In this post I will document my transition process from Blender 2.79 to Blender 2.8 in the hope it helps others do the same thing!
Q: How do we change the 3d-cursor location in 2.8?
A: Hold down shift and right-click.
Q: How can I remove doubles in Blender 2.8?
A: It’s now called “merge by distance” and you can find it from edit –> mesh –> cleanup –> merge by distance. It works similarly to the old functionality, so you specify the distance at which vertices merge to one vertex.
Q: Where is the button to start an animation render in EEVEE/2.8?
A: f12 renders a still image, ctrl+12 renders animation. You can also start it from the “render” drop-down menu in the top bar.
Q: Where is the 3d-viewport manipulator widget (arrows for moving stuff around)?
A: Enable it from the toolshelf (the tool that looks like arrows to four directions).
Q: How can I change the scrubbing for the timeline to left mouse button?
A: Go to edit –> preferences –> Input and find the category called “animation”. There you can set the “Change frame” property to the left mouse button.
Q: How do we deselect in 2.8?
A: “A” selects all, alt + “A” deselects all. You can also hit “A” rapidly two times in a row to deselect all.
Q: How do you select keyframes in the 2.8 dopesheet?
A: With the left mouse button, unless you change timeline dragging to the left button, in which case you need to hold down shift.
Q: How can I get to the search feature that used to open with spacebar?
A: Press F3.
Q: How can I enter the camera fly mode? Shift+F doesn’t seem to be working.
A: Search with spacebar (or F3) for “walk” or change the shortcut from preferences –> Input –> 3D view ” view navigation ” input. The current new shortcut is Shift + ~ which doesn’t work on all keyboards.
Q: Why can’t I see parent-child relationships in the outliner like in the old version?
A: You can, if you switch to the “Scenes” mode in the outliner. Unfortunately locating selected objects with “.” doesn’t work in that mode yet. Control-clicking on a parent object will select all the children just like in 2.79 though.
Q: How can I make a new scene or duplicate a scene in Blender 2.8?
A: Hit F3 and type in “scene” in the search box, it will give you the option to make a new scene with the same options as in Blender 2.79.
Q: How can I switch scenes in Blender 2.8?
A: Change outliner mode to “scenes” and simply click on the name of the scene you want to use. Unfortunately this feature seems prone to crashing Blender at the moment.
Q: How do you switch between vertex select mode, edge select mode and face select mode in 2.8?
A: These buttons are in the top row now. But there is also awesome news: the shortcuts are now much better than before: 1 for vertex select, 2 for edge select and 3 for face select.
Q: Why is ctrl+click extrusion not working in 2.8?
A: There is a “extrude to mouse cursor” tool now in edit mode. Just click on it and start clicking with the mouse.
Q: How can one hide the HDRi background when rendering in EEVEE?
A: Hiding it from the viewport while working is a bit more complex, but hiding it from the actual render only requires one to set film to transparent in the render settings, just like in Cycles.
Q: How can I hide a collection of objects from the render?
A: Simply uncheck the little checkbox next to the collection name in the outliner.