What to expect transitioning from Blender 2.76 to version 3.1?

Question

I am preparing to return to a project that I put aside for a few years. I am eager to upgrade to the latest Blender edition, but I am concerned I will not be able to smoothly transition my 2.76 files into 3.1. What can I expect? Should I just finish my old work in 2.76? I do not yet have the new PC that will support 3.1, and I don't have any way to otherwise test the files in 3.1. How much has changed? Will I need to relearn everything? Thanks for any advice!

edit: am preparing to acquire a new PC that will support Blender 3.1, not sure if i should hurry up and acquire it or just finish my old work on 2.76.

Answer 1

I started really using blender just before 2.79b, and am currently up to date, but it’s been awhile. Take this with a grain of salt.

Even though a lot changed under the hood with Blender 3, I feel like the actual “Blender three” was Blender 2.80, as it made the most changes to be incompatible with 2.79 and before. The most notable that I remember were:

1. Overhaul of the default screen layouts, with a new UI theme.
2. The addition of “gizmos” which are basically the thing where transform arrows would show on the selected thing in the viewport, but far expanded with many previously menu-only tools being available to show, plus some navigational tools that show all the time.
3. The game engine was scrapped.
4. The Blender Internal render engine was scrapped.
5. The EEVEE render engine was added. It is node based, like Cycles, and most shaders will be compatible with both, but EEVEE is built on OpenGL and is more like a game render engine in that it “fakes” (rasterizes) everything for amazingly speedy mostly-accurate renders.
6. The Workbench render engine was added. This is equivalent to the old viewport/OpenGL render (which I think was removed), and is basically solid view.
7. Viewport background images were removed as an option (there’s a workaround by using the world shader to show an image with Window coordinates).
8. Images as an Empty were added. Great for references.
9. The keyboard shortcuts for playback (now Shift+Space), de-selecting all (now Alt+A), and making an editor fullscreen were changed.

Later on, some other things were added/changed:

1. Geometry Nodes. Basically, construct your own modifier(s) with a node editor. Can’t bevel yet, but can add mesh primitives…
2. Asset Browser and “mark as asset”. Meant to make re-using assets easier, although I still mostly just have used Append.
3. “Cycles X”. Cycles was completely re-written on its tenth anniversary from the ground up, and is now much faster, with better OptiX support in general. It was a replacement, so the old Cycles is no longer in place.

For more information, check on YouTube. There’s a “Blender 2.80 basics” video that might help you.