Blender 5.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Blender 5.0

#121

Post by zaptheimpaler » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 1:29 AM UTC

bigyikes wrote: post #109

What does Blender do differently that makes it such a successful open source product? It’s powerful and pleasant to use. Even the release marketing page is beautiful and well-made. I like open source as much as the next guy, but outside of developer tools there is little that comes close to Blender in terms of utility and UX. Is it funding? Specific individuals? Are there PMs and designers? Whatever it is, it’s worki…

Yeah this is a really good question. I'd love to know more about that too. There's some good history on the website here [1].

The creator apparently was selling it as freemium software in 1998, and then the bubble burst and the corp shutdown in 2002. But the creator created a non-profit called the Blender Foundation, launched a Free Blender campaign [2] (the forum post is still up!) to raise money from its users and bought out the rights to the software from the investors.

[1] https://www.blender.org/about/history/

[2] https://blenderartists.org/t/free-blender-campaign-launched/...

Re: Blender 5.0

#122

Post by Cadthrowaway » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 1:30 AM UTC

porphyra wrote: post #85

Blender is really an amazing case study of open source software. Apart from the Linux kernel and web browsers/tools, it is perhaps the only open source software that managed to beat all the commercial software in its niche. It has rendered Maya nearly obsolete. Meanwhile, in other niches, Microsoft Office still beats open source office suites like LibreOffice; Photoshop isn't about to give up its crown to GIMP; Light…

>FreeCAD isn't even in the rear view mirror of Solidworks.

I think FreeCAD might be on a distant hilltop in their rearview these days, check it out again.

Re: Blender 5.0

#123

Post by CoreformGreg » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 1:31 AM UTC

dr_dshiv wrote: post #73

dgroshev wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, but I don't think it's possible without a large and sustained investment into a free geometric modelling kernel, which can probably be only done by a government. Parasolid is powering practically every major CAD system. Its development started in 1986 and it's still actively developed. The amount of effort that goes into those things is immense (39 years of commercial development!) and I don't believe it can be…

> Same, but I don't think it's possible without a large and sustained investment into a free geometric modelling kernel, which can probably be only done by a government. Can you help me understand why this problem is so hard?

The other reply is really good. To add to that, the intersection of two bi-cubic Bezier patches (each being but one part of a cubic B-spline surface) is an implicit equation of degree 18^2=324. This simply cannot be implemented exactly in a geometry kernel and thus must be approximated. How do you want to approximate this? If you choose trimming (the industry standard) now you have to handle gaps in your geometry. If you choose remapping into an unstructured watertight spline, you need to solve a constraint system that is NP-hard. If you choose reparameterizing… well, see nVariate’s watertight Boolean technique (disclaimer: I once sponsored a project with nVariate).

Now, generally speaking, in a CAD model most surfaces will be “analytic” (plane, torus, conical, arc, line, etc). But whenever some complex surface that joins these surfaces is required, (NUR)B-splines are the principal technique for “covering” the gap.

Re: Blender 5.0

#124

Post by Forgeties79 » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 1:35 AM UTC

porphyra wrote: post #85

Blender is really an amazing case study of open source software. Apart from the Linux kernel and web browsers/tools, it is perhaps the only open source software that managed to beat all the commercial software in its niche. It has rendered Maya nearly obsolete. Meanwhile, in other niches, Microsoft Office still beats open source office suites like LibreOffice; Photoshop isn't about to give up its crown to GIMP; Light…

I’m rooting for gimp but they are truly a decade behind photoshop. I don’t know how they can compete. Luckily it does not seem like they are in the market for professionals so the need to match Photoshop isn’t quite as high

Re: Blender 5.0

#125

Post by crote » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 1:37 AM UTC

btreecat wrote: post #103

porphyra wrote: post #85

Blender is really an amazing case study of open source software. Apart from the Linux kernel and web browsers/tools, it is perhaps the only open source software that managed to beat all the commercial software in its niche. It has rendered Maya nearly obsolete. Meanwhile, in other niches, Microsoft Office still beats open source office suites like LibreOffice; Photoshop isn't about to give up its crown to GIMP; Light…

> Meanwhile, in other niches, Microsoft Office still beats open source office suites like LibreOffice; Photoshop isn't about to give up its crown to GIMP; Lightroom isn't losing to Darktable; and FreeCAD isn't even in the rear view mirror of Solidworks. Tbf, everything starts somewhere and all the proprietary apps you listed were not instant market leaders. I can and do use all those FOSS tools just fine both as a ho…

> I can and do use all those FOSS tools just fine both as a hobbyist and professionally, my needs are meet.

