sole object in local view. Must obviously be a glitch?

- This "Indirect Only" filter in Collection was making me loose my mind. 

Not all the icons in the Collections menu are visible at the same time unless you turn them On in the filters. Icons being hidden by default can be a big problem.

The squiggly arrow being "On" for the objects inside that collection "Hoover-Engine"  was making things non-render-able. When I rendered, objects inside the Collection were't showing in the render and the little squiggly arrow icon in the filters was off, so I didn't see the icon was enabled for that collection making me waste a lot of time trying to figure out what was going on.

- Still a bit confused on what the TV icon does. Globally disable in viewports? Does this mean in the workspaces areas?

- Don't know if there is a way to re-order the workspaces tab, it seems as I can click and drag them to the order them as I want, but it doesn't let me. Is the only option right click and "re-order to front"? That doesn't help that much.

- I have no idea how I can now link the Heli with its rig in another file in 2.8 if Groups are no longer available. In 2.79 you selected which layers were visible when the linking happened, can we do that with collections? How about linking assets in another file and then CTRL + ALT + P to Make Proxy, will that still be the case now?

dostovel 

- Overlays can be overlayed on anything (even on top of Eevee and Cycles), that’s it’s power, so yeah if you don’t want to see it in your viewport render then you have to turn it off manually.

Not all the icons in the Collections menu are visible at the same time unless you turn them On in the filters. Icons being hidden by default can be a big problem.

- Only for existing projects (from before these were hidden), I don’t foresee any problems in a fresh scene as you will adjust it to fit your needs while going along.

- the tv icon permanently hides it. If you use the eyeball and use alt+H to unhide something, the eyeball stuff comes back too. But if you use the tv icon it will stay hidden.

- for linking you will now select a ‘collection’ instead of a ‘group’. Creating a proxy still works the same. But I think @waylow can probably explain this a whole lot better than I 😊

@smurfmier1985 Good point, if you start a new scene in 2.8 yourself things should flow better when it comes to icons in the Collections. Problem are bigger when you open stuff from 2.79 in 2.8

I guess I'll just have to get used to the fact that overlays are in the viewport render now. 

Ah now I get that TV Icon thing. That sounds pretty useful. Thanks Miranda. 

Do you know what View Layers are for? that still eludes me. When I opened the Heli file in 2.8 it came with two View Layers but I don't see the difference or its use. 

dostovel I didn’t yet, so I asked professor Google:

View Layers

Render layers have been renamed to view layers, to indicate their expanded scope. Besides splitting up a render into multiple layers for compositing, they can now also be used as multiple views and variations of a scene for editing. Different windows can show different view layers, by selecting the scene and view layer in the top bar.

Collections can be excluded from specific view layers with the checkmark left of the name. They can also set to contribute only indirect light and shadows, or act as a holdout mask. These settings are edited in the outliner now.

https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.80/Layers

ssmurfmier1985 Well that's a mouthful. For now lets just say they are the new render layers in someway. Never had I in Blender used the Scene option, that was always kind of confusing, setting them with linked objects or not and this an that. Now add View Layers into the mix and it all feels quite daunting. 

In the scene I opened from 2.79 it says I have 2 View Layers. I wonder were 2.8 got that from. And it certainly feels like View Layers and Scenes go by the hand, they are set one next to the other. 

I have hit a rather unusual roadblock ......

I went to Blender.org and downloaded the 2.80 Beta , unzipped it and installed it, but when I open it, it says 2.79 on the splash screen but has eevee as an option and has 2.80.1 on the top toolbar (see screenshot) 

It also looks nothing like the 2.8 I have seen so far and was expecting to see. I can only assume I have made an error in downloading /installing or that my computer has somehow crossed wires with the 2.79 I already have installed. Can somebody please point me in the direction of the right download and explain the best way to install it , or tell me where I have gone wrong.

I am only now returning to blender after a 2 year hiatus and am very rusty..... 

 Thanks 

frikkr Matt's alive everyone, worry not, he's ok. 

silentheart00 Silent can probably tell you, I think that's the issue he ran into when doing Project Portfolio C out of Google Drive. 

Captains Log #5

@waylow "Tips for Fixing Animation Data" tutorial saved me a lot of time, a lot of time. If Wayne had kept that knowledge for himself, I would've wasted a lot of time, a lot of time. Sharing accomplishes much more than competing. Innovation is faster when you stand on the shoulders of giants. I should open that bakery. 

- What is up with the new Timeline? You can't see at all where the first frame begins and the last frame ends. You can't see markers well either. Hard to work this way.

- After hours of working this way, turned out you just had to pull up the timeline. Very funny Blender. Very funny.

- In Blender 2.9 the names of the Markers in the Timeline were "Scene_1, Scene_2" and so on. In 2.8 the names changed for some reason. I want to change the names of the Markers, but Blender wont let me. I I go to Marker --> Rename Marker but apparently it glitches out because the name doesn't change. Or maybe since the markers are Bind To Camera, it takes the name of the Camera? Also that's why it has the camera icon? I want to change the name either way. Blender mister dictator now. 

- Got a bit frustrated for a while there because I was used to moving the scrubber in the timeline no matter where the mouse cursor was at, now you have to specifically grab the blue head of the scrubber to move it. Right now when Blender acts out, you think everything is a glitch. 

- Yellow Keyframes bar no longer appear in the timeline. Glitch?

- In 2.79 in the timeline I could hit S and it cut to start in that frame and hit E and the timeline got cut to end on that frame. Can't seem to do that now and the menu doesn't show any hotkeys. 

- This Ribbon sometimes is at the bottom, sometimes is at the top, sometimes it's not there, its hidden, sometimes is there, visible. Don't have any idea on how to achieve that, to move it to the top if I want it at the top, down if I want it down, hide it or make it visible. 

- The little stripes at the corners of every window that let you split windows in half are no longer there. I thought we couldn't split windows anymore because of the Workspaces tabs, but it turns out you can still split the windows, it's just that the stripes are no longer there. Very misleading. Why not just put the stripes back to signify that? 

- I have noticed that when you select a collection in the collections list, right click then delete,  the contents that it has inside doesn't get deleted as well, the whole batch of its content gets move out to the global scene instead of being deleted and if you had that collection hidden then suddenly all it contents will show up in the viewport, creating a horrible mess. Would like that deleting the collection deleted the contents inside as well. 

- Spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the rig a proxy in a linked scene, because it was duplicating it. Two rigs were showing up. Turned out you have to mask it with the Holdout icon so it doesn't show in the linked scene. I hope this is the right way to do that because in 2.79 you just selected which layer you wanted to remain visible.