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Blender 2.92

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Re: Blender 2.92

#161

Post by danShumway »

pjmlp wrote: post #156
danShumway wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not real Open Source if the community pays for it? Studios en-mass deciding to fund a shared, Libre resource that anyone can use so that every studio can all benefit and get better features at a faster pace is basically the dream for most Open Source efforts. There's nothing for anyone to be ashamed about from that model, it's good for Open Source to be funded by the players who are most invested in having a rea…

The point being these are snowflake projects, only kept running thanks to some companies pay checks, the large majority of Linux users pays zero anything for desktop software. Donations and patreon like schemes hardly allow to pay for a mortgage, supermarket, healthcare, transport every single month.

> only kept running thanks to some companies pay checks

I don't understand what you're getting at.

You're arguing that user donations and patreon schemes don't pay enough, but there's something wrong with Blender being funded by the companies that use it?

The companies paying for Blender are a substantial portion of the community. They're funding a common resource that all of them share, and that common resource is being made available to everyone, decreasing the barriers of entry for new talent to get into 3D modeling, increasing the quality of potential hires they can bring on because of its wide availability, providing a common target for addons and tutorials, and providing those same studios with a Libre base that they can build on top of if they need to. This is exactly what is supposed to happen in Open Source, people pay for it because it's a common resource that they care about. That's why companies are investing into it.

What is the funding model for Open Source that you consider legitimate? Pulling in enough money to full-time hire an entire development team doesn't count because you don't like the primary user base? Pretty much everything that Blender is doing here is a success and more Open Source projects should be looking at their governance model and learning from it.

I don't understand a viewpoint that says that Patreon and individual-funded projects are uncompetitive and unsustainable, but also that corporate-funded projects with large donors don't "count" as Open Source success stories. It feels to me like you're defining Open Source as a project with zero funding, and then complaining that it has zero funding. Is Matrix a snowflake project? Is Krita? Is Linux itself?

And anyway, all of this ignores the facts that:

A) Even outside of corporate donations that make the majority of its funding, Blender has also been comparatively way more successful than other OS projects at getting individual user donations (I even donate to Blender just as an individual), because they approach PR and community in a really smart, engaging way that drives enthusiasm. And

B) Blender's funding model has nothing to do with the original thing this thread was talking about, which was just that FLOSS software can be of comparable or better quality than its commercial alternatives. You're kind of jumping around, from first arguing that Blender doesn't count because it started as commercial software, and now arguing that Blender doesn't count because it has funding and that's not typical for other projects.

If FLOSS software overall can pull off commercial competitiveness in many cases underfunded, that's almost more impressive. Imagine how good the Open Source ecosystem would be if we as individual and corporate communities started funding more stuff to the same level as we fund Blender.

Re: Blender 2.92

#162

Post by mkaic »

kinghtown wrote: post #71
fctorial wrote: post #58

Is there any point in learning blender as a software developer? I like it a lot but feel like the learning curve is too high and not worth it for me?

I think Blender is the most exciting software being developed today. I really think we are on the cusp of an indie cg film/show golden age like what Hollywood has in the 70s and 90s. The possibilities with CG are sky high but the barrier to entry has been equally so. Lots of money and man hours. But I truly think the next ten years will be exciting and that something like on the level of Star Wars will be made by a s…

Have you looked at the stuff Ian Hubert makes with Blender? I’d definitely classify the kind of work he does with blender as indie cg golden age.

Seriously, though, Blender is incredible, and I really really enjoy using it frequently on my own film projects. It’s a joy to work with.

Re: Blender 2.92

#163

Post by Daub »

katmannthree wrote: post #6
Daub wrote: post #3

Just playing with it now. The new geometry nodes are the beginning of something big... a more procedural approach to modeling. Perfect for natural distribution of things like rocks and plants. Our department (art and design) moved from 3ds Max to Blender last year, and have not looked back. The rapid pace of development is testament to the fact that Blender now has more than twice as many full time devs working on it…

That is great to hear! I really hope that Autodesk starts feeling some pressure from FOSS and cools off on the blatant anti-consumer moves. The whole "now you have to pay us $XXXX/year in perpetuity or you lose access to all of your business files" has killed a lot of the goodwill they once had.

