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Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

blender.org

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Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#31

Post by potatolicious »

onelovetwo wrote: post #21
defaultname wrote: post #19

Apple's software and hardware arcs are coalescing into them going all in on AR/VR. Things like LIDAR, Photogrammetry, spatial mapping, USDZ / PBR and friends all come across as pretty marginal novelties on smartphones, but they are all a part of that strategy, and will make much more sense with a headset. They're coming out of the gate with a robust ecosystem. Blender is obviously a huge component of the software sta…

It also helps blender is a competitor to Epic's Unreal

Wait, how so? Isn't Blender a pretty direct competitor to 3D modeling and rendering tools like Maya and 3dsmax?

AFAIK you can't directly author 3D models in Unreal, if anything Unreal has a dependency on tools like Blender.

There is some competitive overlap, but that seems mostly within the realm of real-time vs. offline render for producing video content?

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#32

Post by dragontamer »

onelovetwo wrote: post #21
defaultname wrote: post #19

Apple's software and hardware arcs are coalescing into them going all in on AR/VR. Things like LIDAR, Photogrammetry, spatial mapping, USDZ / PBR and friends all come across as pretty marginal novelties on smartphones, but they are all a part of that strategy, and will make much more sense with a headset. They're coming out of the gate with a robust ecosystem. Blender is obviously a huge component of the software sta…

It also helps blender is a competitor to Epic's Unreal

That's almost like saying Internet Explorer is a competitor to Microsoft Word because they both share text documents with pictures.

Yeah, Blender and Unreal kinda-sorta do the same thing (3d rendering). But their applications are completely different... and you'd be more likely to see people use both tools together on one project rather than a competition between the tools.

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#33

Post by washadjeffmad »

cdiamand wrote: post #16

It's great to see Blender get the support. The user numbers seem to be arcing upwards. https://www.blender.org/news/blender-by-the-numbers-2020/ If you've ever had a passing interest in Blender or 3d modeling I recommend checking out the donut tutorial, which is fast becoming the "hello world" of blender - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPrnSACiTJ4 And check out all the donuts - https://www.reddit.com/r/BlenderDough…

I've been helping add it to University curriculum because it's enabled us to contract and hire really talented and motivated people without the vendor tax of 3ds Max or Maya, and they usually have broader skill sets that we can apply elsewhere.

Not knocking all the amazing people who use other software, but if you want new opportunity, use Blender!

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#34

Post by illwrks »

Blender is a fantastic piece of software. I've dabbled with it for years but the 3.83 version and higher with the improved UI has made it better.

That coupled with some 3d printing marketplaces have made for some interesting experiments!

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#35

Post by JAlexoid »

ravenstine wrote: post #20
astlouis44 wrote: post #5

Apple is getting more serious about 3D and the gaming market, which isn’t surprising considering the market size.

It definitely makes sense. Recently I had a need for a CAD program and rediscovered how insanely expensive commercial 3D software is for the average person. Sure, many companies now offer monthly subscriptions, but even those subscriptions are ginormous for the amount of relative value returned. Like, do I really want to pay $220 a month for AutoCAD when I only need to design a part for a non-commercial personal proj…

I know Blender as a 3D animation creation tool, so you get legacy features.

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#36

Post by striking »

JAlexoid wrote: post #24
valine wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cycles is good first step if Apple wants to make blender fully functional on Mac. I wonder if they'll ever attempt to port Eevee to metal, that seems like the logical next step if Apple wants to permanently remove OpenGL from macOS.

"Apple wants to permanently remove OpenGL from macOS" - that would be a poor decision.... although, they really don't care for the pro market in any case.

They've already deprecated OpenGL. Drivers on macOS are locked at OpenGL 4.1, which is missing a whole lot of nice features. Not because the hardware doesn't support them, but because Apple doesn't want to keep maintaining OpenGL.

And why would they? OpenGL is really unpleasant from a hardware manufacturer's / integrator's / OS author's perspective, it makes app ports for mobile that much harder unless you're using GL ES, and Metal works and many apps have a Metal renderer now. If you find the mere idea of Metal distasteful because it's an API that can't be used on other platforms, you can use Vulkan and MoltenVK to get there.

You're confusing not caring for the pro market with their approach to vertical integration. They care for the pro market, but they're not willing to compromise on ripping out what they consider to be dead weight.

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#39

Post by ksec »

mimsee wrote: post #2

> ... Apple has joined the Blender Development Fund as a Patron Member. To find out what "Patron Member" means, it's 120k or more per year[0]. It's the highest corporate tier Blender has. Nice to see Apple supporting open-source. [0]: https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/

This is especially interesting because Blender is GPLv2. And AFAIK apart from Webkit which for historical reason it is LGPL, all other open source software Apple support are BSD / MIT / Apache.

It is also exceptionally rare Apple donate this amount of money to any open source organisation. To the point I would argue this is very non-Apple. There could be some strategic interest for Blender, although I haven't figure it out what it is.

Edit: Someone mentioned AR/VR. Which could be the case here.

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