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Blender 5.0

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Re: Blender 5.0

#211

Post by underscoremark »

wkat4242 wrote: post #165
underscoremark wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blender is the go-to for struggling artists/developers, and industry outsiders, like me. I'm stuck at Blender 2.93.18 because I don't have the budget for better hardware, let alone a Maya license! However, even that version of Blender still gets it done for me. And also, how can you say Blender is not battle-proven? I mean, the big studios use Maya like fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Windows - doesn't mean Linux…

Why not use a later version? Is it much heavier? I haven't used blender much. It's too focused on animation. I mainly make more engineering style things for 3D printing. Even though it can technically do that, the interface just rubs me the wrong way somehow. And i can use Fusion 360 for free.

It's a hardware issue. Blender 3.0+ requires a graphics card and drivers with OpenGL 4.3 support. I don't have that hardware.

I have used Blender for 3D printing, though. Architectural design, as well.

The interface is a rub at first, and then again after you get used to it and have to use something else. :-)

Re: Blender 5.0

#212

Post by underscoremark »

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.

> constantly changing API that doesn’t allow for the extensibility

You pick a (stable) version, and use that API. It doesn't change if you don't. If it truly is a _major_ project, then constantly "upgrading" to the latest release is a big no-no (or should be)!

And these "most people" who are scared of a Python API? Weak! It should have been a low level C API! ;-)

Re: Blender 5.0

#213

Post by jl6 »

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…

TeX is arguably the only application amongst these, as opposed to tool (and that’s debatable). OSS definitely dominates in tooling, but successful open source end-user applications are rarer.

Re: Blender 5.0

#214

Post by jerbearito »

underscoremark wrote: post #108
jsheard wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Blender has done far better than most open source software but Maya is still very much the industry standard. I don't think we can realistically say that Maya is beaten until Blender is battle-proven to the same degree, on the most demanding real-world production workloads (think Pixar/Weta), which for now it hasn't been.

Blender is the go-to for struggling artists/developers, and industry outsiders, like me. I'm stuck at Blender 2.93.18 because I don't have the budget for better hardware, let alone a Maya license! However, even that version of Blender still gets it done for me. And also, how can you say Blender is not battle-proven? I mean, the big studios use Maya like fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Windows - doesn't mean Linux…

> until Blender is battle-proven to the same degree

Re: Blender 5.0

#215

Post by Mashimo »

legends2k wrote: post #140
HKH2 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LibreOffice, GIMP, FreeCAD and Inkscape all have their quirks (and bugs), but they're probably seen as features by their core users so they won't change.

Not sure about FreeCAD but got a lot done with Gimp, Inkscape and LibreOffice in my personal projects. Totally worth my time!

I dislike using Gimp. Always have.

There is just something about it that does not click with me. Just selecting a foreground object even when the background was almost white never worked for me. Just so fiddly.

I can get stuff done with it.

Re: Blender 5.0

#216

Post by Mashimo »

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…

In the 3D printing realm most slicers are open source. And I think a lot of professionals are also using them. Though maybe not in the very expensive end of industrial printers.

Re: Blender 5.0

#217

Post by Mashimo »

Fabricio20 wrote: post #142
polishdude20 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Onshape has blown me away with its browser interface and how quick it all loads. And as long as your projects are public, it's free.

I tried Onshape and the first thing that made me drop it was how slow it is. It feels extremely sluggish, probably because it's running on the browser. I have a really good computer though, so I dont want to deal with that.

Mhh, it's quite quick for me. Maybe the browser you used did not support it.

Re: Blender 5.0

#218

Post by dig1 »

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 is perhaps the only open source software that managed to beat all the commercial software in its niche.

gcc? It’s hard to imagine any of the projects mentioned without a good compiler.

Re: Blender 5.0

#219

Post by mroche »

qwertox wrote: post #206
jsheard wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Blender has done far better than most open source software but Maya is still very much the industry standard. I don't think we can realistically say that Maya is beaten until Blender is battle-proven to the same degree, on the most demanding real-world production workloads (think Pixar/Weta), which for now it hasn't been.

Maya's API is so much better than Blender's. You pay the fee for the OS that Maya is, but the API is so much better than anything open source. Like Postgres is an OS for databases. Blender is not yet there. IIRC you need to compile entire Blender just to change a node.

Blender gives you two paths for extension: a) fork it and layer your changes directly onto the app, or b) you create a plugin via the Blender Python API.

For vendors, the former is obviously a no-go. The latter has the issue of be throttled by Python, so you have to effectively create a shim that communicates with an external library or application that actually performs compute intensive tasks.

Most (if not all) industry DCCs provide a dedicated C++ SDK with Python bindings available if desired.

Re: Blender 5.0

#220

Post by entrox »

Fabricio20 wrote: post #144
1220512064 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK how they compare to professional CAD tools, but I've heard good things about FreeCAD and OpenSCAD. I know that some people use Blender for CAD work, and there are even some extensions to make it easier, but I'm dubious that the representation of meshes that Blender uses are well-suited for CAD applications.

I tried FreeCAD and the user interface is so unintuitive and things just have constraints that block you from doing the most basic things from the get-go that I just gave up in 10m, like sibling. SCAD is scripted/programmer CAD, I like the concept and have used for a few things but it's quite a learning curve to do anything more than a cube with some funny edges! Dune3D is currently my go-to for 3d-printer related pa…

FreeCAD is definitely not something you can just pick up, but it's pretty intuitive if you're coming from CATIA as the workflow is very similar.
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