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Just like objects in your rear-view mirror, Blender 2.8 is closer than it may appear. And while a final launch date hasn't been confirmed yet, we know it's going to drop this spring. The big questions is: are you ready?
Over the past months, CG Cookie has been publishing a steady stream of Blender 2.8 tutorials, training courses and articles. Here is a list of all our training: from short, single videos to full-length courses and recorded livestreams, many of them free.
Jump to the following sections...
- Blender 2.8 Recorded Livestreams
BLENDER 2.8 ARTICLES
Blender Cycles vs. Eevee - 15 Limitations of Real Time Rendering in Blender 2.8
"EEVEE is the new Cycles!"
...or is it???
Yes, EEVEE is a game changer, but it's not a replacement for Cycles just yet. This is a lost of 15 biggest limitations of real-time rendering that you need to be aware of before you decide to kick Cycles to the curb.
Top 5 Changes Coming With Blender 2.8
From a brand new UI and viewport to the dependency graph, a lot is going to change once 2.8 drops. This is a quick overview of the most massive changes heading our way.
Get Ready For Eevee, Blender’s New Real-Time Rendering Engine
This article takes a very close looks at EEVEE and the capabilities it brings along. As stated above, it does not replace Cycles yet...but it sure means your workflow will get a serious boost!
BLENDER 2.8 TUTORIALS
Animating a Stick Figure with Grease Pencil
Software: Blender 2.8 Beta
Difficulty: Beginner
The massive update to Blender's Grease Pencil (GP) tool in the upcoming 2.8 release continues to awe the community. As a fully featured 2D animation toolset, it's a great time to test the waters with the 2.8 beta.
In this tutorial, Wayne Dixon demonstrates fundamental 2D character animation using something everyone can draw: A stick figure. Specifically the lesson revolves around a simple run and jump action using a straight-ahead approach that will teach you essential GP tools as well as core 2D animation workflow.
Animate a 2D Bouncing Ball with Grease Pencil
Software: Blender 2.8 Alpha
Difficulty: Intermediate
If you want to take your Grease Pencil skills up a notch, learn how to animate a 2d bouncing ball! You will draw with different brush types and edit your strokes, apply materials to your drawing and most importantly, you will use some of the great animation tools to help you animate a bouncing that loops over and over in the viewport.
As an added bonus, you will animate the opacity of a grease pencil layer to create the illusion of a shadow under your ball.
Tips for Fixing Broken Animation Data in Blender 2.8 (FREE)
Software: Blender 2.8 Beta
Difficulty: Intermediate
One common problem in animation is when character rigs have broken links from appending or updating between multiple artists using the same file. Surely most of us have opened a character rig only to find it horrifyingly broken; an image that haunts your dreams for the next 3 weeks.
Luckily, Wayne Dixon has some helpful tricks that can get your rigs fixed quickly. You will be counting Suzanne heads again in your sleep in no time. Unless that's your nightmare...
Modeling an Ornamental Shield with Blender 2.8 (FREE)
Software: Blender 2.8 Alpha
Difficulty: Intermediate
The real meat and potatoes of this tutorial is modeling, which is relevant to any version of Blender you use. But it's also a great change to practice modeling in 2.8!
Learn about modeling the shield and it's decorative details on a flat plane first, then deforming a lattice into the final curved shape.
Better Edge and Cavity Masking with Cycles
Software: Blender 2.8 Beta
Difficulty: Advanced
Goodbye, pointiness! Edge detection and cavity masking are very important characteristics of procedural materials. Edge wear is common to any object with age along with cavities and crevices that are constantly attracting dirt, dust, and grime. So it's a good idea to know how to generate procedural factors (masks) for edges and crevices.
The pointiness attribute was the best procedural edge detection we had for a long time. But now with the addition of the bevel node in Blender 2.8 Beta, we can do better. Similarly baking an ambient occlusion texture was one of the only ways to mask cavities. Now Cycles has a built-in AO Node that's much more convenient.
