Earlier quoted context omitted.
WebKit, Clang, LLVM
WebKit is a fork of KHTML and the source had to be released in order to comply with the LGPL.
Sure - just like anyone else who contributes to LGPL projects, Apple willingly chose to do so.
Apple Joins Blender Development Fund
221–230 of 285 posts
Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28866458
You mean a comment that listed several open source projects started by Apple?
Where are you getting your information from? None of the projects listed there were started by Apple, all of them are used in successful Apple products, and all of them have been used by both competitors, and the community.
Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Yeah, the interests are probably: 1) Attracting pro creators to MacBooks requires having top-tier Blender support and performance on Mac, so Apple's interest is in making it run as well as possible 2) some future AR/VR tie-in This is very un-Apple-like, but I really, really, really, really hope they keep going in this direction. There's zero reason for Apple to keep being this stodgy. Why aren't they doing "cool nerd…
it probably is a lot of 1).
Right now, Cycles does not have any GPU acceleration on Mac. Windows and linux its fine, but mac is very limited.
Having a group of people, even if its a small number, be vocal about avoiding their computers and have a good reason behind it, isnt worth the 120k a year that it would cost them to be a sponsor.
Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had mandatory drawing classes.
PE, French. I’m sure understanding a bit about computer graphics is at least as useful to the average person as the quadratic formula.
Is that an argument for making 3D graphics mandatory or the opposite?
I am suspicious of arguments of the form: “Here’s some stupid shit people do! Let’s do more.” Although I will grant there is a seductive consistency to the logic.
Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund
#225Earlier 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…
Are there Metal compatible renderers on non-Apple platforms?
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Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
This might be an odd, or unpopular opinion, but I really wish there were more tutorials written down, in text, with separate images and instructions. I don't like searching YouTube videos for specific steps, but plain HTML documentation is greppable. Blender does have docs -- and they're usually very good, but often out of date. Creatives really shine on YouTube, and make amazing things, but hardly anyone seems to pu…
Check out the Blender Secrets ebook. A fantastic resource of tips and techniques for working in Blender.
Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund
#227Glad to see Apple supporting more open 3d tools. Apple was huge in getting open standards funded at Khronos for OpenGL ES, WebGL and more. These investments led to lots of great things and innovations. The market for 3d tools is one of the most fixed markets out there and the tools are expensive, that has caused interoperability issues and standards being more proprietary. For instance, COLLADA wasn't great but it wa…
Cinema4D is still ~$100 a month unfortunately. I prefer it’s interface to Blender, even with Blender’s recent UI updates. I don’t think my preference is strong enough to support forking over $100/month, though.
The others have a “lite” version or an indie subscription that is significantly cheaper. When you have those, and a lot of other software is is around $10-50 a month, C4D’s pricing is egregious.
Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Metal is by far a much friendlier API than Vulkan. Its approach with opt-in complexity is arguably the correct one. (Ever tried writing a Vulkan "Hello triangle" from scratch?) It's also gaining some nice features that are usable out of the gate, rather than waiting on Vulkan extension standardization and adoption. It simply makes the most sense for Apple.
> Metal is by far a much friendlier API than Vulkan Sure, but that was hardly the point of Vulkan in the first place. The point is to have cross-platform 3D grahipcs, but since Apple never gave a shit about anything cross-platform, they chose to write their own stuff. And if they actually did care, they could have modeled the same API as they have with Metal, but over Vulkan, so the engine is the same but the API is…
Well you can use Vulkan over Metal with MoltenVK, so that point is a bit moot.
Opinion time: WebGPU will become the standard graphics API to target for cross-platform. gfx-rs/wgpu already works over Vulkan/Metal/D3D12/D3D11/OpenGL/WebGL & WebGPU in browsers. Much better than simply Vulkan, unless performance is your primary sticking point.
Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe it will? They didn’t say why they can’t sit through the videos, it might be because they are too slow to get to the point? I don’t really see what value your comment is adding. The parents’ post was reasonable to me.
It was a patronizing lecture. The followup with more patronizing clarified the non-helpful intent.
I don't like videos either and I took watching at 2x as good advice I'll put into use.
Re: Apple Joins Blender Development Fund
#230> ... 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…
I'm guessing it's because Macs are a second-class-citizen when it comes to Blender's technology stack. Intel has a hardware-accelerated denoiser, Nvidia has hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and Macbooks have... pretty much none of that.
In all fairness though, I'd imagine a big chunk of this being Metal's fault. I'd be dragging my feet too if I found out that I had to re-write our graphics backend just to support >8% of the desktop market share.