I have been looking at the new 2.8 builds just now, to check out the UI changes thus far. I am liking some developments so far.
The quick switch for layouts of BFA is now a tab system in 2.8 that you can build and destroy on the fly (workspace) – and each layout has a sub layout for windows layouts traditional of the old Blender, and they all have previews, which is nice. But in practice.. not even the scenes switch on a “workspace”. Seems deeper in concept, with addons and scene settings, but easy to not understand. I hope they clean this up a bit. (In concept though, it’s the same as the layout switch toolbar of BFA, just more flexible/customizable with added addon/settings). It does look like though, that they will remove all the defaults – apparently. Meaning full creative proposals for BFA. I am not pro “everyone must customize their defaults” to use the software from the get go – sometimes you want a quick install on a workstation, get the artists to start working, and have great defaults to immediately start work. I like this of BFA.
The timeline is removed and will be replaced/fusioned into Dopesheet (Great, I was about to propose that for BFA)
The new Outliner is fantastic! This is how an outliner should work, with filters, view changes, and with partitions/collections and fusioned into layers. Finally modernized and up to competition with Softimage and Maya. Though they put the menu groups into submenus where you have to move mouse twice now to get to common actions.. doh.
The new theme is quite nice, tbh. Though over time I can feel the eyes strain.
The new view switch to side columns is curious… not convinced yet.
The top toolbar being frozen in place is a nice touch.
Everything else feels the same, is the same, and… still needs Bforartists magic. The new Eevee controls are starting to already feel bloated and all over the place. The new Workspace settings is clunky and still needs work (though it looks handy),
:dance: