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Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

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Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#171

Post by viraptor »

Havoc wrote: post #166
viraptor wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's different in windows. What do you think is stopping you from messing with net/visual/input there?

>I'm not sure that's different in windows. It definitely it. Read up on anti cheating stuff...the windows stuff is down-right rootkit grade....to the point where there are privacy concerns from every the privacy tone-death crowd. Very very different ballgame from "runs in a WINE container with no visibility beyond that".

Yeah, I know that it's a rootkit-type service. But I'm saying that still doesn't prevent you from going deeper than the checks. Especially if you're using custom code and not a known cheating tool. (Those will get picked up by signatures) Unless they require a fully certified system, you can always play with device drivers which are going to be lower level than anti-cheat.

It's an arms race, but whatever they can check, you can patch. Worst case, you can still virtualise everything.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#172

Post by vincentpants »

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?

As an Unreal+Blender user, I would be absolutely interested in anything that can take a step off my toolchain.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#173

Post by jrockway »

Havoc wrote: post #170
jrockway wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows has no lack of power. All this anti-cheating stuff is mostly a scam to stop the dumbest of the dumb cheaters and probably collect information from your computer that's useful to advertisers/investors/law enforcement agencies. If I wanted to aimbot in an FPS, I would just analyze the HDMI output from my computer (via an FPGA) and have it directly create the necessary USB transactions to move my mouse to the ta…

Aimbots...map reduce...HDMI outputs...and jitter all in one post. ...pretty comfortable in saying that you're not up to speed on 2004 era hax.

I can tell you're a member of the gaming community because you have basically dismissed my comment in a condescending manner without providing any actual information.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#174

Post by fsloth »

soup10 wrote: post #137
creato wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it kind of sucks in comparison. Epic is trying to make Blender better.

As a free open source project blender is always going to be playing catch-up with Maya selling 1K+ licences unless the development is severely mismanaged.

Depends by what you mean by catchup? Complete feature parity hardly is the goal of Blender project so I’m not sure how to figure out what exactly constitutes the feature disparity that should be caught up by blender.

One view to look at it is that polygon based modeling, animation and material authoring can be done using a finite feature set, and once that feature set is complete, further enhancements are nice to have, but not critical.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#175

Post by nineteen999 »

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…

I have the same setup as you, except rather than use Maya for animation I use the free UE4Tools plugin for Blender which works with 2.79.

I had pretty good success with it, and wrote a Python addon which builds on top to retarget mocap data from the Perception Neuron suit to the UE4 Skeleton.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#176

Post by johnnyanmac »

goobynight wrote: post #93

So, this will fund ~2-3 people over the next 3 years. That's by my estimate.

keep in mind the Blender Foundation is based in The Netherlands, not San Francisco. That salary might go a much, much longer way compared to if Blender was based in the US (maybe, I do not know the average compensation for skill programmers in that country).

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#177

Post by gamblor956 »

Jach wrote: post #95
learc83 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason 30% is the industry standard is because network effects and walled gardens make competition very difficult. The cost to valve, Apple, and Google aren't anywhere close to that, which in an efficient market means that the price should go down as competitors enter the space. Steam isn't so much better than the competition that no one can compete with them--they just got into the market at the right time…

What are the costs close to, and what are the costs of distribution if you did it yourself? Feel free to break it down into cost of business across n countries, cost of storage and bandwidth, some bare-minimum listing fee somewhere to at least enable theoretical discovery, and ignore all the other services the platforms provide. I mentioned probable economies of scale in a cousin comment, but I don't think they offer…

The costs aren't 30%.

Assume a $50 game. 100,000 sales. 5 gigs.

Storage and bandwidth = $28,000 (per Amazon's calculator) Cost of doing business in N countries = use paypal = 2.9%+0.30/sale = approximately $1.75/sale = $175,000

Costs = $203,000 Revenue = $5,000,000 Ratio = 4.1%

So yeah, Valve is not the shining knight here and that 30% fee is unjustifiable. Even Epic's 12% share is still very much profitable for Epic.

The 30% fee is also nowhere comparable to wholesale pricing schema of the retail model (effectively a 40-60% fee), since that involved the sale of physical copies of goods, and the retailers had to deal with issues like shrinkage and the risk of unsold inventory.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#178

Post by soup10 »

soulofmischief wrote: post #158
chongli wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My question is about OP's assertment: > Unreal Engine, like Unity, right now has to be used with Autodesk products like 3DS Max or Maya I am asking why they think this is the case. Not the circular reasoning of "most professionals use it" but I am interested in what they feel the Blender is missing.

Blender supports FBX exports so you can bring models from there to unreal, but Maya is the much more popular program with artists for modelling and rigging, there's a whole lot going on with these programs so I doubt its any one thing, if it were close i'm sure a lot of people would be happy to not pay for Maya considering how expensive it is.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#179

Post by soulofmischief »

soup10 wrote: post #178
soulofmischief wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question is about OP's assertment: > Unreal Engine, like Unity, right now has to be used with Autodesk products like 3DS Max or Maya I am asking why they think this is the case. Not the circular reasoning of "most professionals use it" but I am interested in what they feel the Blender is missing.

Blender supports FBX exports so you can bring models from there to unreal, but Maya is the much more popular program with artists for modelling and rigging, there's a whole lot going on with these programs so I doubt its any one thing, if it were close i'm sure a lot of people would be happy to not pay for Maya considering how expensive it is.

> Maya is the much more popular program with artists for modelling and rigging

This is the circular reasoning I'm trying to avoid.

I'm not looking for any one thing either, I'm looking for any shortcomings OP can think of. I've used Blender+Unreal for a number of years and Blender itself for over fifteen years so I could rattle off issues I've dealt with in integrating Blender into the pipeline, but many have been dealt with so I'm curious about OP's particular pain points.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#180

Post by erichocean »

nineteen999 wrote: post #175
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…

I have the same setup as you, except rather than use Maya for animation I use the free UE4Tools plugin for Blender which works with 2.79. I had pretty good success with it, and wrote a Python addon which builds on top to retarget mocap data from the Perception Neuron suit to the UE4 Skeleton.

I've got one of those suits and would love to give your Python code a try with UE4, if it's available somewhere.
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