My first run in with Autodesk was when we were looking to buy compositing software to replace our aging Shake. Around 10 representatives from Autodesk came to our school to pitch Flame as a solution. It was clear that none of them knew the software very well. However, they were very adept at bad mouthing the competition, to the point of telling untruths about them.

The team from Nuke consisted of one former Nuke developer and his wife. It was clear that he was a fan of the software as well as a user. Guess who got the contract.

Re: Blender 2.92

#164

Post by Daub »

shahar2k wrote: post #148
Daub wrote: post #3

Just playing with it now. The new geometry nodes are the beginning of something big... a more procedural approach to modeling. Perfect for natural distribution of things like rocks and plants. Our department (art and design) moved from 3ds Max to Blender last year, and have not looked back. The rapid pace of development is testament to the fact that Blender now has more than twice as many full time devs working on it…

so as a heavy maya user, the two things I've missed in blender are fine little QOL improvements and big systemic issues. the collection of features in blender are second to none, and I've enjoyed learning them a lot, but I really wish some of the overall consistency of maya really keeps me away (same hotkeys across the entire app for one thing, multiple overlapping well thought out methods of interaction with systems…

We moved away from the Blender keymapping. Use instead the 3rd party 'proper' keymap. Very compatible with keymaps of other software. The default Blender keymap is insanely quirky, and as you point out, inconsistent.

Re: Blender 2.92

#165

Post by Daub »

bondarchuk wrote: post #104
Daub wrote: post #3

Just playing with it now. The new geometry nodes are the beginning of something big... a more procedural approach to modeling. Perfect for natural distribution of things like rocks and plants. Our department (art and design) moved from 3ds Max to Blender last year, and have not looked back. The rapid pace of development is testament to the fact that Blender now has more than twice as many full time devs working on it…

Also check out the addon Sverchok, I think at the moment it is still much more powerful than the new geometry nodes, basically a full-blown Grasshopper (from Rhino3D) alternative. Would be nice to see it added into the main program at some point. https://github.com/nortikin/sverchok

This is news to me. Will check it out.

Re: Blender 2.92

#166

Post by follower »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #49
Animats wrote: post #47

A completely new workflow for editing meshes Oh, no. I am so tired of re-learning Blender for each new minor revision. There have been about three major UI revisions in the last year or so. Another round of "where did they hide X this time", trying to use Google to find out and getting obsolete tutorials, and taking half an hour to do a two minute fix.

I'm curious, is there a lot of pressure to use the latest version of Blender? Back when I was a kid, I stuck with a certain version of 3DS Max to avoid exactly that type of problem. But I'm not familiar with Blender, so maybe it's not so straightforward just to stick with the old one you know.

> is there a lot of pressure to use the latest version of Blender?

Post 2.8, not hugely, AFAICT (outside of the desire to use new features). Older released versions are always available even back to SGI/Irix releases that are presumably primarily of historical interest.

The Blender team has an awareness of the potential disruption that arises from being forced to upgrade in the middle of a typical multi-year film/video project, so now explicitly cater for this use case with their new Long Term Support (LTS) versions pilot:

https://www.blender.org/download/lts/

Bugs fixes will be added but no new features.

Re: Blender 2.92

#167

Post by IshKebab »

hydroxideOH- wrote: post #143
prideout wrote: post #75

I think Blender might be the most complex and feature rich open source application in existence, period. (By "application" I mean a standalone product for end users with a GUI.)

Firefox?

Yeah and I'd say OpenOffice would give them both a run for their money.

Re: Blender 2.92

#168

Post by pjmlp »

danShumway wrote: post #161
pjmlp wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point being these are snowflake projects, only kept running thanks to some companies pay checks, the large majority of Linux users pays zero anything for desktop software. Donations and patreon like schemes hardly allow to pay for a mortgage, supermarket, healthcare, transport every single month.

