Blender 3.0(blender.org)
blender.org
Blender 3.0
https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-0/
264 comments
I have been using Blender for over 15 years and I also love it but also for different reasons.
When I started using Blender I came from 3DsMax. Max took almost half aminute to start, Blender maybe 2 seconds. And now, years later, Blender is still fast. The architecture is just very good. And maybe it's one of the best in the wold.
A lot of people hated the UI, but I always loved it. I love that you can arrange the panels the way you like. I wish programs like Photoshop could do this as well. And yes, since v2.8 everything became even better and the learning curve was lowered.
I also love all shortcuts and user interactions. This was really made for users. And maybe that's because Blender is mostly made by users.
And now v3.0! I am excited about two things: Cycles X (very fast rendering) and the overhauled Geometry Nodes.
I believe Geometry Nodes are the next big thing because this is Blender's answer to Houdini.
Edit: if you are interested in Geometry Nodes you should check out Erindale @ YT https://youtube.com/c/Erindale
He creates complete scenes without modeling a thing. The models are all procedurally built.
When I started using Blender I came from 3DsMax. Max took almost half aminute to start, Blender maybe 2 seconds. And now, years later, Blender is still fast. The architecture is just very good. And maybe it's one of the best in the wold.
A lot of people hated the UI, but I always loved it. I love that you can arrange the panels the way you like. I wish programs like Photoshop could do this as well. And yes, since v2.8 everything became even better and the learning curve was lowered.
I also love all shortcuts and user interactions. This was really made for users. And maybe that's because Blender is mostly made by users.
And now v3.0! I am excited about two things: Cycles X (very fast rendering) and the overhauled Geometry Nodes.
I believe Geometry Nodes are the next big thing because this is Blender's answer to Houdini.
Edit: if you are interested in Geometry Nodes you should check out Erindale @ YT https://youtube.com/c/Erindale
He creates complete scenes without modeling a thing. The models are all procedurally built.
OMG Erindale's voice is so soothing. I have nothing to do with blender or animation at all and I've just watched half of his hexagon video and it's just soo relaxing!
I really enjoyed this talk by Captain Disillusion at the Blender Conference 2018 where he goes over some of that - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qSTcxt2t74
Captain Disillusion is my hero. He is a fantastic storyteller, artist and skeptic.
All I’ve ever done is a donut tutorial but I still love it. A fun 8 or so hours!
It has been a few zears since I used Blender, because I don't do 3D modeling anymore. But I am following its development and man, this has become such an awesome project. I would not say that I "love" Blender, but I highly admire what has become of this software that when I worked with it was actually quite hard to use.
The video is Biggie, not Kanye!
I'm a solo game developer working in Unreal Engine. I typically buy environments and props from the Unreal Marketplace and modify them to meet my needs. Unreal's built-in modeling tools are usually enough for my purposes so I rarely open Blender, but when I do, I am so appreciative that this software exists and is free to use.
It's incredible how far Blender has come. I remember the days when time between significant releases was measured in years, not months. The progress they've made in recent years — particularly since Epic Games gave them a $1.2 million Epic MegaGrant — has been impressive, and encouraging to watch.
Thank you to all who fund Blender, and thank you especially to the people who make it. You're making a difference in the lives of many indie developers.
It's incredible how far Blender has come. I remember the days when time between significant releases was measured in years, not months. The progress they've made in recent years — particularly since Epic Games gave them a $1.2 million Epic MegaGrant — has been impressive, and encouraging to watch.
Thank you to all who fund Blender, and thank you especially to the people who make it. You're making a difference in the lives of many indie developers.
While there are so many things to dislike about Epic, I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day.
You can't really call them a broken clock for your own subjective view. Epic games makes good games and a phenomenal game engine that's allowed countless devs to make great games with great graphics.
A big plus for me is that they used their massive force to sue, and eventually budge Apple of their 30% revenue cut on their walled garden, but that's subjective.
A big plus for me is that they used their massive force to sue, and eventually budge Apple of their 30% revenue cut on their walled garden, but that's subjective.
They've also been subject to a class action lawsuit, the Epic Games Store they set up was so barebones and badly put together that there were major security breaches in the first few weeks. Refunds still don't work properly. They eventually resorted to bribing people with free games to join their platform, and pressuring devs into exclusive deals with lower platform cuts instead of fixing their damn product. Their handling of problems has usually been dismissive and out of touch and seems to lead to toxic communities around their games. They're as anti-consumer of a company as it gets, although nobody really beats EA there I guess.
I mean congrats, they sued Apple adding a precedent to let devs use external ways of paying for microtransactions, something 99% of actual devs don't have the infrastructure to do anyway. It only helps Epic stuff their face a bit more. Like winning a lawsuit that lets you run self-refined gas in your car or something.
Also they're owned by Tencent, so yeah.
I mean congrats, they sued Apple adding a precedent to let devs use external ways of paying for microtransactions, something 99% of actual devs don't have the infrastructure to do anyway. It only helps Epic stuff their face a bit more. Like winning a lawsuit that lets you run self-refined gas in your car or something.
Also they're owned by Tencent, so yeah.
> They eventually resorted to bribing people with free games to join their platform, and pressuring devs into exclusive deals with lower platform cuts instead of fixing their damn product.
You frame it as a bad thing but this is not a bad thing.
Epic seems like a pretty decent company overall. Not perfect by any measure of course.
You frame it as a bad thing but this is not a bad thing.
Epic seems like a pretty decent company overall. Not perfect by any measure of course.
Exclusive deals are bad for consumers - there's no way to frame it otherwise. And it's not like Epic paid full price for all of the games they gave away.
The only real downside for consumers is having to install Epics software. Exclusive deals tend to have a timelimit after which they can be distributed on other platforms as well. The upside is cheaper games and some badly needed competition for Steam.
They limit customer choice. Different platforms have different features and policies, which we should be able to pick between. If I want good Linux support, I go to Steam. If I wanted something else that someone else did better, I'd go there. With exclusives, that choice is gone.
Something a lot of people don't realize: they've taken like $3+ billion in private funding since 2018. I think a lot of those store exclusives and free games are investor money going up in flames lol
Just saying, but them giving out free games is actually much cheaper than advertising. If you checked the numbers from the Apple vs Epic lawsuit, you would see that they got new users extremely cheap.
Users who only take the free games and never spend a dime in the store, yes.
You don't need everyone to spend. Even if only like 1% or 2% of the acquired users purchase 1 or 2 full priced games year or multiple smaller ones they're already recouping the costs.
This feels like one of those "over-reacting to smallish issues" that to an outsider seem like a puzzling aspect of the gaming community.
(I play games occasionally and I follow trends but there's lots I don't get about the culture)
(I play games occasionally and I follow trends but there's lots I don't get about the culture)
> Also they're owned by Tencent, so yeah.
They own "only" 40% of Epics shares from what I can gather.
They own "only" 40% of Epics shares from what I can gather.
PC gamers just hate having any other game stores besides Steam. In the long run, a Steam only world is not good for anyone.
The first three parts of the Donut tutorial, updated for Blender 3, are here, as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw
I've only done a little bit with Blender as a hobbyist, but Andrew's tutorials are what really made it fun for me and helped things start to "click". If you've never used Blender but wanted to check it out, these are the tutorials you should use.
They never clicked for me, unfortunately, although I should give them another try.
I highly recommend https://academy.cgboost.com/p/resources
Also free of charge, and a very good presenter (if you can excuse the German accent).
But most people like the Donut tutorial, that's true.
I highly recommend https://academy.cgboost.com/p/resources
Also free of charge, and a very good presenter (if you can excuse the German accent).
But most people like the Donut tutorial, that's true.
A friend of mine just finished his Introduction to Blender series on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjcpPOioHUk
Have you tried it after 2.8? The interface is a lot more intuitive now.
I just started using blender this month - this tutorial series is great! The donut tutorial is a fantastic foundation for getting into blender. Make a surprisingly good looking render of a donut in an evening or two (including your own pausing and fiddling)!
I'm interested it for making 3d printing models, so it wasn't all relevant to my goals, but it gave me enough familiarity to know where things are well enough that I can get by pretty well through googling the rest. Lots more tutorial videos to dig into, but already feel like I have superpowers.
(I've been applying sculpting and textures to objects I modeled in OpenSCAD, super cool to be able to leave the high-tolerance surfaces alone and add rounding and interesting detail to everything else!)
I'm interested it for making 3d printing models, so it wasn't all relevant to my goals, but it gave me enough familiarity to know where things are well enough that I can get by pretty well through googling the rest. Lots more tutorial videos to dig into, but already feel like I have superpowers.
(I've been applying sculpting and textures to objects I modeled in OpenSCAD, super cool to be able to leave the high-tolerance surfaces alone and add rounding and interesting detail to everything else!)
> (I've been applying sculpting and textures to objects I modeled in OpenSCAD, super cool to be able to leave the high-tolerance surfaces alone and add rounding and interesting detail to everything else!)
Oh, that's a cool approach I don't think I've heard much about people using.
Oh, that's a cool approach I don't think I've heard much about people using.
Made this soda can holder mug with handle (that probably insulates decently with the infill airgaps) for my friend who likes memes and drinks way too much diet pepsi
https://imgur.com/a/DEWjDCx
Made a rough coffee mug with an internal diameter less than a millimeter greater than a soda can's circumference. Then smoothed and added the "Bepis" texture in blender.
In blender, started with some sculpting, then used the displacement modifier with a texture of a repeating image file and remapped the UV Map spherically with a tilt. It's easier than it sounds!
(Could have used blender for the whole thing, but I'm just more used to OpenSCAD, so used that for the base cup)
I've used this same UV mapping of textures for various christmas ornaments I'm making for this holiday season: can get some cool snowflake-ish patterns.
https://imgur.com/a/DEWjDCx
Made a rough coffee mug with an internal diameter less than a millimeter greater than a soda can's circumference. Then smoothed and added the "Bepis" texture in blender.
In blender, started with some sculpting, then used the displacement modifier with a texture of a repeating image file and remapped the UV Map spherically with a tilt. It's easier than it sounds!
(Could have used blender for the whole thing, but I'm just more used to OpenSCAD, so used that for the base cup)
I've used this same UV mapping of textures for various christmas ornaments I'm making for this holiday season: can get some cool snowflake-ish patterns.
Wow this guy is FUNNY. Thanks for sharing!
dymk(5)
Side note: It is very interesting to see how pro-blender everyone is. You know how there is almost always a group of people who will say something bad about an open source project (disclaimer: not judging the people or their potentially legitimate complaints, also I may be part of such groups). With blender, it's hard to see such a group. Maybe I am missing it? Maybe blender is actually doing incredibly well compared to othee projects? Not sure
To be fair, Blender is better than 99% of the projects I've ever seen, commercial or not. AND they are open source, AND they have a great community behind, AND they are also great at promotional bits like this page itself, AND they are being backed by large companies.
So IMHO it's one of the best executed desktop programs while also being in a massively difficult field, and they deserve the praise. In many places there are outliers like this; Stripe for Documentation, Wikipedia for encyclopedic knowledge, Google for search, etc.
The two main criticisms that I've found is that first the interface is very confusing (but this has been improved constantly in the last 5-10 years!). As a personal opinion, I believe this video was a big inflection point (Blender seemed stubborn before the video, but this video at the very least softened the opinion of Blender): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWacQrEcMHk
The second one is that it's not "industry standard", but as more and more people are using it for hobbies and indie projects, this will def change eventually, so I'm not too worried about that as well.
