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Blender 5.2 LTS

blender.org

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Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#21

Post by [deleted] »

keyle wrote: post #6
phren0logy wrote: post #2

I don't use Blender, so my admiration is from a distance but: Wow - what an impressive project. At least if I understand it correctly, this is a real pro-level piece of free and open software that's equivalent to thousands and thousands of dollars in closed-source commercial software.

Yes, it's had a lot of money put through it since its early days, with quirky shortcuts and quirky features. Imagine if they made Gimp good, this would be what blender became in 3D. They've done it right, with a foundation and it appears to run like clockwork. Feature wise it now rivals with some pretty expensive alternatives. Open source; can win!

[deleted]

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#22

Post by jijijijij »

cheschire wrote: post #12
unshavedyak wrote: post #3

For those of you who get value out of Blender please consider donating: https://fund.blender.org/ :) It's a wonderful project. Even small amounts help. Thanks!

Done. I was feeling bad for saying how often I used blender without paying a cent not 20 seconds earlier in this very thread. Then I saw your message. The fact that Apple Pay is an option made it take only another 20 seconds for me to throw some money at a great project.

Thanks for the Apple pay hint. That was just what I needed to get me over the mental threshold. It's been literally two clicks.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#23

Post by [deleted] »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #8
keyle wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's had a lot of money put through it since its early days, with quirky shortcuts and quirky features. Imagine if they made Gimp good, this would be what blender became in 3D. They've done it right, with a foundation and it appears to run like clockwork. Feature wise it now rivals with some pretty expensive alternatives. Open source; can win!

https://krita.org/en/ It is also free. =3

[deleted]

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#24

Post by Joel_Mckay »

pid-1 wrote: post #11
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Or just use free props if you are a hobbist.

There is no such thing as "free" unless the original author released files under CC0 or Public domain. The rest of the ecosystem is a legal minefield even for kids kit-bashing a project for fun.

We spent around $3k conducting a survey of the Blender ecosystem for a game dev project about 2 years ago, and continue to monitor the situation every update. A rather sobering experience in some ways.

Would recommend Poly Haven as the plugin is not required to access their free assets, but it is usually a good idea to support people that make things easier for everyone. =3

https://polyhaven.com/plugins/blender

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#25

Post by cheschire »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #16
cheschire wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use blender constantly to make things for 3d printing and I haven’t spent a cent on it or any plugins I use for it. So for anyone on the fence about picking up blender and reading this comment above, no it doesn’t require hundreds of dollars of plugins to be useful. Not for every use case.

Every use-case differs. I like Blender even when they break my hobby projects every update. OpenScad and FreeCad also works for 3D cad files. However, many people that own 3D printers will never sculpt, re-mesh, or cad up their own objects. =3

FreeCAD is great if someone mainly wants to print functional, usable parts. That’s totally valid and honestly even more powerful than Blender for that use case. Autodesk Fusion (prev. Fusion 360) is also a popular option.

I use blender because I also like to do a lot of 3d printed art, and as you mentioned, that sculpt tooling is one of many fantastic tools for that purpose.

Also LLMs know a lot about Blender, making it very easy to describe what I want to do, and then get a walk through of how to do it with Blender.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#27

Post by Joel_Mckay »

halfdaft wrote: post #19
cheschire wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use blender constantly to make things for 3d printing and I haven’t spent a cent on it or any plugins I use for it. So for anyone on the fence about picking up blender and reading this comment above, no it doesn’t require hundreds of dollars of plugins to be useful. Not for every use case.

Same - I make most of my living from Blender and I occassionally use 1 or 2 paid add-ons. With the recent improvements to the compositor and the editor, it has even replaced the last piece of Adobe software I was using - After Effects - very nice feeling. I donate to Blender after every paid job too.

Indeed, geometry nodes are revolutionary in some ways, and volumetric displacement brushes are magic.

The issue is Blender has been in perpetual Beta for decades. Every update something breaks, moves, permutes, or goes missing. It is chaos incarnate in some ways. =3

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#28

Post by maqp »

What's the ideal route for someone familiar with 3ds Max to learn Blender? I feel a bit stuck with my proprietary skillset.

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#29

Post by Joel_Mckay »

cheschire wrote: post #25
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every use-case differs. I like Blender even when they break my hobby projects every update. OpenScad and FreeCad also works for 3D cad files. However, many people that own 3D printers will never sculpt, re-mesh, or cad up their own objects. =3

FreeCAD is great if someone mainly wants to print functional, usable parts. That’s totally valid and honestly even more powerful than Blender for that use case. Autodesk Fusion (prev. Fusion 360) is also a popular option. I use blender because I also like to do a lot of 3d printed art, and as you mentioned, that sculpt tooling is one of many fantastic tools for that purpose. Also LLMs know a lot about Blender, making…

We found most of this devs work was popular with artists. May be worth a look.

https://bartoszstyperek.gumroad.com/

LLM are sometimes good at organizing the awful documentation for Blenders ever permuting API, but will not help you get better creatively. If you are interested in geometry nodes, than this channel offers a lot =3

https://www.youtube.com/@TheDucky3D/videos

Re: Blender 5.2 LTS

#30

Post by embedding-shape »

> Node-powered physics

Ah man, been waiting so long for this, finally! The integration with sound to geometry nodes is also great and will be a lot of fun for music videos.

Every day Blender inches closer to Houdini, and I for one am very happy about it :)

Really like the polished changelog notes they've done for quite some time as well, used to be a huge hassle to actually understand what changed and it's a breeze now.

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