Reference/Release Notes/2.80

= Blender 2.80 Release Notes =

User Interface
Blender has a revamped user interface, to make it easier to discover and use its many features.

Tools & Gizmos
The 3D viewport and UV editor have new interactive tools and gizmos, along with a new toolbar.

Eevee
Eevee is a new physically based realtime renderer. It works both as a renderer for final frames, and as the engine driving Blender's realtime viewport for creating assets.

Viewport
The 3D viewport was completely rewritten, to optimize it for modern graphics cards and add powerful new features.

Grease Pencil
A powerful new 2D animation system was added, with a native 2D grease pencil object type, modifier and shader effects.

Cycles
New volume and hair shaders, bevel and ambient occlusion shaders, along with many other improvements and optimizations.

Collections
The limited layer system has been replaced by collections, a more powerful way to organize and link objects.

Modeling
Multiple meshes can now be edited together in edit mode, along with improvements for custom normal editing, bevel and OpenSubdiv.

Animation & Rigging
Many new constraint, modifier and bendy bone features were added for rigging. There is also new keyframe visualization, and improved NLA editor and easier driver editing.

Import / Export
The Khronos glTF 2.0 importer and exporter is now bundled with Blender. There are improvements to COLLADA, Alembic and video import and export.

Dependency Graph
The core modifier and animation evaluation system was rewritten, to improve performance and pave the way for new features.

More Features
Improved unit system, cloth physics, background images and video editing cache system.

Removed Features
A number of features that were no longer under active development or did not fit in the new design were removed.

Python API
Blender 2.80 is an API breaking release. Addons and scripts will need to be updated, both to handle the new features and adapt to changes to make the API more consistent and reliable.

Add-ons
Most add-ons for 2.79 are available for 2.80 as well. A few new ones were added, and a few were removed.