> only kept running thanks to some companies pay checks I don't understand what you're getting at. You're arguing that user donations and patreon schemes don't pay enough, but there's something wrong with Blender being funded by the companies that use it? The companies paying for Blender are a substantial portion of the community. They're funding a common resource that all of them share, and that common resource is b…

What I getting to?

If the companies sponsoring Blender, many of which already customers from the commercial days, withdraw their support tomorrow, in a couple of years Blender will turn into another Gimp, as everyone switch to something else to pay their bills.

What I learned from my zealot FOSS days, is that trying to sell FOSS desktop or developer tools is hardly any different from trying to make a living as street musician.

It is cool for a while, eventually it turns into survival, as bitter Winter arrives.

Re: Blender 2.92

#169

Post by ehvatum »

fctorial wrote: post #70
jrockway wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want to model things in 3D and render them? If so, Blender is a great tool. I feel like this question is like going to an art forum and asking if you should learn Kubernetes. You could, but it's not going to help with your art.

I was hoping for examples of situations in which blender helped a software developer.

The attitudes, outlook, habits of the Blender development community are healthy. Dwelling in that scene and bringing something of it with you to mundane work will make you something special.

Re: Blender 2.92

#170

Post by danShumway »

pjmlp wrote: post #168
danShumway wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only kept running thanks to some companies pay checks I don't understand what you're getting at. You're arguing that user donations and patreon schemes don't pay enough, but there's something wrong with Blender being funded by the companies that use it? The companies paying for Blender are a substantial portion of the community. They're funding a common resource that all of them share, and that common resource is b…

What I getting to? If the companies sponsoring Blender, many of which already customers from the commercial days, withdraw their support tomorrow, in a couple of years Blender will turn into another Gimp, as everyone switch to something else to pay their bills. What I learned from my zealot FOSS days, is that trying to sell FOSS desktop or developer tools is hardly any different from trying to make a living as street…

> If the companies sponsoring Blender, many of which already customers from the commercial days, withdraw their support tomorrow, in a couple of years Blender will turn into another Gimp, as everyone switch to something else to pay their bills.

And if the companies buying Slack suddenly stop buying Slack, it will also die. The observation that all software development requires an investment of resources is not a FLOSS-specific observation, and it's not particularly relevant to the conversation about whether FLOSS software is regularly competitive with proprietary alternatives.

It's not really an insight to say that if you starve developers they'll stop developing. We all know that already. And it's also true of every commercial product. When a community switches to another product, the original product withers because it lacks support. That is a correct observation, but what does that have to do with FLOSS? That's just a general principle that applies to everyone.

I don't see you arguing that Slack doesn't count as a competitive product because most of its individual users and small communities use the free version, and some day the big corporations it relies on for the bulk of its revenue might switch to Matrix/Element instead.

> many of which already customers from the commercial days

This is also just not true. Blender's current funding exists because they put in the work to get completely new grants and investments from major game studios like Epic, Ubisoft, Steam, and Microsoft, as well as from hardware manufacturers like NVidia and AMD. Blender's funding has solidly increased from its early days.

Blender is not just sailing on its previous commercial support from its previous commercial days. It didn't get grants in those days, companies generally don't give massive no-strings-attached grants to commercial products. Modern-day Blender has greatly expanded the support it has because the people managing its funding/organization are very smart and have put a metric ton of work into understanding and innovating on existing Open Source PR and community management models.

This is part of why Open Source maintainers and organizers should be paying so much attention to what Blender does, because it is genuinely doing an excellent job selling the idea of a community-supported Open Source standard to large companies.

----

Stepping outside of the conversation, just to reiterate one more time: the fact that FLOSS tools are regularly competitive despite receiving on average much less support than their proprietary alternatives is a sign that there is something very cost-efficient about the FLOSS development model, and that pumping more funding into it might be a better use of resources than buying commercial products.

You can argue all you want that Open Source is not sustainable, but there are still a lot of Open Source projects that are of competitive levels of quality compared to their proprietary alternatives.

Could the funding situation be better? Yes. Does the funding situation mean that those projects somehow don't exist, or that they're not currently of comparable quality to their commercial alternatives? No.

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