I don't recall if anyone here has seen anything about the next version of Blender, but I had gotten an email, don't recall from where, that Blender 3.0 is being worked on, and we may see something this summer or fall.

Blender 2021 Roadmap

Also, Cycles is going to be upgraded, now that it's reached it's 10th anniversary.

Cycles X

You can download the experimental alpha build of 3.0a here:

https://builder.blender.org/download/

I've been playing around with it. I'm still using 2.83.6 for all my production stuff though. I only play around with the newest builds because I have no interest in reinstalling all the addons, etc. only to find bugs that set back my workflow when it comes to animating or creating products. However, it seems like the next logical step. I've been using 2.93 for the latest sculpting features, such as cloth sculpting but to be honest it still doesn't hold up to Zbrush for the type of sculpting work I need to do with it. 2.83.6 seems to be the most rock-solid build so far if you use Blender for serious productivity work.

There are a few paid builds out there that have really improved on the Cycles engine also. I have a feeling Cycles X will be using many of these new improvements that appeared in these paid, standalone releases, such as e-Cycles and k-Cycles builds. The major improved features have to do with Optix and RTX optimizations as well as improved Cuda optimizations. I found e-Cycles, for example, to be about 30% faster on the exact same animated scenes when using similar settings. e-Cycles opened up a few render optimization settings to the UI that wasn't available directly with vanilla Blender builds. I heard k-Cycles is even faster and more optimized than e-Cycles, but I haven't tried that one yet.

I'm anxious about Cycles X only because Poser's SuperFly is based on Cycles, and I know Poser 12's version has been updated from what I've been using the past "x" amount of years with Poser 11, so this is going to be viewed by the Poser dev team as something they'll have to get into as well, though probably not until the next version of Poser comes out . . . maybe next year.

Yes I have heard some rumbling about Blender 3.0 but the only think that saw with some detail was about

Cycles X

Thanks for the link to that video Lobo. I hadn't realized there was one about Cycles X.

I also realized, after I started this thread, the Cycles X link I had seen posted on the Udemy Blender class I've been taking's forum. A group of the instructors have a forum setup for each of their classes, and one of the members of the Blender class posted about it. I just couldn't remember where I had gotten that particular link.

With all I had going on I missed some of the news about what will be coming to Blender 3.0 development has been so fast I mean seems like yesterday we had 2.8 with all the major improvements and now 3.0 is not to far away it is going to be interesting summer watching what will be coming

Yes, should be an interesting summer Blender-wise.

Looking forward to it

As you pointed out Lobo Blender is evolving quickly.So many changes. This is amazing.

yarp posted at 9:42PM Wed, 28 April 2021 - #4417918

As you pointed out Lobo Blender is evolving quickly.So many changes. This is amazing.

They are saying that Cycles X there are going to be some major rendering speed boost

Yes, 7 times faster and so will Poser in the end :)

Yes if Poser continues to update their Superfly render with Cycles it will be a great long term partnering in the long run

I believe that is their aim Lobo, to keep updating SuperFly to mimic the latest version of Cycles as best they can. There are some differences which will take some time to adjust, but I know they're already updating SF for Poser12, so hopefully they'll be able to continue to do so when Cycles X is introduced, or not too long afterwards.

Yes I am looking forward to them keep Poser SF development closely to Cycles I will applaud the day that SuperFly and Cycles can work interchangeably