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Blender 5.0

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Re: Blender 5.0

#221

Post by btreecat »

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…

> 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.

I've only ever used openSCAD, Freecad, and on shape.

And for me, Freecad had increased my use of my 3d printer, originally built in 2016.

Cad has a specific workflow, which is true regardless of the tool. Sticking to the right order of operations goes a long way to having a positive XP as does some basic intro tutorials.

It's not a tool you can bumble around and figure out easily, even with XP in similar tools.

Re: Blender 5.0

#222

Post by btreecat »

HKH2 wrote: post #120
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…

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.

> 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.

I wouldn't say that, there's bugs in Freecad that drive me bonkers but I would be dishonest if I said it hadn't gotten more stable and better supports my Nvidia card today compared to previous releases

Re: Blender 5.0

#223

Post by mroche »

underscoremark wrote: post #212
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.

> 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! ;-)

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

I wouldn't frame it as "scared". The issue is that at a certain scene scale Python becomes the performance bottleneck if that's all you can use.

> 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)!

This is fine if you only ever have one show in production. Most non-boutique studios have multiple shows being worked on in tandem, be it internal productions or contract bids that require interfacing with other studios. These separate productions can have any given permutation of DCC and plugin versions, all of which the internal pipeline and production engineering teams have to support simultaneously. Apps that provide a stable C/C++ SDK and Python interface across versions are significantly more amenable to these kinds of environments as the core studio hub app, rather than being ancillary, task specific tools.

Re: Blender 5.0

#224

Post by bluecalm »

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. It has rendered Maya nearly obsolete.

GCC and now Clang has beaten Intel compiler (and others). Nginx has beaten/replaced commercial web servers. Stockfish has beaten commercial chess engines and Lichess is much better than commercial chess sites.

Just 3 examples that came to my mind reading your comment.

Re: Blender 5.0

#225

Post by mroche »

jsheard wrote: post #92
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…

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.

> on the most demanding real-world production workloads (think Pixar/Weta), which for now it hasn't been.

Super small nit (or info tidbit), but it doesn't take away from your overall message regarding production and scene scale.

Pixar does not and has not used Maya as the primary studio application, it's really only used for asset modeling and some minor shading tasks like UV generation and some Ptex painting. The actual studio app is Presto, which is an in-house tool Pixar has developed over the years since its earliest productions. All other DCCs are team/task specific.

Dreamworks is similar with their tool, Presto, IIRC. Walt Disney Animation Studio (WDAS) does use Maya as the core app last I saw, but I don't know if they've made any headway with evaluating Presto since 2019...

Re: Blender 5.0

#226

Post by leakmanatz »

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…

[dead]

Re: Blender 5.0

#227

Post by oblio »

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…

> I mean, the big studios use Maya like fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Windows - doesn't mean Linux isn't battle proven.

Those are different niches. Not even Apple has managed to budge Window out of corporate environments, though it is a lot more present than 20 years ago.

I imagine it's similar with Blender and Maya: do they fill the exact same space? Or is Blender adopted by different types of companies (probably smaller)?

Re: Blender 5.0

#228

Post by oblio »

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.

Graduates in which domain?

Re: Blender 5.0

#229

Post by oblio »

alex1138 wrote: post #139
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…

The comment I've heard is that Office (or was that Word?) doesn't necessarily beat LO, some people are just forced to use it because of file formats

Office as a whole wipes the floor with LibreOffice. Cleaner interface, generally more stable, especially on Windows, Excel is and remains a powerhouse, etc. Word and PowerPoint are also very solid. Outlook is meh.

If anything, OnlyOffice is incredibly polished. I don't know how they did it but it seems to work better and have a much cleaner UI than LibreOffice even though it's much newer.

Re: Blender 5.0

#230

Post by jiggawatts »

WillAdams wrote: post #178
jiggawatts wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that I've daydreamed of in the past is making a new constructive solid geometry "kernel" around which a CAD application could be wrapped based on projective geometric algebra (PGA). The algorithms it enables are fundamentally more capable and robust than traditional kernels based on linear algebra (vectors and matrices). You can do really fancy things like interpolating in space and time robustly, find extr…

Have you been tracking https://fornjot.app/ Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30597061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30825429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32295690

I haven't heard of fornjot, but that's not a surprise because I haven't been involved in the CAD field for a very long time (decades).

My thinking is to approach the problem from a fundamentally different angle. There's already constructive solid geometry (CSG) kernels, triangle mesh kernels, and NURBS-based kernels. Their mathematical foundations are very different, which results in wildly different behaviour and capabilities.

I came across PGA while studying physics, saw some vaguely CAD-like CSG demos and I realised that it could be yet another mathematical foundation on top of which CAD applications could be built.

Notably, variants of GA and PGA are already used in robotics, inverse kinematics, etc... including 5-axis milling, so it's not unheard of in industry. However, it's always used as a "spot" solution to work around a problem such as gimbal lock, or interpolating transformations. Typically by converting back-and-forth between linear algebra representations and some variant of GA temporarily. I'm thinking of using PGA throughout as the foundational geometric elements.

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