So IMHO it's one of the best executed desktop programs while also being in a massively difficult field, and they deserve the praise. In many places there are outliers like this; Stripe for Documentation, Wikipedia for encyclopedic knowledge, Google for search, etc.
The two main criticisms that I've found is that first the interface is very confusing (but this has been improved constantly in the last 5-10 years!). As a personal opinion, I believe this video was a big inflection point (Blender seemed stubborn before the video, but this video at the very least softened the opinion of Blender): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWacQrEcMHk
The second one is that it's not "industry standard", but as more and more people are using it for hobbies and indie projects, this will def change eventually, so I'm not too worried about that as well.
IMO the Blender project psychology gets this reception in part because it works very similar to general "doin' business" service psychology. Features requested are built; money requested is donated; resources are used for additional upgrades; industry-cooperative movements are made; progress is tracked, open, and accountable.
If you want a critical take on Blender therefore, for one you ought to look outside a community of business-minded devs. Look where artists hang out and you'll find a less rational take that is based on individual likes and dislikes. Where logic doesn't matter so much--it's how you feel. That's where you'll get into it. And if you look at other FOSS graphics software communities where the project lead is someone who just does whatever they want, even better, you'll find a group of users who either adapt or leave, and that's quite different from Blender's psychological development ecosystem in a lot of ways.
Alternately you could go more-business and go ask a SolidWorks user group to tell you how great Blender is. They will probably tell you how business is done properly and why the Blender way is clueless in various ways.
It so happens I ran an online community for another FOSS 3D package for over a decade. We got some people who were anti-Blender, and some who were pro-Blender. Often the anti-position was based in prefers-underdog reasons, which I understand. Even in FOSS there are some clear underdogs and people get upset when they like the underdog and continually see another project winning attention instead.
We also got some people who were pro-Blender, who thought that our community must be anti-Blender, because we were obviously "competitors in the space." In fact there was never a competitive mindset, it's more that people who lean into that business psychology of "here's how you win" think more often in terms of competition.
BTW Blender is definitely an awesome project, I've used it since 2002 and on various commercial projects in addition to hobby stuff.
If you want a critical take on Blender therefore, for one you ought to look outside a community of business-minded devs. Look where artists hang out and you'll find a less rational take that is based on individual likes and dislikes. Where logic doesn't matter so much--it's how you feel. That's where you'll get into it. And if you look at other FOSS graphics software communities where the project lead is someone who just does whatever they want, even better, you'll find a group of users who either adapt or leave, and that's quite different from Blender's psychological development ecosystem in a lot of ways.
Alternately you could go more-business and go ask a SolidWorks user group to tell you how great Blender is. They will probably tell you how business is done properly and why the Blender way is clueless in various ways.
It so happens I ran an online community for another FOSS 3D package for over a decade. We got some people who were anti-Blender, and some who were pro-Blender. Often the anti-position was based in prefers-underdog reasons, which I understand. Even in FOSS there are some clear underdogs and people get upset when they like the underdog and continually see another project winning attention instead.
We also got some people who were pro-Blender, who thought that our community must be anti-Blender, because we were obviously "competitors in the space." In fact there was never a competitive mindset, it's more that people who lean into that business psychology of "here's how you win" think more often in terms of competition.
BTW Blender is definitely an awesome project, I've used it since 2002 and on various commercial projects in addition to hobby stuff.
> it works very similar to general "doin' business" service psychology. Features requested are built; money requested is donated; resources are used for additional upgrades; industry-cooperative movements are made; progress is tracked, open, and accountable.
That sounds more like FLOSS done right than most "doin' business" available these days. If most "doin' business" worked as you describe, FLOSS wouldn't have eat so much market from them.
That sounds more like FLOSS done right than most "doin' business" available these days. If most "doin' business" worked as you describe, FLOSS wouldn't have eat so much market from them.
My main complaint about Blender that doesn't have to do with subjective things like the UI or whatever (which i mentioned elsewhere) is how the script APIs break all the time. I used to write scripts for it at the past but pretty much everything i wrote is now long broken and after the second time that happened i just gave up. Now if i want anything i just export to one of the formats that come bundled with Blender (most often OBJ) since these are the most likely to remain around across breakages (3rd party exporter plugins also break often) and use adhoc tools to do the processing. It does limit what i can do though.
It'd be nice if they made some sort of "stable" API that plugins can rely on in the long term, even if they had another one that is "better" (whatever their current definition of "better" might be).
It'd be nice if they made some sort of "stable" API that plugins can rely on in the long term, even if they had another one that is "better" (whatever their current definition of "better" might be).
I've noticed that if someones impression of Blender is pre-2.8, they see it more akin to GIMP compared to Photoshop. Post 2.8, especially with a lot of digital artists I know, are very enthusiastic about the tool.
Yeah and on that note I really would like a better Gimp. It's too clunky.
Give Krita a try, it is done in a similar manner to blender.
I completely agree, although GIMP does seem to be getting better as well.
I doubt the majority of the HN community does 3D modelling at a professional level so I assume most of this praise is more fandom and appreciation over direct experience.
Blender is indeed great but Maya is still extremely popular and many professionals happen to prefer Maya for one reason or another. I don't often see that fine grained of a discussion of media tools here.
Blender is indeed great but Maya is still extremely popular and many professionals happen to prefer Maya for one reason or another. I don't often see that fine grained of a discussion of media tools here.
Maya has been getting worse. But a lot of studios have built a lot of “pipeline” (ie automation and software to move and manage large projects) around Maya and apparently the Blender API is crap somehow (because everyone keeps telling me it is?)
My bet is Blender will become more standard in the next 10 years. It’s becoming big in gaming (I’ve heard)
My bet is Blender will become more standard in the next 10 years. It’s becoming big in gaming (I’ve heard)
Blender breaks their API. Maya breaking the API is huge news, and generally patched same-day. The APIs are different, with different tradeoffs, but the biggest by far is Maya isn't expected to break your automation pipeline, and that is worth a considerable amount.
This is the major issue (along with the shitty undo system and dependency graph) As someone who develops addons they break the API with every release often entirely unnecessarily (e.g making a bunch of arguments keyword only in a random selection of methods every release and not documenting this fully).
They also break the API accidentally frequently. My favourite is that they have accidentally inverted the direction of rotation of the rotation operator 4 times since 2.8 and randomly removed one of the modes that the UV Smart project operator worked in.
The documentation is also lacking for the API and none existent for the main code base.
Despite this Blender is amazing but I do wish they were more professional. From a developer point of view the two things that would make life vastly better is if they
a) hired a technical writer to produce decent docs
b) stopped breaking the API every 5 minutes and when they did documented it properly (and in advance)
They also break the API accidentally frequently. My favourite is that they have accidentally inverted the direction of rotation of the rotation operator 4 times since 2.8 and randomly removed one of the modes that the UV Smart project operator worked in.
The documentation is also lacking for the API and none existent for the main code base.
Despite this Blender is amazing but I do wish they were more professional. From a developer point of view the two things that would make life vastly better is if they
a) hired a technical writer to produce decent docs
b) stopped breaking the API every 5 minutes and when they did documented it properly (and in advance)
Maya requires to recompile native plugins for each new version though (unless this has changed recently?). The reason is that the Maya devs made the decision (back in the 90's) to use C++ APIs in DLLs for the plugin interface instead of a C API. Not their best decision in hindsight.
That is (was) a problem if it was built with MSVC. Build it with Gcc, and no. MSVC has lately been obliged to stabilize their ABI a bit, and now plugins are more implicitly stable.
So, not such a bad decision. Building with MSVC used to be a bad decision, less so now.
So, not such a bad decision. Building with MSVC used to be a bad decision, less so now.
Are GCC-built plugin DLLs compatible with Maya on Windows? When I dabbled with Maya plugin development up until a few years ago, one had to use a specific MSVC version to compile plugin DLLs.
I believe Clang is able to compile compatibly with MSVC. It would be good customer service for Autodesk to release a Gcc-built Maya, but I would not be surprised if they never do.
[deleted]
Recompiling per version is fairly minimal work.
Having to have divergent code paths per version is hell.
Blender has a Python API. Which is arguably one of the easiest languages to keep a stable API in, since you're not dealing with an ABI.
Yet that breaks regularly.
I'm okay if I had to recompile for every version of maya I support. I just don't want to have to have to maintain tons of ifdefs per version
Having to have divergent code paths per version is hell.
Blender has a Python API. Which is arguably one of the easiest languages to keep a stable API in, since you're not dealing with an ABI.
Yet that breaks regularly.
I'm okay if I had to recompile for every version of maya I support. I just don't want to have to have to maintain tons of ifdefs per version
There are definitely still some issues with it (e.g. the VSE is still not very good) but they're just so damn good at improving it how can you complain? That release video is insanely professional. It's probably the best run non-developer open source project that there is.
One important aspect of Blender as a project is that the technology is developed alongside a specific creative project with a specific goal (e.g. "Big Buck Bunny", "Sprite Fright").
The technology & the creative development are part of an intertwined process.
The technology & the creative development are part of an intertwined process.
I think I remember seeing people complain about its interface, but it's changed so much since then, I don't know if there are still people complaining.
Yeah they've done a remarkable job with the 2.80 update, the UI is pretty decent now.
Also its competitors are buggy-ass insanely overpriced monthly subscription proprietary editors, so no surprise there.
There are still things to complain about, like the undo speed, CSG modifier unreliability, lack of certain features, but none of them are strict deal breakers.
Also its competitors are buggy-ass insanely overpriced monthly subscription proprietary editors, so no surprise there.
There are still things to complain about, like the undo speed, CSG modifier unreliability, lack of certain features, but none of them are strict deal breakers.
Well, i do have complains about Blender's new interface: the new one feels "off" compared to 2.7x (something i never felt with the 2.4x -> 2.5x transition).
But it is minor... and i can still use 2.79 anyway :-P
But it is minor... and i can still use 2.79 anyway :-P
I really like Blender, especially as a modeler. The only major downside is the nightmarish user interface, which doesn't seem like it's gotten better in this release. They reverse most UI best practices, for example they had right click to select by default up until sometime last year. Their panel UI system is kludgey and painful. There's lots of hidden and non-obvious functionality. The benefits of Blender far outweigh the pain of learning the terrible UI though.
It’s because they see Blender as “fighting for open source” against 3DS Max and the others. People do the same thing with Godot. You used to see it with Firefox before some of the recent bad press.
I assign Blender success to first passing the "good enough" bar and then focusing on being attractive to beginners. Once enough beginners became addicted, there was no turning back and Blender slowly started to eat other communities. Development then was financed and a virtuous cycle started that made Blender the 3d modelling tool with the largest community of users ever.
There’s been bad press for Blender? Genuinely curious!
I think they meant bad press for Firefox.
If you want to see a different angle of what Blender is capable of, see Worthikids' channel, where almost every 2D cel-style and Rankin/Bass stop-motion style animation is made with Blender, and at least some (maybe all?) videos are also cut with Blender's video editing tools. https://youtube.com/c/Worthikids
In addition, there's an incredible 3D character creator named FlyCat who makes some absolutely insane timelapses. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnXU0MjnApXHZkf3uGYbLSA
Wow, just wow.
This is simply amazing.
If you want to learn digital sculpting and proper meshing (manually unfortunately, but still), this is a fantastic resource.
Thanks for the link.
This is simply amazing.
If you want to learn digital sculpting and proper meshing (manually unfortunately, but still), this is a fantastic resource.
Thanks for the link.
Is there work in AI/ML that is working to try and do this? Watching one of FlyCat's timelapses, I have no idea how you would go about that but it's incredible to dream of the possibility.