How to Loop an Animation Clip with the Blender VSE (FREE)
Software: Blender 2.8 Alpha
Difficulty: Beginner
When viewing animations and sharing them online, it's often best for them to be looped especially if they're short like a bouncing ball. This way the action can be reviewed several times as opposed to once and then have to annoyingly press the replay button over and over.
In this video, Wayne Dixon shows you how to render a viewport animation and quickly loop it with Blender's Video Sequence Editor (VSE).
BLENDER 2.8 COURSES
Creating Mini Tanks for a Mobile Game
Software: Blender 2.8 Alpha
Difficulty: Intermediate
Let's reate mini tanks for a mobile game! This comprehensive course covers all the modeling and texturing, including tips and tricks like painting with layers in Blender 2.8, how to work with Photoshop files, combining procedural textures with hand painted textures in one image, and much more.
Create Rigged Grease Pencil Animations in Blender
Software: Blender 2.8 Beta
Difficulty: Intermediate
Blender 2.8's Grease Pencil merges 2D and 3D animation into the same application and even allows their tools to blend together into an extremely effective hybrid system. In this short course, follow Wayne Dixon through this simple project that combines a hand-drawn 2D character with a 3D rig for easy animation.
Animated Sci-Fi Game Environment Creation
Software: Blender 2.8 Beta
Difficulty: Advanced
This 8-hour course is a beast, covering every single part of the animated game asset creation process. In 21 video tutorial lessons, you'll create your own cool looking sci-fi door and have a thorough understanding of the game asset creation workflow, which you can then apply to any type project.
Generative Modeling & Design with Blender 2.8
Software: Blender 2.8 Beta
Difficulty: Intermediate
Follow Midge Sinnaeve through his galaxy-brain workflow to see how he taps into the extraordinary power and flexibility of modifiers and Blender 2.8. It's a kind of 3D creativity that will truly blow your mind. Even if abstract isn't your thing, learning about generative modeling is very much worth learning.
2.8 RECORDED LIVESTREAMS
The Limits of Rendering with EEVEE (FREE)
How should you choose the right rendering engine before starting with your project? In this livestream, Jonathan Lampel dove into EEVEE, including the difference between path tracing and rasterization. Big topic, big decision!
Creating Icicles with Blender 2.8 (FREE)
During this livestream, Kent Trammell created an icicle render from scratch, complete with relastic lighting and shading with a macro camera angle.
Creating a Wintry Lakescape (FREE)
Focusing on speed with this workflow, Kent Trammell tackled a beautiful wintry lakescape based on a photo. The final render includes trees, terrain, lake surface and volumetric fog.
Modeling, shading and rendering a Snow Sled (FREE)
In this livestream, Kent Trammell too on modeling a classic snow sled: The "Flexible Flyer" (more or less). The focus is on hard surface, polygon modeling. We'll be starting from scratch so this means sourcing reference images and generating a modeling sheet in addition to the entire 3D modeling process.
This was a two-pater: modeling was covered in the first part, with the second livestream focusing on shading & rendering the model.
Creating an Icy Wolf Sculpture with Blender 2.8 and Eevee
This time, Kent focused the first hour on sculpting a majestic wolf howling at the moon. The second hour was spent building a stylistic ice material with Eevee!
The variety of topics covered is pretty huge, but so are the changes coming with the most anticipated Blender launch of this decade. The best time to get started is now!
Agree ssmurfmier1985 The list of 2.8 stuff has grown quite long. Excellent work CGCookie crew! 🙂
Looking forward to a basics course on Blender 2.80. A lot of things I was able to do in Blender 2.79 are now different enough that I need a refresher!
ssmurfmier1985 Yes this is the menu so far and more to come! ;)
gived me a poke to work!
*thought ;) typo!
Great to have these links all in one article! There are quite many already more than I though :-D