Mine aren't: GIMP is okay, FreeCAD is a complete joke. It is painfully obvious that their development is done primarily by F/LOSS enthusiasts rather than by industry professionals and UX designers. They are closer to being a random collection of features than a professional workhorse. You might eventually get the job done, but compared to the proprietary competition it is woefully incomplete, overly complicated, and significantly buggier.

The poor quality of FreeCAD is the main reason my 3D printer is collecting dust. As a Linux-only user the proprietary alternatives mostly aren't available to me, and FreeCAD is bad enough that I'd rather not do CAD at all. The Ondsel fork was looking promising for a while, but sadly that died off.

Re: Blender 5.0

#126

Post by mortoc » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 1:40 AM UTC

porphyra wrote: post #85

Blender is really an amazing case study of open source software. Apart from the Linux kernel and web browsers/tools, it is perhaps the only open source software that managed to beat all the commercial software in its niche. It has rendered Maya nearly obsolete. Meanwhile, in other niches, Microsoft Office still beats open source office suites like LibreOffice; Photoshop isn't about to give up its crown to GIMP; Light…

As a game developer, I'm really rooting for open source game engines.

Unity and Unreal are dinosaurs that target the shrinking console market. Godot is being built in their image. My hope is that something more versatile like Bevy becomes common so that we have something that could potentially compete with the next generation of Roblox.

Re: Blender 5.0

#127

Post by jsheard » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 1:44 AM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #107

MichaelEstes wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not a very big studio or very big production, Blender falls over in the pipeline department. It’s a constantly changing API that doesn’t allow for the extensibility needed to get a major project out the door, just the fact that only a Python API is provided is enough for most people who have worked on massive scenes with massive amounts of data to consider it a non starter.

I'm sure "major project" is a subjective label, but Flow made headlines earlier this year with an Academy Award (Best Animated Feature) and Golden Globe (Best Animated Feature Film) https://flow.movie/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgZccxuj2RY https://www.blender.org/user-stories/making-flow-an-intervie...

Flow is good filmmaking expressed through low-tech production, which is totally valid, but it doing a lot with a little isn't going to stop Disney from one-upping themselves with the next Zootopia movie so Blender needs to handle that angle too if it's going to become a catch-all solution for all kinds of production.

Re: Blender 5.0

#128

Post by mixmastamyk » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 1:45 AM UTC

MichaelEstes wrote: post #100

manifoldgeo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The studio that makes Evangelion moved from 3DS Max to Blender as their primary 3D software according to this article: https://www.blender.org/user-stories/japanese-anime-studio-k...

That is not a very big studio or very big production, Blender falls over in the pipeline department. It’s a constantly changing API that doesn’t allow for the extensibility needed to get a major project out the door, just the fact that only a Python API is provided is enough for most people who have worked on massive scenes with massive amounts of data to consider it a non starter.

VFX studios have been using Python APIs for twenty+ years, backed by C. They were one of the first industries to use it. That's where I learned it, around the turn of the century.

Re: Blender 5.0

#129

Post by Forgeties79 » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 1:46 AM UTC

Aerolfos wrote: post #95

porphyra wrote: post #85

Blender is really an amazing case study of open source software. Apart from the Linux kernel and web browsers/tools, it is perhaps the only open source software that managed to beat all the commercial software in its niche. It has rendered Maya nearly obsolete. Meanwhile, in other niches, Microsoft Office still beats open source office suites like LibreOffice; Photoshop isn't about to give up its crown to GIMP; Light…

Video editing? Adobe has set themselves up for failure there, everyone wants an alternative Davinci Resolve is probably competitive with Premiere, but while free it's not actually open source. But either a viable competitor catching up or Davinci publishing the code could change that fast

Resolve Studio vastly outshines Premiere IMO. For $300 flat it’s a no-brainer.

Re: Blender 5.0

#130

Post by omnicognate » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 1:47 AM UTC

porphyra wrote: post #85

Blender is really an amazing case study of open source software. Apart from the Linux kernel and web browsers/tools, it is perhaps the only open source software that managed to beat all the commercial software in its niche. It has rendered Maya nearly obsolete. Meanwhile, in other niches, Microsoft Office still beats open source office suites like LibreOffice; Photoshop isn't about to give up its crown to GIMP; Light…

> Apart from the Linux kernel and web browsers/tools, it is perhaps the only open source software that managed to beat all the commercial software in its niche.

I can think of a few more: Git obsoleted an entire category of commercial software seemingly almost overnight, VSCode has become by far the most widely used IDE (not entirely open source, though), TeX still dominates mathematical typesetting AFAIK (as it has for as long as computers have been used for that), (lib)ffmpeg is used everywhere for video/audio transcoding and between them nginx and apache still account for the majority of webservers. Most popular programming language compilers/interpreters/runtimes are open source too, of course.