I don't think machine learning is necessary. There are tools like Character Creator and Metahuman.
In the same vein, there is also dedouze https://youtube.com/c/Dedouze who is doing amazing things with Blender.
Yep. My wife has been using Blender purely for video editing (no 3D modeling) for more than 10 years now. Apparently it's a bit weird to get used to, but very powerful.
I was thinking about trying that. Does she have recommendations for resources on how to get into that?
I remember seeing their videos mimicking Rankin/Bass and (at least initially) did not believe that they were done in Blender. They looked so much like the actual stop motion that it just didn't seem right.
After a minute or two I would occasionally find something that looked "CG-ish", but I wouldn't have found anything if I weren't looking.
It's amazing how good Blender has gotten.
After a minute or two I would occasionally find something that looked "CG-ish", but I wouldn't have found anything if I weren't looking.
It's amazing how good Blender has gotten.
His Patreon sometimes includes behind the scenes posts or clips that make it even more fascinating. He really does hand-animate a lot of pieces as if they were real objects in order to get that effect. Fun state of mind to get into.
https://www.youtube.com/c/GrantAbbitt has been another incredible resource for my recent dive into learning Blender.
I just scrolled through several pages of these videos and I'm only seeing one animation style?
"Captain Yajima" and "Dried Up Old Bones" are the claymation ones.
Actually I believe the Captain Yajima one is made in blender.
EDIT: Not sure why I'm being downvoted for this, I can't find any comment from the creator, but it's widely talked about in the CG community how impressive it is how they managed to mimic the stop motion style so closely.
Even little details like occasionally showing fake strings to make them seem like puppets.
https://twitter.com/catsuka/status/1389289376031588352?lang=...
EDIT: Not sure why I'm being downvoted for this, I can't find any comment from the creator, but it's widely talked about in the CG community how impressive it is how they managed to mimic the stop motion style so closely.
Even little details like occasionally showing fake strings to make them seem like puppets.
https://twitter.com/catsuka/status/1389289376031588352?lang=...
I meant that they're both faux-claymation-in-Blender :)
Blender is the best open source project around. Major kudos to everyone who works on it for making such an excellent tool
Yeah, it's been amazing to watch. I was one of the original funders back in 2002 to open source it. My career took another path and I never did more than mess around with Blender. But that, I think $100 (not small amount for me at the time), is the best, most proud/happy donation I've ever made.
[deleted]
I always post this link when Blender is discussed because it's so impressive. It shows what a single person can achieve in Blender. The visual effects and compositing have been created by Blender expert Ian Hubert. The video shows a (grimy) futuristic city scene. Green screen footage and the final shots created are shown side-by-side:
VFX Breakdown - Dynamo Dream Teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFJ_THGj72U
The full short Dynamo Dream was posted a few months ago by Hubert on his YouTube channel:
Episode 1 : Salad Mug - DYNAMO DREAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsGZ_2RuJ2A
VFX Breakdown - Dynamo Dream Teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFJ_THGj72U
The full short Dynamo Dream was posted a few months ago by Hubert on his YouTube channel:
Episode 1 : Salad Mug - DYNAMO DREAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsGZ_2RuJ2A
His series of one-minute "Lazy" tutorials are fantastic!
Make Nightmare Men in Blender - Lazy Tutorials
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgfJIZEDY44
Edit: Yes, I subscribe to his Paetron series to -- such awesome stuff!
Make Nightmare Men in Blender - Lazy Tutorials
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgfJIZEDY44
Edit: Yes, I subscribe to his Paetron series to -- such awesome stuff!
He has a great Patreon series too
https://www.patreon.com/IanHubert
I just dabble with blender but really enjoy his videos showing how he goes about various vfx with blender
https://www.patreon.com/IanHubert
I just dabble with blender but really enjoy his videos showing how he goes about various vfx with blender
I've been using blender to prototype an addition to my house. It was surprisingly easy to pick up and I'm frankly astounded by the polish and capabilities of this tool. It's possibly the most complete and professional open source project that I have ever used.
Not only did I have fun using learning how to use Blender, but the model of my home that I built has actually turned out to be very useful. The VR support is especially neat, as I can take out a wall in my living room and then stand in the new space and see if it the changes I made work in (virtual) reality.
Highly recommended for anyone else thinking about doing work on your house.
I'm also thinking about using it to design some simple furniture that I could build, though haven't looked much into that yet.
Not only did I have fun using learning how to use Blender, but the model of my home that I built has actually turned out to be very useful. The VR support is especially neat, as I can take out a wall in my living room and then stand in the new space and see if it the changes I made work in (virtual) reality.
Highly recommended for anyone else thinking about doing work on your house.
I'm also thinking about using it to design some simple furniture that I could build, though haven't looked much into that yet.
Blender is such an incredible piece of software. It’s a great example to show people what open source can be.
I have a company where I design custom jewelry with my customers fingerprints (https://lulimjewelry.com) and I use blender on the backend to automate it.
NYTimes maintains a blender docker container and I run it on google cloud run to take displacement maps and use them to “engrave” my jewelry and output an STL file. The displacement maps are generated client side using fabric.js
It’s awesome that blender can be run headless in a docker container. I’ve also been looking forward to these new blender apps. It seems like you can specify a paired down interface for blender so you could have it purpose built for a single task.
I have a company where I design custom jewelry with my customers fingerprints (https://lulimjewelry.com) and I use blender on the backend to automate it.
NYTimes maintains a blender docker container and I run it on google cloud run to take displacement maps and use them to “engrave” my jewelry and output an STL file. The displacement maps are generated client side using fabric.js
It’s awesome that blender can be run headless in a docker container. I’ve also been looking forward to these new blender apps. It seems like you can specify a paired down interface for blender so you could have it purpose built for a single task.
> NYTimes maintains a blender docker container
Interesting, anybody know what NYTimes uses it for? Can't find much information about it.
Interesting, anybody know what NYTimes uses it for? Can't find much information about it.
The New York times does various 3D graphics for some of their pieces, and has some very cool use of three.js etc..
They have an R&D page that goes into some of their 3D endeavours too https://rd.nytimes.com/projects/reconstructing-journalistic-...
They have an R&D page that goes into some of their 3D endeavours too https://rd.nytimes.com/projects/reconstructing-journalistic-...
Wow, had no idea they had an R&D page. There's some pretty cool stuff in there, thanks!
This is the release that rolls out their new rendering engine that they've been working on for a while: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Blender-...
Yep, specifically the offline rendering engine (they have a real time one too)
For anyone not familiar, "Cycles X" is the new offline (not realtime) renderer, replacing Cycles:
https://code.blender.org/2021/04/cycles-x/
The realtime renderer is EEVEE, slated for big upgrades in 3.x:
https://code.blender.org/2021/06/eevees-future/
https://code.blender.org/2021/04/cycles-x/
The realtime renderer is EEVEE, slated for big upgrades in 3.x:
https://code.blender.org/2021/06/eevees-future/
Cycles X, is essentially a rewrite of Cycles. Cycles-X no longer exists as it has been merged back into cycles.
Crazy performance gains!
Crazy performance gains!
Also Cycles is raytraced (or is it pathtraced?) while Eevee is rasterized.
Blender is one of the open source projects I'm super happy to sponsor. Please consider sponsoring it too (and/or any other open source projects you really like)
https://fund.blender.org/
https://fund.blender.org/
I find it amazing what open source and community can create! Here is a video of 20 interviews with people around the world on how they use Blender now:
https://youtu.be/rJ48-SYY1sQ
Also here is a link to their download page as the Blender home page seems to be slammed today: https://www.blender.org/download/
Also here is a link to their download page as the Blender home page seems to be slammed today: https://www.blender.org/download/
I would rather say it is amazing what €1.7mio of founding per year can do to a piece of software that has been lingering around for 26 years. https://fund.blender.org/
The support for the software is based on the hate of cloud-based subscription models of Autodesk et al.
Blender has all but lingered in the last 26 years. It gas been opensourced, The 2.3 - 2.5 transition (Sintel) was huge, the next versions have been super nice, with many important upgrades on editor, ui, a new cycles renderer...
I remember visiting Mexico from the US at the beginning of the current century and walking through a market and seeing bootleg DVDs for sale, nestled among the movies copies of AutoCad and Maya. Thinking, huh this software is really quite expensive and there must be demand for it world wide.
Being excellent, open source and free it pretty much changed the 3d software landscape globally.
I found it odd they didn't include that video on the homepage. Its pretty great showcase of the tool (I learned its python scriptable!)
Being excellent, open source and free it pretty much changed the 3d software landscape globally.
I found it odd they didn't include that video on the homepage. Its pretty great showcase of the tool (I learned its python scriptable!)
This has nothing to do with Blender specifically: is there, or why isn’t there, a DAW (Pro Tools, Logic Pro, etc.) that is relatively comparable with closed-source tools?
I’ve often heard the sound/plugin packs for DAW keep people on the paid products. Why shouldn’t there be a competitive open source option?
Edit to contextualize, and maybe an added question: Blender is amazing and competes in so many ways with high-cost, industry-standard software. How is the DAW world not a great analog and opportunity?
I’ve often heard the sound/plugin packs for DAW keep people on the paid products. Why shouldn’t there be a competitive open source option?
Edit to contextualize, and maybe an added question: Blender is amazing and competes in so many ways with high-cost, industry-standard software. How is the DAW world not a great analog and opportunity?
Completely subjective answer, but I suspect it's borne out of a need or necessity. 3D modelling/animation prior to Blender was really dominated by a few key players who were seemingly not afraid to be user hostile, or charge huge sums of money for their software, etc.
In the music production space, you have many DAWs being given away for free, or coming with your OS, or not costing exorbitant amounts of money. My guess is nobody has been motivated enough yet to do what people like Ton Roosendaal or Linus Torvalds have done and devote years of their life to producing a viable open source alternative to the closed source (and moreover, non-free) behemoths.
I do expect that it's only a matter of time, though.
In the music production space, you have many DAWs being given away for free, or coming with your OS, or not costing exorbitant amounts of money. My guess is nobody has been motivated enough yet to do what people like Ton Roosendaal or Linus Torvalds have done and devote years of their life to producing a viable open source alternative to the closed source (and moreover, non-free) behemoths.
I do expect that it's only a matter of time, though.
Ardour is pretty good. I use it for audio production on Linux and it has quite a few powerful features that many commercial DAWs don't. With Ardour 6 it introduced end to end latency compensation, which is a must have for complex projects, and the current development trunk includes a complete revamp of tempo handling that fixes longstanding issues with rounding error on MIDI region edges and such. I'm very much looking forward to the next release from that branch; it'll have solved all gripes I had with Ardour until now. They keep adding handy features, like the recent volume normalization feature that automatically ajusts your master gain to produce a master at the correct level for different streaming services.
Granted, it's not perfect - some people like some of the workflows, some don't - but I find it very good, especially if you spend some time customizing keyboard shortcuts and maybe adding a script or two (it's scriptable in Lua, and you can even write audio plug-ins in that)
It supports LV2 and VST2/3 plug-ins natively, and with Yabridge you can bridge Windows VST2/3 plug-ins very seamlessly.
(Full disclosure: I have a few bugfix patches in Ardour; I'm fairly committed to it for my needs and happy to help debug crashes and such, though these days they're very rare; the developers are very responsive on IRC though!)
Granted, it's not perfect - some people like some of the workflows, some don't - but I find it very good, especially if you spend some time customizing keyboard shortcuts and maybe adding a script or two (it's scriptable in Lua, and you can even write audio plug-ins in that)
It supports LV2 and VST2/3 plug-ins natively, and with Yabridge you can bridge Windows VST2/3 plug-ins very seamlessly.
