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Blender 5.0

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Re: Blender 5.0

#191

Post by croes »

jamilton wrote: post #23
donutdan4114 wrote: post #9

What’s the consensus on the future of this type of 3D tool? Especially for video animation/CGI in movies/tv/ads? Seems like in 10 years AI will basically make it pointless to use a tool like this at least for people working on average projects. What do folks in the industry think? What’s the long term outlook?

If AI is at the point where it is exactly as capable of your average junior 3D professional in 10 years, it will probably have automated a ton (double digit percentage?) of current jobs such that nothing is safe. There's a lot of complexity, it's fairly long time horizon, it's very visually detailed, it's creative and subjective, and there's not a lot of easily accessible high quality training data. It's like 2D art…

Not quite. The junior produced also source filed that a senior can enhance. AI gives you the end result that can’t be as easy tinkered with.

Re: Blender 5.0

#192

Post by pjmlp »

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…

Blender has the advantage of having been a commercial product that went open source, thus many people on the initial core team cared about stuff that other projects don't, plus they already had an installed base.

You don't see the same success with Gimp, Krita,...

Re: Blender 5.0

#193

Post by Klaster_1 »

nickthegreek wrote: post #65
Workaccount2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FreeCAD is probably the single most frustrating and unintuitive pieces of software I have ever used. I almost drafted hate mail to the devs after 15 minutes of crash coursing fusion360 got me further than 2 days of trying to use FreeCAD. It seems like it has lots of capability but still "punch your monitor" levels of difficulty just trying to do the most basic stuff.

how long ago did you try? the recent advances have turned me into a believer as a hobbyist compared to the first time i checked it out.

Not OP, but I've been using FreeCAD for hobby projects for 8 years and even though I usually do achieve the results I want, the "monitor punching UX issues" are absolutely real. I'd love for FreeCAD to succeed the way Blender did, but the project either lacks people with UX expertise or funds to sponsor such people.

Re: Blender 5.0

#194

Post by cageface »

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'd add postgres to that list.

Re: Blender 5.0

#195

Post by buster »

rr808 wrote: post #153
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…

Microsoft Office is dying. Most grads we get only know Google docs and avoid Office. Most of our docs are on wikis or email now.

But, in my experience enterprises are moving to office365. Ten years ago I would have bet on the Google suite but it looks like Microsoft is winning this game in the corporate world. Google gets all the private users, Microsoft the companies. So, no, sadly, MS Office is not dying. I wish it would.

Re: Blender 5.0

#196

Post by mkaic »

I think some of the coolest changes in this release are on the nodes side of things — they added Closures (kinda like lambdas!), Bundles (tuples/structs, I guess?), and Repeat (loops!) (already was in Geo Nodes, now it's in Shader Nodes too).

Blender nodes have come a long way over the past decade and it's incredibly satisfying to see the care with which they have been developed. Blender's node editor is my personal favorite node editor I've ever used in any software, and I often find myself wishing other software adopted some of their UI and UX conventions.

Been a happy user since, oh, v2.75? And looking forward to being a user for many more releases to come.

Donate to Blender! [0]

[0] https://fund.blender.org

Re: Blender 5.0

#197

Post by germandiago »

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…

> It has rendered Maya nearly obsolete

Is this even true? My understanding is that 3D Studio and Maya used to be ahead.

Re: Blender 5.0

#198

Post by taneq »

etrautmann wrote: post #133
crote wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Maybe try OnShape, which is browser based and quite professional?

The free tier is non-commercial only, and makes anything you design available publicly, so it might not be suitable for some users. It's also pricey, the first paid tier is $1500/year (compared with Fusion which is $680/year).

Re: Blender 5.0

#199

Post by Reviving1514 »

crote wrote: post #125
btreecat wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Give plasticity a shot - not FOSS but pretty decent CAD and works on linux

Re: Blender 5.0

#200

Post by savolai »

omnicognate wrote: post #130
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…

Git is an interesting case in its obscure ergonomics. Maybe Linus was right in that for his initial user target group that turned into advocates, algorithmic elegance was a more important quality, so git won regardless of ergonomics for wider audience.

So various projects have come up ever since to try to patch the UX.

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