Sadly, but not entirely unexpectedly, Blender 2.8 did not make the targeted beta release of August 12 (yesterday). A new target of “before the end of October”, i.e., in time for this year’s Blender conference, has been set and the expected full RTM of Blender 2.8 has been moved to early 2019. You can read more about the changed roadmap at the dev blog here.
Instead, as of yesterday Blender is now in state “2.8 alpha 2”, as you’ll see if you download the newest build. Apparently there’s just so much different that it’s taking a little longer than they’d hoped to crush all the bugs – and there’s also the fact that new features, big and important ones too, have actually been added during the alpha, which of course come with their own bugs that need squished.
I am not too terribly disappointed by this news; I don’t think it affects the class very much, as all the basic functionality is still there and working for the most part. I will still complete the class with 2.8 but I will wait until the end of the month to decide whether I will stick with 2.8 after all considering the moved-back development time. I still might.