(Full disclosure: I have a few bugfix patches in Ardour; I'm fairly committed to it for my needs and happy to help debug crashes and such, though these days they're very rare; the developers are very responsive on IRC though!)
I think there's a couple of reasons.
1) Blender is ~25 years old and has been open source for ~20. That's a lot of development hours.
2) Blender marketplace and the acceptance of the existence of paid addons by (most) of the Blender community means that addon developers can actually be paid for their work and to maintain their addons.
Addons add a lot of features that Blender doesn't have out of the box and if you're using blender professionally you are probably reliant on addons for your workflow and it is a pain when they break (which they do frequently because the API is so unstable).
Not being attacked, and even being encouraged to charge for open source software (and adddons are all open source) on the understanding that not all devs are lucky enough to work for faangs, be tenured professors or still live with our parents, and that we need to eat is something that is pretty unique in my experience.
1) Blender is ~25 years old and has been open source for ~20. That's a lot of development hours.
2) Blender marketplace and the acceptance of the existence of paid addons by (most) of the Blender community means that addon developers can actually be paid for their work and to maintain their addons.
Addons add a lot of features that Blender doesn't have out of the box and if you're using blender professionally you are probably reliant on addons for your workflow and it is a pain when they break (which they do frequently because the API is so unstable).
Not being attacked, and even being encouraged to charge for open source software (and adddons are all open source) on the understanding that not all devs are lucky enough to work for faangs, be tenured professors or still live with our parents, and that we need to eat is something that is pretty unique in my experience.
Could be a lot of reasons:
* There it's a strong "vendor lock" in DAWs (Studios don't like to invest in re-training their audio engineers)
* Lack of a strong initial sponsor that creates momentum.
* Codecs with patents that can be scary
* I don't want to imagine what a mess should be with the QA of the VTS plugins out there or things like ASIO drivers for interfaces.
Blender is a rare case: Exists in part thanks to a lot of studios taking the risk of using it, therefore a few professionals want to use it, which made more studios want to use it too and sponsor it, which attracted more users, creating momentum, then a positive feedback loop.
In any case, right now I'm happy with Reaper. It's cheap, reliable and easy to use. For people hardcore into the free software movement, are usually fine with audacity (at least the forks without spyware). I bet all that make the incentive to make a new FOSS DAW reduce even more.
* There it's a strong "vendor lock" in DAWs (Studios don't like to invest in re-training their audio engineers)
* Lack of a strong initial sponsor that creates momentum.
* Codecs with patents that can be scary
* I don't want to imagine what a mess should be with the QA of the VTS plugins out there or things like ASIO drivers for interfaces.
Blender is a rare case: Exists in part thanks to a lot of studios taking the risk of using it, therefore a few professionals want to use it, which made more studios want to use it too and sponsor it, which attracted more users, creating momentum, then a positive feedback loop.
In any case, right now I'm happy with Reaper. It's cheap, reliable and easy to use. For people hardcore into the free software movement, are usually fine with audacity (at least the forks without spyware). I bet all that make the incentive to make a new FOSS DAW reduce even more.
Slowly but surely trying to get https://ossia.io there :)
I always ask a similar question. But a project card Zrythm had my attention. I have yet to give it a spin, though.
for a fully-featured DAW there's Ardour https://ardour.org/ which supports lots of the proprietary plugins (VST etc.)
It’s been a number of years since I’ve been in the field but back in the day the paid plugins were everything. One couldn’t do business without them.
probably because developers tend to be more interested in 3D than music
It is truly amazing that I can download and use a tool with this much capability for free. What a time to be alive.
For more experienced users, I have a question;
Does anyone have an index of blender guides and tutorials, that are *NOT* hosted on youtube? Literally everything I'm finding insists on using a video for something that could be explained with a few images and paragraphs of text. It's incredibly frustrating.
Thank you Blender!
I'd like them to bring back some more of the game engine components.
I use Unity, but seeing what Blender can do, via their demo movies, I'd love to see a Blender Game Engine!
I'd like them to bring back some more of the game engine components.
I use Unity, but seeing what Blender can do, via their demo movies, I'd love to see a Blender Game Engine!
There is a project called UPBGE, it is a fork of the old game engine and being actively maintained. https://upbge.org/
Thank you, however as far as I know it's only one dev. Blender would probably need to pull this back into the core product for it to be useful.
A powerful mature engine with Python, one can dream.
A powerful mature engine with Python, one can dream.
There is a lot of effort to get Godot in that spot. 4.0 is going to be really good, especially for 3d.
How does Godot handle terrain ?
Unity is mainly useful since if you're willing to drop a few thousand dollars on assets, plus about 200 hours of your own personal time, you can have a shipable game in a month or so.
Godot looks really neat, but at least with my skill level I need a starter kit to get going on most projects. Then again, I know Godot's gotten a ton of funding lately so we'll see what happens.
Unity is mainly useful since if you're willing to drop a few thousand dollars on assets, plus about 200 hours of your own personal time, you can have a shipable game in a month or so.
Godot looks really neat, but at least with my skill level I need a starter kit to get going on most projects. Then again, I know Godot's gotten a ton of funding lately so we'll see what happens.
Eeeeh, maybe if you're extremely experienced in Unity you can have a shippable game in a month. There's a lot of jank in Unity that is non-obvious to inexperienced Unity users. I don't even mean inexperienced programmers. Between un-/under-documented features, surfing the wave of continuing to use "deprecated" features versus their incomplete replacements, and the general architectural problems baked deep into the core of Unity, it takes a lot of Unity-specific expertise to get a good game together.
It took longer than a month but I have shipped games for Unity before. Nothing groundbreaking, but if you want to make something simple, Unity is pretty easy. Now if you're pushing for a AAA title, are doing something really innovative, it might be a bit harder
There is a dev who specifically works in that area, can’t think of his name right now, but he works on terrains. There is already a free add on for Godot 3.
I too would love to have a Blender game engine. But removing it was the right (though painful) decision. It caused a code maintenance nightmare by duplicating and reimplementing a lot of other code, and removing it makes adding new things to Blender much easier (like Interactive Mode).
Back when I was using 3D Studio Max, I wished it had a fast sleek efficient minimal game engine runtime called "3D Studio Min", but that never panned out either.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/106972/what-will...
>As for the reasons for removal we can conclude it was an old and aging component, it was largely unmaintained, suffered from several bugs and limitations, and the Blender Foundation probably lacked the energy, motivation and manpower to maintain it properly.
>"Adding new things to Blender gets much easier that way. The Blender Internal code started in early 90s. Over 25 years old! Functionally, EEVEE can (and will) completely replace it." -Ton Roosendaal
>It was also very architecturally outdated, lagged severely behind the current industry standards and modern technologies in many ways, it would be very hard to bring it up to date. Modernizing it or introducing new features would end up being more work than a full rewrite from scratch. [...]
>What About Forking It?
>UPBGE is a third party fork, whose objective is updating and modernizing the BGE with better technologies and features, with the end goal of eventually merging it back with main Blender development branch.
>I fear its future is uncertain at this point unfortunately. While I believe Blender developers won't actively do anything to purposefully break Blender trunk codebase compatibility, I speculate it will naturally become increasingly hard for UPBGE developers to maintain their code working, as features are removed and main Blender development deviates further from the current design. [...]
>There have been talks about replacing the old game engine with a newer better integrated "Interactive Mode". It would be a more integral part of Blender, as opposed to a separate component with a lot of duplicated code that re-implemented a very limited subset of supported features we currently have.
>This is not meant to be a direct replacement of the old BGE, nor a discrete game engine in the traditional sense with wide publishing capabilities, rather more of an integrated real-time "presentation tool" or interaction mode with a physics simulation sandbox environment, that runs directly inside Blender's viewport on currently supported platforms.
>On 28 May 2018 Ton Roosendaal announced in the Developers Mailing list that a portion of the 2.8 Code Quest funds were reserved for the development of a new and improved real time rendering system or "Interactive Mode" and Benoit Bolsee, a developer historically known for his involvement in real time side of Blender, accepted a grant to work part time on this for one year.
https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2018-May/0...
https://www.blender.org/2-8/quest/
https://code.blender.org/2013/06/blender-roadmap-2-7-2-8-and...
>I speculate this will probably feature a new node based workflow and logic system, real time physics, and integrate well with other upcoming features like "Object Nodes" also known as "Everything Nodes" in one way or another.
Back when I was using 3D Studio Max, I wished it had a fast sleek efficient minimal game engine runtime called "3D Studio Min", but that never panned out either.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/106972/what-will...
>As for the reasons for removal we can conclude it was an old and aging component, it was largely unmaintained, suffered from several bugs and limitations, and the Blender Foundation probably lacked the energy, motivation and manpower to maintain it properly.
>"Adding new things to Blender gets much easier that way. The Blender Internal code started in early 90s. Over 25 years old! Functionally, EEVEE can (and will) completely replace it." -Ton Roosendaal
>It was also very architecturally outdated, lagged severely behind the current industry standards and modern technologies in many ways, it would be very hard to bring it up to date. Modernizing it or introducing new features would end up being more work than a full rewrite from scratch. [...]
>What About Forking It?
>UPBGE is a third party fork, whose objective is updating and modernizing the BGE with better technologies and features, with the end goal of eventually merging it back with main Blender development branch.
>I fear its future is uncertain at this point unfortunately. While I believe Blender developers won't actively do anything to purposefully break Blender trunk codebase compatibility, I speculate it will naturally become increasingly hard for UPBGE developers to maintain their code working, as features are removed and main Blender development deviates further from the current design. [...]
>There have been talks about replacing the old game engine with a newer better integrated "Interactive Mode". It would be a more integral part of Blender, as opposed to a separate component with a lot of duplicated code that re-implemented a very limited subset of supported features we currently have.
>This is not meant to be a direct replacement of the old BGE, nor a discrete game engine in the traditional sense with wide publishing capabilities, rather more of an integrated real-time "presentation tool" or interaction mode with a physics simulation sandbox environment, that runs directly inside Blender's viewport on currently supported platforms.
>On 28 May 2018 Ton Roosendaal announced in the Developers Mailing list that a portion of the 2.8 Code Quest funds were reserved for the development of a new and improved real time rendering system or "Interactive Mode" and Benoit Bolsee, a developer historically known for his involvement in real time side of Blender, accepted a grant to work part time on this for one year.
https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2018-May/0...
https://www.blender.org/2-8/quest/
https://code.blender.org/2013/06/blender-roadmap-2-7-2-8-and...
>I speculate this will probably feature a new node based workflow and logic system, real time physics, and integrate well with other upcoming features like "Object Nodes" also known as "Everything Nodes" in one way or another.
I'm a big confused, why can't interactive mode become a game engine?
Unfortunately blender is GPL, but otherwise I would wonder if the Godot team could just use blender's rendering engine instead of implementing their own.
I will say blender is exceptionally polished, probably the best open source content creation tool ever made. We'll see what Godot comes up with next year
Unfortunately blender is GPL, but otherwise I would wonder if the Godot team could just use blender's rendering engine instead of implementing their own.
I will say blender is exceptionally polished, probably the best open source content creation tool ever made. We'll see what Godot comes up with next year
The blender's internal datastructures are optimized for editing. Game engines use optimized data structures for rendering, the conversion is usually done offline. The interactive viewport could be bundled with "export as a game" option i guess, where the exported version would run faster.
