Live data from Hacker News

Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

blender.org

81–90 of 285 posts

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More and more devices from Apple are getting LiDAR sensors so it makes sense to support it. Apple also is taking open source more seriously .

Still waiting for FOSS version of Facetime ;)

https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/07/apple_announces_o... for those that don’t get the reference

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#82
post #39
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…

Apple has never had problems with GPLv2. The problem was always GPLv3 and that's why all their GNU tooling was frozen for a very long time at the last GPLv2 version of those tools.

Apple prefers BSD/MIT/Apache because that's just easier for developers to reason about but GPLv2 code that's a standalone binary is generally not a problem. Besides, Blender is a tool you use to generate non-GPL work product. From the perspective of authoring 3d content, GPL doesn't pose any kind of problem for them, even if they also needed to use Blender as part of an automated toolchain somehow for ARVR.

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#83

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…

Recommend Ian Hubert's "Lazy Tutorials"[1], although they're not really so beginner friendly. More for inspiration and entertainment.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4Dq5VyfewIxxjzS34k2N...

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 G…

>You're confusing not caring for the pro market with their approach to vertical integration. Apple knows exactly what they need to do to keep the pro market on MacOSX, they are not interested in doing that at all. And that simple thing is standardization, not exclusive API. So they don't even have to support OpenGL... just not make it even harder for CAD/CAM makers to port their software/features back to MacOSX. Lack…

> already got a lot of pros off Macs

What is your quantitative evidence for saying this?

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#85
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And why would they? OpenGL is really unpleasant from a hardware manufacturer's / integrator's / OS author's perspective That's why it must be deprecated. Why do we need to reinvent the wheel over and over again ? I get it, X sucks and the answer to this is .... wayland. OpenGL sucks and the answer to this is ? DirectX ? Vulkan ? SDL ? Libcaca ? ( sorry i forgot ncurses). Just like an old builder: you have some bric…

I've only dabbled in GPU programming, but I think the issue is more serious than this. It's not really pointless churn. OpenGL was released 29 years ago, and the way GPUs work now vs then is massive. Apparently developers want low level access, and that is what Vulkan/Metal give them. As a user I wish Vulkan had a path without so much setup. I'm not sure if that's possible, or maybe it would defeat the purpose. It se…

And OpenGL changed massively. Going from fixed function to programmable hardware.

I understand that a lot of developers want low level access to hardware - that's great for a lot of applications. But that low level access means that software is tied to hardware... and software is not forward/cross compatible. Which is a VERY big deal for pro market.

Remember when Apple just "forgot" to release a pro grade desktop for years? Do you think those pros just stayed with their outdated hardware?(they didn't, they moved to Windows)

Do you think that there's a good reason for many pro software vendors to jump to Metal, when the majority of their customers are on Windows with Vulkan support?

I mentioned this on another subthread - Apple just needs to offer a cross platform API, to prove that they want pro software to be developed on Macs.

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#86
post #77

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…

Anyone know a good intro tutorial for using Blender as a video editor like Premier?

I recommend looking into the Power Sequencer addon [1] that makes editing in Blender's Video Sequence Editor (VSE) a better experience. However, it's still pretty clunky so might be even better to wait for the upcoming VSE overhaul [2]

[1] https://www.blendernation.com/2020/05/17/blender-power-seque... [2] https://developer.blender.org/T78986

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More and more devices from Apple are getting LiDAR sensors so it makes sense to support it. Apple also is taking open source more seriously .

Still waiting for FOSS version of Facetime ;)

You can thank software patents for that https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/01/08/apple-denied-new-...

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#88
post #83

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…

Recommend Ian Hubert's "Lazy Tutorials"[1], although they're not really so beginner friendly. More for inspiration and entertainment. [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4Dq5VyfewIxxjzS34k2N...

I'm becoming more and more convinced that Ian Hubert is the patron saint of hobby CGI. Everything he touches turns to gold.

Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nice to see Apple supporting open-source. ... in a domain where they have either no products or their own products have clearly failed to obtain traction. Not going to happen for anything where there's an even reasonably successful Apple product, I think we can be sure of that. So yes, it is really nice to see Apple supporting Blender but let's not confuse that with open source/libre software in general.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

No damnation involved. Just clarity about what "supporting open source" means in the context of Apple.
Post reply on HN