I have been completely unable to export anything using Blender 2.8
YABEE doesn’t work, the BAM exporter doesn’t work… Not even the directX plugin works!
What is the suggested exporter for Blender 2.8, or should I use another 3d modelling software instead?
I don’t know about 2.8, but I do find that YABEE works with 2.78c. If it’s feasible to use that version, then it may be worth trying!
Yeah, I have been trying to install blender 2.7 on my Linux computer but face weird build errors, probably to do with CUDA or my graphics card. Is there no other alternative?
I gather then that a pre-built version (i.e. just taken from the Blender download page) of Blender doesn’t work on your system either?
(For what it’s worth, I’m using a pre-built version of Blender 2.78c under Ubuntu Linux–but then, I may have different graphics hardware or system software to you.)
As to other options, I’m afraid that I’ll leave that to others–I don’t know what might be available.
I am trying the pre-built version now… hopefully it works!
I hope so too! Good luck! 
Yep, it works with the 2.78c version.
However, it would still be great if eventual support for Blender 2.8 was made
I have an exporter for 2.8 for geometry only. No animation, no materials. As for the materials, I think I need to write an editor for Panda3D, I see no reason to use shaders and nodes, and the standard description of the texture slots has been removed from Blender 2.8.
You can use blend2bam:
You can alternatively export to .gltf and use panda3d-gltf:
Although it might be worth noting that, based on the readme for blend2bam, under Blender 2.8 it will be using panda3d-gltf in the background.
Furthermore, it looks like feature support differs a little depending on whether it’s using the “panda3d-gltf” pipeline or the “YABEE” pipeline.
(But note that depending on one’s purposes, blend2bam using panda3d-gltf might be better than blend2bam using YABEE, or vice versa–it doesn’t look like one is strictly better than the other, just different.)
Yes I did try gltf but unfortunately it could not export the materials or textures (or at least didn’t know how to), as per serega’s comment:
Didn’t know about blend2bam though!
I had in mind my development as an exporter, this is the old version:
However, I can’t understand where the panda is going, a new format is being introduced with the loss of user data. I think this is a step backwards, unless, of course, the gltf 2.0 format is supplemented by a tag repository. It seems to me easier to develop a material editor on the panda3D engine to avoid confusion with beginners. Which are trying to export complex shader models from a blender.
The glTF pipeline out of Blender 2.8 and into Panda via panda3d-gltf is pretty touchy and requires some careful settings on both the exporter and the importer. blend2bam handles these settings for optimal compatibility.
Blender 2.8 does indeed require using material nodes in order to set up texturing. As long as you keep your node graph fairly straightforward, though, and stick to the Principled BRDF, blend2bam and/or the glTF exporter should have no trouble with this.