Definitely, I’m very interested in blender as a better Unity
There’s armory3d which is impressive but it’s still early days
There’s armory3d which is impressive but it’s still early days
Recent and related:
Blender 3.x roadmap - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024572 - Oct 2021 (114 comments)
Blender 3.x roadmap - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024572 - Oct 2021 (114 comments)
I'm noticing a lot of interesting extensions coming out for Blender, especially in the Retogo and skinning area which was always a headache. I guess being able to code in Python instead of MaxScript or MEL (althought it looks like Maya does support python now?) gives you a healthier ecosystem.
Maya has been supporting Python for a long long time, it even supports Python 3 now. There is no more need to use MELscript to develop tools for it anymore, even though some commands are run using the MELscript wrapper in Python, but even then it's very rare.
Pretty much all the tools I've developed in the past couple of years for AAA games have been almost exclusively made with Python.
One of them we even developed tools to be DCC agnostic, which means that they could run both in Maya and 3ds Max flawlessly.
Pretty much all the tools I've developed in the past couple of years for AAA games have been almost exclusively made with Python.
One of them we even developed tools to be DCC agnostic, which means that they could run both in Maya and 3ds Max flawlessly.
High performance Maya and Max plug-ins are written with C++ APIs. Blender doesn’t have a binary plugin API because of GPL.
Surely licensing can't be the reason. Firstly, there is no distribution happening here - a plugin written against the Blender API and shipped separately is no different from NVIDIA's proprietary driver for Linux.
The usual GPL issue around plugins is whether program+plugin are a "mere aggregate" or a "derivative work". This doesn't really matter if they aren't distributed together, but even if it did, the question is no easier to answer in the case of interpreted vs compiled code. They are still running in the same process, exchanging internal data structures through direct procedure calls. It just so happens that one is running through a translation layer.
If that translation layer protects you, then you could just as easily enjoy that protection by running binary plugins through a no-op emulator.
And regardless of all of this, there's no reason Blender Python plugins can't use Python native extensions for performance. FLIP Fluids, for example, has a C++ fluid sim engine and uses Python just for the interface to Blender.
The usual GPL issue around plugins is whether program+plugin are a "mere aggregate" or a "derivative work". This doesn't really matter if they aren't distributed together, but even if it did, the question is no easier to answer in the case of interpreted vs compiled code. They are still running in the same process, exchanging internal data structures through direct procedure calls. It just so happens that one is running through a translation layer.
If that translation layer protects you, then you could just as easily enjoy that protection by running binary plugins through a no-op emulator.
And regardless of all of this, there's no reason Blender Python plugins can't use Python native extensions for performance. FLIP Fluids, for example, has a C++ fluid sim engine and uses Python just for the interface to Blender.
I have used Blender running headless to generate automated slideshow service for a custom gifting song startup I was a part of. After some initial hiccups getting it packaged (running a 2.78 version while cycles was being rewritten). I can't not speak highly enough about the tools and ecosystem that the community has assembled. There is no other tool that was suitable for the type of dynamic video editing via script control that is also open source. Congratulations on the new release team!
Why are there no torrents offered? The server is clearly under load.
If anyone already has the files and cares to share the magnet, I'll gladly help with seeding.
If anyone already has the files and cares to share the magnet, I'll gladly help with seeding.
Steam is another way to get it if you have it installed.
Such a weird way to me.
Thank you, I completely forgot it was on Steam.
Related: Shout out to Blender's Open Movie Project
https://www.blender.org/about/studio/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_Foundation
What is wrong with Blender lately? Everyone in a workaholic phase?
Much appreciated of course!
Much appreciated of course!
They are now funded by all major tech companies. So much for not being "industry standard" (by so many Maya or 3ds Max artists I talked to).
Receiving a lot of funding from tech companies is not synonymous with being widely used within the M&E industry (can't speak for other industry verticals). That's on the studios and artists, not funders. Being an industry standard requires a certain level of entrenchment/integration/mindshare that Blender does not have yet.
> Being an industry standard requires a certain level of entrenchment/integration/mindshare that Blender does not have yet.
In concrete terms, it means convincing universities to train students on your tools. Autodesk has the dollars to spend on efforts like that.
In concrete terms, it means convincing universities to train students on your tools. Autodesk has the dollars to spend on efforts like that.
it also mean having high end plugins and integrating well with other industry-standard tools. That doesn't matter for home/amateurs users because you can't afford these tools anyway, but it does for studios.
Blender has been showing up in more and more professional studios, particularly in the gaming and media segments - I think it's still pretty rare in the ArchViz space.
Blender isn't THE industry standard by any means, but I don't think it would be a stretch to call it an industry standard. EA uses it for a lot of their concept work, Ubisoft uses it for their animation studio, it's the modelling tool at Infinity Ward, etc.
Blender isn't THE industry standard by any means, but I don't think it would be a stretch to call it an industry standard. EA uses it for a lot of their concept work, Ubisoft uses it for their animation studio, it's the modelling tool at Infinity Ward, etc.
From what I have read and people I've spoken with, the games industry definitely uses Blender the most out of Games, VFX/Anim, and ArchViz. But the latter two, not so much out of isolated pockets, and usually nothing past the modeling phase. I'm coming from the studio VFX/Anim side, so I'm biased in that regards to my viewpoint in adoption.
Being funded by tech companies doesn't make it industry standard. For one...the tech companies aren't the industry to begin with.
It definitely is a strong show of support for Blender, but there aren't a lot of studios in the industry using Blender, so it's quite far from being anything like a standard yet.
It definitely is a strong show of support for Blender, but there aren't a lot of studios in the industry using Blender, so it's quite far from being anything like a standard yet.
What are your sources? From what I hear, few friends in CG, Blender is gaining ground. Don’t know if there is an official statistic anywhere.
My sources are that I am very involved in the 3D industry groups.
Blender is gaining ground, yes, but most studios are very much Maya based still with Blender used sparingly.
The one major Blender studio (Tangent) has also shuttered and were mid moving away from Blender at the time. I think the next biggest users of Blender are a division within Ubisoft, but it's not the primary DCC for Ubisoft in it's entirety either.
Where Blender is gaining most traction is freelance artists and people who don't need to work with a pipeline. Blender is slowly getting better for Pipeline integration, but it really doesn't like to play well yet within a studio where you're dealing with many different artists working on a shot, in possibly multiple DCCs.
Blender is gaining ground, yes, but most studios are very much Maya based still with Blender used sparingly.
The one major Blender studio (Tangent) has also shuttered and were mid moving away from Blender at the time. I think the next biggest users of Blender are a division within Ubisoft, but it's not the primary DCC for Ubisoft in it's entirety either.
Where Blender is gaining most traction is freelance artists and people who don't need to work with a pipeline. Blender is slowly getting better for Pipeline integration, but it really doesn't like to play well yet within a studio where you're dealing with many different artists working on a shot, in possibly multiple DCCs.
This release adds import of USD files which should make Blender fit in more nicely in pipelines.
The new asset browser is also another great addition for plugging into pipelines.
The new asset browser is also another great addition for plugging into pipelines.
I still would rather us 3DS max over blender, it still feels like using GIMP after using Photoshop productively for years.
Then use that software if you prefer the UX.
As an anecdote, I installed GIMP for my son 6 years ago, who is now going to college to be a graphics designer. He did all of his digital artwork in GIMP and Krita, now Blender as well, for the whole length of that time.
He now has to use Photoshop for his classes. There are some tools in it he is impressed with but overall doesn’t care for Photoshop at all.
As an anecdote, I installed GIMP for my son 6 years ago, who is now going to college to be a graphics designer. He did all of his digital artwork in GIMP and Krita, now Blender as well, for the whole length of that time.
He now has to use Photoshop for his classes. There are some tools in it he is impressed with but overall doesn’t care for Photoshop at all.
I want to use blender and I'm sure they would get a lot more acceptance if they fix the one thing people have been complaining about for YEARS! That's great for your son but no credible agency will use GIMP. Krita is awesome and I love it and comes the closest to an open source alternative to PS, it is much better than GIMP in everyway and is actually usable.
Unfortunately the industry doesn't care if he doesn't care about photoshop, it cares about it and if he wants to be a part of it he should start learning to care unless his work is beyond amazing and he will only be freelancing then ignore everything I said.
Photoshop is not impressive but it gets the job done quickly and smoothly with minimal friction and that's why it is number one.
Unfortunately the industry doesn't care if he doesn't care about photoshop, it cares about it and if he wants to be a part of it he should start learning to care unless his work is beyond amazing and he will only be freelancing then ignore everything I said.
Photoshop is not impressive but it gets the job done quickly and smoothly with minimal friction and that's why it is number one.
Would you mind elaborating on what complaints you mean? Blender has had multiple major UI overhauls in the past few years, and changed a lot of basic command assignments in the process. They even moved selection from the right mouse button to the left button. That was the #1 complaint I used to hear all the time from everyone, and it was resolved a couple years ago. So I’m very curious what you’re referring to, and whether you’ve used it recently.
The industry complains plenty about Adobe cloud and the lock in of their products. They strongly need a competitor. Pipelining is a problem because designers rarely are experts for digital formats, but when more people switch, this is a temporary inconvenience.
I agree with GIMP vs Photoshop ui-wise, but in the case of Blender IMHO it is the total opposite. Even if it were free I find 3DS ui unsufferable.
I guess that’s what happens when personal interest is aligned with organisational objectives. Rare.
Check out the improvements that can be done by simply doing the sensible thing and using zstd: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0/Co...
Can seasoned Blender users can visualize and compose Geometry Node graphs in their minds? It seems to me that it would be pretty hard, simply because of their clunky design.
In my opinion, the only thing missing from Blender's amazing Geo Node system is icons, i.e. something compact and symbolic that one can store in their mental space as they would a word when composing a sentence.
I do also feel like a top down flow is more conductive to "process-oriented" or procedural design. I've done my fair share of procedural visual scripting with nodal systems such as UE4's Blueprints, PopcornFX or Blender's Geometry Nodes and none of them feel as "natural" as Houdini's.
It almost feels as though vertical lines occupy less space in my mind than horizontal lines do. Perhaps it's because our brains are hardwire to deal with lots of top down structured environments (plants, tree-trunks, other Sapiens).
I do also feel like a top down flow is more conductive to "process-oriented" or procedural design. I've done my fair share of procedural visual scripting with nodal systems such as UE4's Blueprints, PopcornFX or Blender's Geometry Nodes and none of them feel as "natural" as Houdini's.
It almost feels as though vertical lines occupy less space in my mind than horizontal lines do. Perhaps it's because our brains are hardwire to deal with lots of top down structured environments (plants, tree-trunks, other Sapiens).
> I do also feel like a top down flow is more conductive to "process-oriented" or procedural design. I've done my fair share of procedural visual scripting with nodal systems such as UE4's Blueprints, PopcornFX or Blender's Geometry Nodes and none of them feel as "natural" as Houdini's.
I agree with this. I've never used Houdini, but I have used Max/MSP and after using that, always found the horizontal visual programming systems very clunky and, as you say, they just feel like they take up a lot lot more space. Of course, Max's nodes are quite compact in comparison to something like Blueprints, but horizontal ones always are because each additional input/output makes the node one connection taller, while with a vertical layout you tend to fit many connections in the available width (of course, connection labels aren't clearly visible in that case, but I find that's something you get accustomed to).
Personally, I greatly prefer a vertical layout for visual programming systems.
I agree with this. I've never used Houdini, but I have used Max/MSP and after using that, always found the horizontal visual programming systems very clunky and, as you say, they just feel like they take up a lot lot more space. Of course, Max's nodes are quite compact in comparison to something like Blueprints, but horizontal ones always are because each additional input/output makes the node one connection taller, while with a vertical layout you tend to fit many connections in the available width (of course, connection labels aren't clearly visible in that case, but I find that's something you get accustomed to).
