Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

blender.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 261 posts

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#141

Post by VMG »

soulofmischief wrote: post #108
bhouston wrote: post #68

Commoditize one's compliments: https://jasongriffey.net/wp/2012/04/19/commoditizing-our-com... Unreal Engine, like Unity, right now has to be used with Autodesk products like 3DS Max or Maya, or at least that is the case with the large majority of professionals. This is an impediment to using Unreal Engine and thus makes Epic Games sort of dependent on Autodesk. There is probably no coincidence that the new general m…

I use Unreal+Blender just fine. What do you mean?

You're probably not representative

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#142

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

Anyone interested in following a fantastic Twitter account that is always doing fun stuff in Blender, especially with Grease Pencil.

This is a 2D animation generated from a 3D environment. Mind blowing ->

https://twitter.com/5agado/status/1146021523460935681

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#143

Post by Jach »

saltminer wrote: post #84
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few exclusives is more than worth breaking Valve's near-monopoly and 30% toll on game revenue. That 30% is coming straight out of gamers' pockets and HN usually hates middlemen; it's baffling to see so many people in support of Valve.

Originally, Steam's 30% cut was a huge windfall for developers (retail stores could take 60%+). But I won't harp on that, just a historical note for why people (including developers) might still like the (existing) middlemen. The 30% figure is a bit deceiving. If you sell a lot on Steam, you can get a better cut from Valve, but you don't even need to sell a single copy to get a 100% cut - Valve charges nothing for St…

Your reply on "coming straight out of gamers' pockets" reminded me of something. I wonder if there's an official term in economics for it. But it comes up when people discuss levying new taxes on various product categories (we might consider it in this thread as Epic raising their fee back up to an industry standard) and a counterargument would go something like "companies will just pass the cost through to the consumer". Except that's not what happens, what happens is the company just has to eat it and try to survive. The market has already priced the good and has reached an equilibrium. If a company could get away with raising the price to a new value, and even after accounting for a decrease in sales still end up with the same or higher profit within a static time frame, they would have already done it.

One can also look at the possibilities by modeling more than just the $60 game in isolation. Include the cost, it took $X to create, and each $60 sale chips away at $X by some $Y so that after enough sales over some time window breakeven is reached (and profit after that). A new tax means that $Y becomes smaller, so you need more sales than before to reach breakeven within the same time. Except you won't get more sales than before, because the price is the same. You have to eat the tax. You could try raising the price to say $70 or whatever is needed so that $Y remains the same, and now you only need the same number of sales as before, let the customers eat it. Except you won't get the same number of sales as before, because the increase in the product's price will result in a decrease in customer demand, you'll have fewer sales than before within the same time frame. Compared to the difference with $X, it's still the company who has eaten the tax and has to deal with its consequences on their continued existence.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#144

Post by johnrbent »

soulofmischief wrote: post #108
bhouston wrote: post #68

Commoditize one's compliments: https://jasongriffey.net/wp/2012/04/19/commoditizing-our-com... Unreal Engine, like Unity, right now has to be used with Autodesk products like 3DS Max or Maya, or at least that is the case with the large majority of professionals. This is an impediment to using Unreal Engine and thus makes Epic Games sort of dependent on Autodesk. There is probably no coincidence that the new general m…

I use Unreal+Blender just fine. What do you mean?

I used to work with Unity and Blender professionally. Not sure what this guy is talking about.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#145

Post by tombert »

iamcreasy wrote: post #125
binthere wrote: post #40

As someone who's done lots of Blender work as well as Maya and integrations with Unity and Unreal Engine, I still think there's quite a long way to go to make Blender a good option for game development. It's free, it kind of works but it's very painful when it comes to animation, texturing, and details. Right now, this is what I usually do: - Basic Modeling: Blender - Sculpting + Details: ZBrush - Painting: Substance…

Could you please explain what Blender is not good at animation? What major features are missing?