Personally, I greatly prefer a vertical layout for visual programming systems.
Vertical node graphs like Houdini, Nuke or Katana tend to work for "pass the world" , whereas horizontal ones allow for more data specific passing instead.
It's just a difference of approach in what's going from one to the other. Houdini for example switches to horizontal data passing for VOPs.
I find horizontal data graphs easier to reason about at a glance, whereas vertical ones are easier to quickly prototype things.
Horizontal is just more explicit about data flow.
It's just a difference of approach in what's going from one to the other. Houdini for example switches to horizontal data passing for VOPs.
I find horizontal data graphs easier to reason about at a glance, whereas vertical ones are easier to quickly prototype things.
Horizontal is just more explicit about data flow.
I started with Blender, but have been working a bit in Houdini over the past quarter. I feel like both models work for both programs, and I find it pretty natural to work in a vertically oriented system in Houdini (outside of VOPs) and the horizontally oriented system in Blender.
Vertical nodes don't easily allow for the port names to be displayed.
I'm new to programming and always hear that it's a good idea to contribute to active open source projects you care about to show what you know.
I think Blender is a project I'd be really excited to contribute to. Are there any tasks that might be worthwhile for a beginner? Or am I aiming out of my league?
I think Blender is a project I'd be really excited to contribute to. Are there any tasks that might be worthwhile for a beginner? Or am I aiming out of my league?
FWIW I would encourage you to start by seeing if you can find an answer to your first question.
As a general tip over recent years there has been a growth in "standard" ways that a project can communicate tasks/bugs/issues that are particularly well suited for people to start their involvement with a Free/Open Source project by highlighting ways someone can get involved as new contributor.
As a general tip over recent years there has been a growth in "standard" ways that a project can communicate tasks/bugs/issues that are particularly well suited for people to start their involvement with a Free/Open Source project by highlighting ways someone can get involved as new contributor.
I've actually already read the 'getting started with development' pages. I just want to take HN's temperature on how challenging it would be/ the likelihood of that project accepting submissions from a novice.
Blender is an inspiring open source project. Absolutely killing it.
Blender's 2.9 release was what did it for me. That team is on fire.
I'll hype Krita's 5.0 release (still in beta) - it has the same "turnaround" feel.
Thanks, everyone, for plugging the donut tutorial link! Checked it out today. 3D modeling has lots of subtle, jarring nuances and the author addresses them head-on. Recommended.
It's exciting to see libre software becoming so refined. Several projects are serious about managing the triangle of UI, stability, and features. These tools aren't "in the artists' way" anymore.
I'll hype Krita's 5.0 release (still in beta) - it has the same "turnaround" feel.
Thanks, everyone, for plugging the donut tutorial link! Checked it out today. 3D modeling has lots of subtle, jarring nuances and the author addresses them head-on. Recommended.
It's exciting to see libre software becoming so refined. Several projects are serious about managing the triangle of UI, stability, and features. These tools aren't "in the artists' way" anymore.
I've been using Blender for years as a video editor. As a performer, I need to be able to make decent promo videos, but I rarely do this more than once in a year. Blender gives me everything I need to make really nicely edited videos free, with far better control of the timing of audio and video crossfades than other free options (an important part for a promo video).
Are there release notes? Blender usually does a really nice release notes page showing off the new features.
This is what happens with long-awaited Linux distribution or web browser releases, as well: final binaries are uploaded, so they can propagate to the mirrors, and someone posts it “prematurely”.
(I don't mind, I like this kind of heads-up.)
Release notes will be there when the release is officially announced and linked from Blender's home page.
(I don't mind, I like this kind of heads-up.)
Release notes will be there when the release is officially announced and linked from Blender's home page.
Cheers, thanks. Really looking forward to using the Asset Browser and Geometry Nodes.
The link is literally to a release notes page with two demo reels and a description of the new features
I've been using Blender for as long as I've been using computers. I learned 3D modelling including level design, learned programming by making small games with BGE, used it to make a client's business card stand out with 3D effects, created 2D and 3D YouTube intros for my brother and a LOT more. I even managed to make some real money in difficult times to support my family, thanks to Blender.
Blender is probably the most important part of my life software-wise, and it bugs me that I never managed to use it (even older versions) at its fullest.
Congratulations to all the people behind this behemoth of a software who carried and carries many of the best artists out there. If I ever get anywhere in life with game development / 3d art I'll wholehartedly credit Blender.
Blender is probably the most important part of my life software-wise, and it bugs me that I never managed to use it (even older versions) at its fullest.
Congratulations to all the people behind this behemoth of a software who carried and carries many of the best artists out there. If I ever get anywhere in life with game development / 3d art I'll wholehartedly credit Blender.
AMD HIP/ROCm support is there but AMD still hasn't released drivers supporting it.
Funny -- going on a decade ago, Blender had OpenCL support, but the AMD drivers were so bad that OpenCL support was only usable on NVidia cards. Still not as good as CUDA, though. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
AMD Blog: "Our AMD Radeon™ Software Adrenalin 21.12.1 or Radeon PRO Software for Enterprise 21.Q4 (or newer) drivers are required to use Cycles in Blender 3.0. Support is currently validated on AMD Radeon PRO W6800 and AMD Radeon RX 6000 series desktop GPUs and enabled on other AMD RDNA™ and AMD RDNA 2 architecture graphics cards."
https://community.amd.com/t5/radeon-pro-graphics/blender-3-0...
There are beta drivers available for testing. https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-2...
An interesting area I know of where Blender is used professionally is rough animation: such as the French film 'I Lost My Body'; the Irish film 'Wolfwalkers'; and multiple anime, including the recent 'Ranking of Kings'.
An animation company in Wales, https://www.clothcatanimation.com/cloth-cat-awarded-epic-meg..., is using Blender, but I'm not sure what for.
An animation company in Wales, https://www.clothcatanimation.com/cloth-cat-awarded-epic-meg..., is using Blender, but I'm not sure what for.
love to see blender popping up here on hacker news and you folks liking it. Blender is awesome and has grown into a really polished piece of software.
It would make a really good research/documentary to go behind the history and the growth of blender. I bet we can learn ton of lessons in software engineering, open source software management, creative tool creation and herding open source communities.
It would make a really good research/documentary to go behind the history and the growth of blender. I bet we can learn ton of lessons in software engineering, open source software management, creative tool creation and herding open source communities.
Please check freemocap, I guess it exports blender files but I'm not sure. I really hope it would enable people to make better animation.
I haven't had much time for Blender lately and need to correct that. I also need to look more closely at the changes. I know something about an asset manager and a bunch of new nodes in the procedural geometry work, but beyond that I'm behind. And sadly Steam hasn't gotten the new binaries yet and I am lazy so like letting steam manage this one for me.
I don't see much mention in the changelogs for texture baking. I used blender for a website which has 3D models with baked textures, and the workflow for creating those textures was very convoluted. It's a great feature for applications where the lighting doesn't change, it just needs a better UI and workflow on top of it.
How many years of study and practice would it take to do anything shown in that demo reel? I have downloaded Blender several times over the last decades, thinking I would watch some tutorials and learn something, but always gave up having failed to model so much as a solid cube.
You have to find your path, that's where the subjective energy comes from. The thing about a demo reel is that you're automatically focusing in on someone else's deep and subjective set of interests (or a group of users' various sets). So it's often way too objective (in terms of psychological distance) a lens through which to be able to see a good starting point for one's humble own self.
Personally I eventually found my way in by focusing on lighting and procedural textures. I got really good at making decked-out spheres. :-) It's still a favorite doodling activity. In the process of learning I ended up contributing to Wikipedia articles on things like global illumination, and some of my texturing images are still up there.
(And to this day I don't find the modeling part that interesting. One of my projects was in the 2005 Blender showreel I think, it was just a simple project that seemed fun and I couldn't wait to have the modeling part complete)
Personally I eventually found my way in by focusing on lighting and procedural textures. I got really good at making decked-out spheres. :-) It's still a favorite doodling activity. In the process of learning I ended up contributing to Wikipedia articles on things like global illumination, and some of my texturing images are still up there.
(And to this day I don't find the modeling part that interesting. One of my projects was in the 2005 Blender showreel I think, it was just a simple project that seemed fun and I couldn't wait to have the modeling part complete)
[deleted]
Do some tutorials, or even a paid course. Just like no DAW will replace the need to understand and practice music theory, Blender will never replace the need to understand and be able to work properly with 3D space.
I adore Blender. I use it for fun, to make animation for lectures (fluid mechanics) and even as a research tool.
I’ve helped my colleagues and my students use it for a range of different applications from communication of science to the implementation of simple physics simulations to explore chaos.
It’s just amazing.
I’ve helped my colleagues and my students use it for a range of different applications from communication of science to the implementation of simple physics simulations to explore chaos.
It’s just amazing.
[deleted]
I'm wanting to get into making 2d-ish explainer videos similar to the 3Blue1Brown math videos but much simpler for language/grammar explanations. Is Blender a good tool for that job or would it be better to use a simpler tool like Apple Motion?
[deleted]
Is this the most successful ones source software in history? I mean one that might be considered on par with the very top of the commercial software, maybe even better? Has there ever been anything like that?
My son ran a render last night using the e-Cycles render engine: 12 minutes. Same scene today on Blender 3 with the new version of Cycles (aka Cycles-X): 5 minutes.
12 mins to 5 mins with a software upgrade is pretty good!
12 mins to 5 mins with a software upgrade is pretty good!
Honestly I'm a bit disappointed with their geometry nodes project. I went into it expecting a generic visual scripting language aimed at generate geometry. That IS what it is to an extent, but the design decisions are strange and limiting to say the least.
The main issue is that data is only stored in the geometry itself, per-vertex. So if you just want a single variable you're out of luck. Math operations operate on vertices so you can't just multiply two numbers, you have to store a number in each vertex, then multiply all vertices by the same value. It's like every node is for-loop that loops over vertices.
This limited design is useful for certain things like scattering rocks over terrain but not much else.
The main issue is that data is only stored in the geometry itself, per-vertex. So if you just want a single variable you're out of luck. Math operations operate on vertices so you can't just multiply two numbers, you have to store a number in each vertex, then multiply all vertices by the same value. It's like every node is for-loop that loops over vertices.
This limited design is useful for certain things like scattering rocks over terrain but not much else.
Check out the Nodevember geometry nodes entries this year. You can accomplish quite a lot with it as it is. Also, the implementation in 3.0 is very different from the one in 2.93.
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23nodevember2021%23geometrynod...
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23nodevember2021%23geometrynod...
I think what you wrote here is just straightforwardly not correct, eg. you can absolutely set a variable and multiply arbitrary numbers in addition to working with vertex data. There are also a lot of other ways to store and interact with data, eg. textures (either procedural or painted). Maybe you should have another look.
[deleted]
Blender is great... I just tried a bunch of free/open apps to do boolean operations on complex STL files, and it was the best performing one... most completely failed.
My wish list for the future is a better API story
And the ability to write plugins in C, or rather offer a native api so i can use my language of choice, i despise python..
And the ability to write plugins in C, or rather offer a native api so i can use my language of choice, i despise python..
Is Blender substantially different/better than, say, Cinema 4D? Or are people more excited about it because it's free/open source?
A mix of both. It does do somethings much better (like the 2D drawing etc) and viewport quality, but lags in others (like pipelinability, renderer integrations, materials etc...). The free part is a big draw of course.
>materials
Not sure I agree here! I work primarily in Substance Designer and Painter these days because I want more portability and basically everything has a substance plugin, or at worst I can export them for a regular PBR workflow, and I've played around with mari, and there's yet to be a situation where I thought I couldn't do the same thing with blender's node system.
Not sure I agree here! I work primarily in Substance Designer and Painter these days because I want more portability and basically everything has a substance plugin, or at worst I can export them for a regular PBR workflow, and I've played around with mari, and there's yet to be a situation where I thought I couldn't do the same thing with blender's node system.
I guess I should have elaborated more, but I meant extensible materials. Other DCCs let you extend them with custom material types that map to renderers. Blender is kind of "use our tools or fork the app" instead.
It is mainly a side grade, if you are a 3D modeler by trade then I would tell you to learn it anyway because blender is being developed at a *far* faster pace than any other dcc packages maybe other than Houdini
Oh shit oh shit, so I don't have to use prerelease versions to use my new nodes setups anymore soon.
Is it just me or they added antialising/Lanczos resampling to the render window?
"Removed features and compatibility"
You don't read that very often in changelogs.
You don't read that very often in changelogs.
How different is Blender to 3DS Max and Maya? Anyone have experience with both?
I didn't use 3DS MAX for 15 years so I can't tell you how it is now.
Maya is the videogame industry standard for modeling, just like ZBrush is the industry standard for sculpting. It is almost 100% non destructive-editing and integrate with studios asset pipelines perfectly in various ways. It's paid and closed source.
Blender is a jack of all trades, master of none. Aside from a game engine (removed since 2.8) it has basically all that you need to do modelling, sculpting, physics,3D painting, 2D and 3D animation, compositing and even some quirky video editor with audio. And it's free and open source and it has the largest community, by far, since version 2.8.
Maya is the videogame industry standard for modeling, just like ZBrush is the industry standard for sculpting. It is almost 100% non destructive-editing and integrate with studios asset pipelines perfectly in various ways. It's paid and closed source.
Blender is a jack of all trades, master of none. Aside from a game engine (removed since 2.8) it has basically all that you need to do modelling, sculpting, physics,3D painting, 2D and 3D animation, compositing and even some quirky video editor with audio. And it's free and open source and it has the largest community, by far, since version 2.8.
awesome, thank you
Depends at what level you're talking about. In the abstract? No, most 3D concepts are pretty much standard across all of them.
In the nitty gritty, they're all substantially different and have very different views of scenes, data representations and workflows.
It's easy enough to jump between all three, at least for me, but they each have their respective strengths and weaknesses, that lend themselves better to different kinds of work.
In the nitty gritty, they're all substantially different and have very different views of scenes, data representations and workflows.
It's easy enough to jump between all three, at least for me, but they each have their respective strengths and weaknesses, that lend themselves better to different kinds of work.
[deleted]
The release notes and features highlight reel page is now live!
https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-0/
https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-0/
Ok, we'll change the URL to that from https://download.blender.org/release/Blender3.0/. Thanks!
Have they improved the UI/UX since 2.8x? They said it would be much better and it was still driving me up a wall compared to 3DS Max. It still felt like going from Photoshop to GIMP. That's the only thing holding me back from really adopting blender.
Not an user, but judging from comments, you're part of a small set that still repeats comments like this after 2.8.
What has changed since 2.8 in the UI? When I used 2.8 there were still a lot of pain points with the interface that kept me doing the heavy lifting in 3DS max. It was a cloth sim project and I was using blender to export the files into GLTF and even that was a bit frustrating.
It sounds like you need to spend some more time reading the manuals and less time complaining online.
Again, what has changed since 1998 in 3D Studio Max's UI?
I disagree. The 2.8+ UI is well designed and way snappier than 3DS Max.
It is subjective but 3D max interface is much more intuitive. Like when navigating the 3D view ports. UE4 also has a nice interface that is similar to blender but feels better.
What does intuitive in the context of a complex app like blender or 3d max even mean? You need to seriously learn the interface for either one before you can do anything. To me this is sort of like saying the interface of a boeing is more intuitive than the interface of an airbus, really quite meaningless for anyone.
Hah this feels like the same arguments people have about Haskell and PLs in general.
People can't help but mistake familiarity for quality.
People can't help but mistake familiarity for quality.
I think it's a wasteful debate nowadays. Blender used to be too peculiar if not crippled but they reduced the gap a lot. It's bearable now.. and, they could probably get close to most 3D apps UX (i'm speculating but i'd bet a few dollars).
> It is subjective but 3D max interface is much more intuitive.
The most intuitive interface is the one you're used to.
The most intuitive interface is the one you're used to.
I've used many many different 3D programs from 3DS max, milkshape, XSI, Maya, Unreal 2, Unreal 3/UDK, Unreal 4, Hammer, Source, Three.js web editor, Zbrush, Houdini, etc and none of them have made me as frustrated as using blender. So I don't know?
Hello again. Can you name ONE way 3D Studio Max's user interface has tangibly improved since Monica Lewinsky brought Bill Clinton a pizza and blew him in the White House? Not ONE?
If you can't, then I rest my case: Max has an ANCIENT outdated user interface, and it's been stagnating for decades. So what if you're used to it? I'm used to Windows 95 and Microsoft Visual Studio 6 too, but that doesn't mean they have good user interfaces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYt0khR_ej0
>"Jim, let me tell you something: there's gonna to be a WHOLE BUNCH of things we don't tell Mrs. Clinton. Fast food is the least of our worries, ok buddy?"
If you can't, then I rest my case: Max has an ANCIENT outdated user interface, and it's been stagnating for decades. So what if you're used to it? I'm used to Windows 95 and Microsoft Visual Studio 6 too, but that doesn't mean they have good user interfaces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYt0khR_ej0
>"Jim, let me tell you something: there's gonna to be a WHOLE BUNCH of things we don't tell Mrs. Clinton. Fast food is the least of our worries, ok buddy?"
It depends what you're using it for. I like Sketchup and Hammer; Blender doesn't remotely resemble those. But then, Blender can do things that those most certainly can't; they're for different jobs.
Well has 3D Studio Max improved its UI/UX interface since 1998, when I asked Kinetix if they would support pie menus, and they replied that while their users had demanded pie menus (aka marking menus), they wouldn't implement them because of Alias's patent?
I even offered to help Kinetix implement pie menus for Max, since I was already writing Max and MaxScript plugins, and wanted their help integrating my open source ActiveX/OLE pie menus with Max. But Kinetix wasn't interested then, and Autodesk still isn't interested in listening to their users or improving Max's user interface decades later, apparently.
https://donhopkins.medium.com/automating-the-sims-character-...
After 25 years since it was created, 3D Studio Max STILL doesn't have pie menus (while Blender has really great built-in pie menus).
Kinetix's 3D Studio Max and Alias's Maya used to be competitive and innovative when they were owned by different companies.
But now they are both owned by Autodesk, so they have both stagnated and failed to innovate, listen to the demands of their users, and improve their user interfaces, the way Blender rapidly and continuously does today, and always has.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26917124
Alias used to spread FUD about pie menus, and now Autodesk and their minions spread FUD about Blender, like falsely claiming Blender's GPL license means that you can't use it to make copyrighted artwork.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26918150
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26923816
https://www.blender.org/about/license/
As if stagnating and ignoring the demands of your users while spreading FUD and innuendo about Blender wasn't bad enough, it's rumored that Autodesk even went as far as to mercilessly attack Ton Roosendaal with a ceiling tile ;) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk
Pie Menu FUD and Misconceptions: Dispelling the fear, uncertainty, doubt and misconceptions about pie menus.
https://donhopkins.medium.com/pie-menu-fud-and-misconception...
>Huge Problem: Software Patents and FUD
>There is a sad history of people using software patents to make misleading claims about obvious techniques that they didn’t originate, and constructing flawed straw man definitions of ersatz pie menus to contrast with their own inventions, to mislead the patent examiners into granting patents.
>There is a financial and institutional incentive to be lazy about researching and less than honest in reporting and describing prior art, in the hopes that it will slip by the patent examiners, which it very often does.
>Patent Abuse Example: US Patent US5689667A: Methods and system of controlling menus with radial and linear portions
>Unfortunately a bad patent that covered an obvious technique, and also made some incorrect misleading claims, was abused by Alias marketing in Bill Buxton’s name to baselessly threaten and discouraged others from using pie or marking menus, by exaggerating its scope and obfuscating its specificity. It’s my strong opinion that the particular technique that it covered (overflow items) was quit obvious.
>Gordon Kurtenbach and I discussed pie and marking menus in 1990 before he wrote his paper and filed the patent, and at that time he made it clear that he understood pie menus supported mouse ahead display suppression, and that pie menus enjoyed the same benefits as marking menus have in easing the transition from novice to expert user:
>“The the cool thing is that expert can mouse ahead like you’ve talked about but they get an ink trail so they have a better idea what they’ve selected without even bothering to wait for the menu to come up.”
>However that contradicts what the paper and the patent implies, and it’s misled other people into incorrectly believing that pie menus don’t support what I call “mouse ahead display preemption” (or “suppression”, a harsher word), and that the patent covers much more than it actually does.
>When Gordon applied for the patent on in 1995, which his employment contract with SGI required him to do, the patent had at least two misleading statements, and the “overflow” technique claim was obvious, which should have prevented it from being granted or invalidated it.
>Another piece of mistaken but published misinformation about the differences of “typical pie menus” and marking menus is that “typical pie menus” pop up submenus after the cursor has moved a certain distance from the menu center, without clicking the mouse button. However, I have never seen nor implemented such badly designed pie menus in the real world.
>“Typical pie menus” (such as those in The Sims, played by hundreds of millions of people) have always selected leaf and submenu items by triggering on a button press or release (or pen or finger tap or release). They also typically support mouse-ahead. Pie menus can seamlessly support both quick press-drag-release gestures, as well as the more leisurely click-move-click gestures.
>The patent US5689667A “Methods and system of controlling menus with radial and linear portions” also makes the mistake of claiming that that pie menu selection is based on pointing at the items like linear menus (or PIXIE), instead of the direction of cursor motion, which Kurtenbach and Buxton know very well is simply not the case with “typical pie menus”.
Flight of the PIXIE: This video is derived from a film that demonstrates an early graphical user interface in use. The film was made in 1969 to accompany a paper entitled “PIXIE: a new approach to graphical man-machine communication” presented at the 1969 CAD Conference held in Southampton:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDrqR9XssJI
>“Radial menus include two types: pie menus and marking menus. Pie menus are typically used in item selection using the location principles of linear menus as discussed above. Marking menus operate on the principle of the direction of cursor or pointer motion as being the basis for item selection.” -US Patent US5689667A
>Unfortunately they were able to successfully deceive the patent reviewers, even though the patent references the Dr. Dobb’s Journal article which clearly describes how pie menu selection and mouse ahead work, contradicting the incorrect claims in the patent. It’s sad that this kind of deception and patent trolling is all too common in the industry, and it causes so many problems.
>Even today, long after the patent has expired, Autodesk marketing brochures continue to spread FUD to scare other people away from using marking menus, by bragging that “Patented marking menus let you use context-sensitive gestures to select commands.”
>The Long Tail Consequences of Bad Patents and FUD
>I attended the computer game developer’s conference in the late 90’s, while I was working at Maxis on The Sims. Since we were using 3D Studio Max, I stopped by the Kinetix booth on the trade show floor, and asked them for some advice integrating my existing ActiveX pie menus into their 3D editing tool.