I was wondering that too; Sintel, Big Buck Bunny, and Operation Barbershop all have pretty-decent animation, so it's clearly capable of doing some good stuff.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#146

Post by shmerl »

Andrex wrote: post #29

In the spirit of supporting open software, it would be fantastic if Epic Games Store and its DRM warmed up to Linux next. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844241

They should offer DRM-free options, and Linux options as well. And no more of that exclusive nonsense.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#147

Post by ThatPlayer »

mrguyorama wrote: post #104
chc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given that Tim wants to force everyone to use his crappy launcher This is a pretty wild accusation to make with no lead-up or follow-through.

The store does not have a shopping cart feature, and started flagging people for fraud for buying multiple games in a row during a huge sale

That's a problem with their anti-fraud not a problem with missing a shopping cart. And that's probably been fixed.

iTunes, Apple App Store, Google Play Store, even Amazon Kindle book store, all are missing carts. Because a one-click buy is way easier to navigate than adding to cart, going to cart, and then finally checking out.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#148

Post by chongli »

soulofmischief wrote: post #108
bhouston wrote: post #68

Commoditize one's compliments: https://jasongriffey.net/wp/2012/04/19/commoditizing-our-com... Unreal Engine, like Unity, right now has to be used with Autodesk products like 3DS Max or Maya, or at least that is the case with the large majority of professionals. This is an impediment to using Unreal Engine and thus makes Epic Games sort of dependent on Autodesk. There is probably no coincidence that the new general m…

I use Unreal+Blender just fine. What do you mean?

That's the whole point. If you're a carmaker, you want gasoline to be a cheap, widely available commodity. Gasoline complements cars.

3D modelling software has had a long history of expensive, esoteric, difficult-to-use applications. Epic, hoping to make money from large numbers of Unreal Engine licenses, would like to see that situation change. Ideally (for them), 3D modelling software would be free and easy to use for everyone, thereby lowering the barrier to entry for those who might make 3D games using UE.

By donating to Blender, Epic hopes to achieve two things:

1. Blender becomes better and easier to use, allowing more developers to enter the market and buy UE licenses.

2. Increased competition puts downward price pressure on commercial 3D packages such as Maya, thus making it more affordable for small-to-medium sized game studios, potentially freeing up budget for more UE licenses.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#149

Post by dtf »

MrLeap wrote: post #20

This is great! As a slighty OT aside, I really hope blender's UI changes sloooow down. I've been using it for 16 years. 2.8 versus 2.7 is so different, It almost feels like they're making changes for change sake. I've been trying to use their various 2.8 RC's so I don't have to say I don't know how to use blender anymore when it pops. They made the following things toggleable at launch, but man these are some muscle…

Some ways to merge vertices by distance (aka "remove doubles"), in edit mode:

1) Mesh > Clean Up > Merge by Distance

2) F3 operator search. Start typing "mer..." and hit Enter.

3) Ctrl-V to show vertex menu, then Merge Vertices > By Distance

4) The quickest: Alt-M + B (show vertex merge menu, B to select "By Distance")

I scratched my head a bit first too, but frankly "merge vertices by distance" is far more descriptive than "remove doubles".

The UI that pops up is just the operator parameters that used to appear when you hit F6 (eg try adding a Circle, see the parameters that pop up) It's better this is visible to users, rather than hidden behind some secret hotkey. As with previous Blender versions, operators are "applied" by default - you can change the parameters via the UI until you like the result. Once you switch operator, move on, or change mode, the UI will disappear and the operation becomes undoable.

To make objects visible/selectable/renderable etc... open the filter menu on the Outliner (top right, looks like a funnel). This lets you add more toggles to the items.

To move the view/selection/snap settings to the bottom just right click, Header > Flip to Bottom/Top.

Collections replace layers and groups (eg you can instance a Collection), though I haven't completely got my head round them yet. But they look quite powerful.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#150

Post by [deleted] »

noahster11 wrote: post #43
Andrex wrote: post #29

In the spirit of supporting open software, it would be fantastic if Epic Games Store and its DRM warmed up to Linux next. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844241

The anticheat they use (EAC) for fortnite checks if Wine is in use, and will fail to run the game if it is. This is taken directly from the EAC dll: https://i.imgur.com/a4wBVWz.jpg

[deleted]
Post reply on HN