ActiveX Pie Menus: Demo of the free ActiveX Pie Menu Control, developed and demonstrated by Don Hopkins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnC8x9x3Xag
>They told me that Alias had “marking menus” which were like pie menus, and that Kinetix’s customers had been requesting that feature, but since Alias had patented marking menus, they were afraid to use pie menus or anything resembling them for fear of being sued for patent infringement.
>I told them that sounded like bullshit since there was plenty of prior art, so Alias couldn’t get a legitimate patent on “marking menus”.
>The guy from Kinetix told me that if I didn’t believe him, I should walk across the aisle and ask the people at the Alias booth. So I did.
>When I asked one of the Alias sales people if their “marking menus” were patented, he immediately blurted out “of course they are!” So I showed him the ActiveX pie menus on my laptop, and told him that I needed to get in touch with their legal department because they had patented something that I had been working on for many years, and had used in several published products, including The Sims, and I didn’t want them to sue me or EA for patent infringement.
The Sims, Pie Menus, Edith Editing, and SimAntics Visual Programming Demo. This is a demonstration of the pie menus, architectural editing tools, and Edith visual programming tools that I developed for The Sims with Will Wright at Maxis and Electronic Arts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs
>When I tried to pin down the Alias marketing representative about what exactly it was that Alias had patented, he started weaseling and changing his story several times. He finally told me that Bill Buxton was the one who invented marking menus, that he was the one behind the patent, that he was the senior user interface researcher at SGI/Alias, and that I should talk to him. He never mentioned Gordon Kurtenbach, only Bill Buxton.
>So I called Bill Buxton at Alias, who stonewalled and claimed that there was no patent on marking menus (which turned out to be false, because he was just being coy for legal reasons). He said he felt insulted that I would think he would patent something that we both knew very well was covered by prior art.
>I told him that companies try to get bad patents all the time, and that I did not mean to insult him by simply repeating to him the misinformation that his marketing people were spreading around the computer industry, in his name. I told him that should not shoot the messenger, and he should reel in his marketing department and tell them to stop spreading FUD in his name, which he refused.
>I tried to explain how Alias’s FUD had adversely affected the user interface design of 3D Studio Max, who refused to implement pie menus in spite of user requests for them. But he did not care about 3D Studio Max, since Kinetix was his competition. I asked him whose side he was on, the user’s or the patent lawyer’s?
>He claimed to be on the side of the users, since he is such a well known user interface researcher, but I believe he has sold out to big corporations like Alias, SGI, Microsoft and Autodesk by abusing the patent system for profit, and is in the thrall of corporate lawyers, so he wasn’t being honest. Users beware!
I even offered to help Kinetix implement pie menus for Max, since I was already writing Max and MaxScript plugins, and wanted their help integrating my open source ActiveX/OLE pie menus with Max. But Kinetix wasn't interested then, and Autodesk still isn't interested in listening to their users or improving Max's user interface decades later, apparently.
https://donhopkins.medium.com/automating-the-sims-character-...
After 25 years since it was created, 3D Studio Max STILL doesn't have pie menus (while Blender has really great built-in pie menus).
Kinetix's 3D Studio Max and Alias's Maya used to be competitive and innovative when they were owned by different companies.
But now they are both owned by Autodesk, so they have both stagnated and failed to innovate, listen to the demands of their users, and improve their user interfaces, the way Blender rapidly and continuously does today, and always has.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26917124
Alias used to spread FUD about pie menus, and now Autodesk and their minions spread FUD about Blender, like falsely claiming Blender's GPL license means that you can't use it to make copyrighted artwork.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26918150
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26923816
https://www.blender.org/about/license/
As if stagnating and ignoring the demands of your users while spreading FUD and innuendo about Blender wasn't bad enough, it's rumored that Autodesk even went as far as to mercilessly attack Ton Roosendaal with a ceiling tile ;) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk
Pie Menu FUD and Misconceptions: Dispelling the fear, uncertainty, doubt and misconceptions about pie menus.
https://donhopkins.medium.com/pie-menu-fud-and-misconception...
>Huge Problem: Software Patents and FUD
>There is a sad history of people using software patents to make misleading claims about obvious techniques that they didn’t originate, and constructing flawed straw man definitions of ersatz pie menus to contrast with their own inventions, to mislead the patent examiners into granting patents.
>There is a financial and institutional incentive to be lazy about researching and less than honest in reporting and describing prior art, in the hopes that it will slip by the patent examiners, which it very often does.
>Patent Abuse Example: US Patent US5689667A: Methods and system of controlling menus with radial and linear portions
>Unfortunately a bad patent that covered an obvious technique, and also made some incorrect misleading claims, was abused by Alias marketing in Bill Buxton’s name to baselessly threaten and discouraged others from using pie or marking menus, by exaggerating its scope and obfuscating its specificity. It’s my strong opinion that the particular technique that it covered (overflow items) was quit obvious.
>Gordon Kurtenbach and I discussed pie and marking menus in 1990 before he wrote his paper and filed the patent, and at that time he made it clear that he understood pie menus supported mouse ahead display suppression, and that pie menus enjoyed the same benefits as marking menus have in easing the transition from novice to expert user:
>“The the cool thing is that expert can mouse ahead like you’ve talked about but they get an ink trail so they have a better idea what they’ve selected without even bothering to wait for the menu to come up.”
>However that contradicts what the paper and the patent implies, and it’s misled other people into incorrectly believing that pie menus don’t support what I call “mouse ahead display preemption” (or “suppression”, a harsher word), and that the patent covers much more than it actually does.
>When Gordon applied for the patent on in 1995, which his employment contract with SGI required him to do, the patent had at least two misleading statements, and the “overflow” technique claim was obvious, which should have prevented it from being granted or invalidated it.
>Another piece of mistaken but published misinformation about the differences of “typical pie menus” and marking menus is that “typical pie menus” pop up submenus after the cursor has moved a certain distance from the menu center, without clicking the mouse button. However, I have never seen nor implemented such badly designed pie menus in the real world.
>“Typical pie menus” (such as those in The Sims, played by hundreds of millions of people) have always selected leaf and submenu items by triggering on a button press or release (or pen or finger tap or release). They also typically support mouse-ahead. Pie menus can seamlessly support both quick press-drag-release gestures, as well as the more leisurely click-move-click gestures.
>The patent US5689667A “Methods and system of controlling menus with radial and linear portions” also makes the mistake of claiming that that pie menu selection is based on pointing at the items like linear menus (or PIXIE), instead of the direction of cursor motion, which Kurtenbach and Buxton know very well is simply not the case with “typical pie menus”.
Flight of the PIXIE: This video is derived from a film that demonstrates an early graphical user interface in use. The film was made in 1969 to accompany a paper entitled “PIXIE: a new approach to graphical man-machine communication” presented at the 1969 CAD Conference held in Southampton:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDrqR9XssJI
>“Radial menus include two types: pie menus and marking menus. Pie menus are typically used in item selection using the location principles of linear menus as discussed above. Marking menus operate on the principle of the direction of cursor or pointer motion as being the basis for item selection.” -US Patent US5689667A
>Unfortunately they were able to successfully deceive the patent reviewers, even though the patent references the Dr. Dobb’s Journal article which clearly describes how pie menu selection and mouse ahead work, contradicting the incorrect claims in the patent. It’s sad that this kind of deception and patent trolling is all too common in the industry, and it causes so many problems.
>Even today, long after the patent has expired, Autodesk marketing brochures continue to spread FUD to scare other people away from using marking menus, by bragging that “Patented marking menus let you use context-sensitive gestures to select commands.”
>The Long Tail Consequences of Bad Patents and FUD
>I attended the computer game developer’s conference in the late 90’s, while I was working at Maxis on The Sims. Since we were using 3D Studio Max, I stopped by the Kinetix booth on the trade show floor, and asked them for some advice integrating my existing ActiveX pie menus into their 3D editing tool.
ActiveX Pie Menus: Demo of the free ActiveX Pie Menu Control, developed and demonstrated by Don Hopkins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnC8x9x3Xag
>They told me that Alias had “marking menus” which were like pie menus, and that Kinetix’s customers had been requesting that feature, but since Alias had patented marking menus, they were afraid to use pie menus or anything resembling them for fear of being sued for patent infringement.
>I told them that sounded like bullshit since there was plenty of prior art, so Alias couldn’t get a legitimate patent on “marking menus”.
>The guy from Kinetix told me that if I didn’t believe him, I should walk across the aisle and ask the people at the Alias booth. So I did.
>When I asked one of the Alias sales people if their “marking menus” were patented, he immediately blurted out “of course they are!” So I showed him the ActiveX pie menus on my laptop, and told him that I needed to get in touch with their legal department because they had patented something that I had been working on for many years, and had used in several published products, including The Sims, and I didn’t want them to sue me or EA for patent infringement.
The Sims, Pie Menus, Edith Editing, and SimAntics Visual Programming Demo. This is a demonstration of the pie menus, architectural editing tools, and Edith visual programming tools that I developed for The Sims with Will Wright at Maxis and Electronic Arts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs
>When I tried to pin down the Alias marketing representative about what exactly it was that Alias had patented, he started weaseling and changing his story several times. He finally told me that Bill Buxton was the one who invented marking menus, that he was the one behind the patent, that he was the senior user interface researcher at SGI/Alias, and that I should talk to him. He never mentioned Gordon Kurtenbach, only Bill Buxton.
>So I called Bill Buxton at Alias, who stonewalled and claimed that there was no patent on marking menus (which turned out to be false, because he was just being coy for legal reasons). He said he felt insulted that I would think he would patent something that we both knew very well was covered by prior art.
>I told him that companies try to get bad patents all the time, and that I did not mean to insult him by simply repeating to him the misinformation that his marketing people were spreading around the computer industry, in his name. I told him that should not shoot the messenger, and he should reel in his marketing department and tell them to stop spreading FUD in his name, which he refused.
>I tried to explain how Alias’s FUD had adversely affected the user interface design of 3D Studio Max, who refused to implement pie menus in spite of user requests for them. But he did not care about 3D Studio Max, since Kinetix was his competition. I asked him whose side he was on, the user’s or the patent lawyer’s?
>He claimed to be on the side of the users, since he is such a well known user interface researcher, but I believe he has sold out to big corporations like Alias, SGI, Microsoft and Autodesk by abusing the patent system for profit, and is in the thrall of corporate lawyers, so he wasn’t being honest. Users beware!
That's a fascinating story, I appreciate your sharing this background.
Are there any associated patents that haven't expired?
Are there any associated patents that haven't expired?
There are a lot of patents that refer to pie menus. Searching "pie menu" on google patent search gets 33 pages of results:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22pie+menu%22&tbm=pts&sxsrf...
A lot of them are expired, and a lot of them cover something really specific or not directly related, some of them are really terrible ideas you wouldn't want to copy anyway, and many of them make trivial but obvious changes in the hopes of abusing a patent system, which is an extremely common practice, and a whole lot of them are completely oblivious to prior art, and shouldn't have been issued in the first place, but they were.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22pie+menu%22&tbm=pts&sxsrf...
A lot of them are expired, and a lot of them cover something really specific or not directly related, some of them are really terrible ideas you wouldn't want to copy anyway, and many of them make trivial but obvious changes in the hopes of abusing a patent system, which is an extremely common practice, and a whole lot of them are completely oblivious to prior art, and shouldn't have been issued in the first place, but they were.
So I have been thinking about what makes this project so special. I think it's the fact that the community owns it. So you don't have to ask for permission to do anything. Mix that with inherently creative people who approach the tool and you get:
AI-generated Kanye West rap teaching you how the modifiers work - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7Nn5Uilso0