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Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

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Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#251

Post by nailer »

TrevorJ wrote: post #13
nailer wrote: post #4

This is really smart move that helps Epic more than you might think. UE4's own tools (which are based around creating environments from existing models, placing actors, and realtime rendering) are WORLDS ahead of common Autodesk modelling tools eg 3DS Max and Maya (which Epic itself uses). UE4 is easy to pick up, but then you have to learn Maya and it becomes a grind. There needs to be something as powerful as Maya w…

There's no real comparison between a game engine and a modeling/animation package. They are built to do very different things. However, it is definitely in Epic's best interest to support a robust and freely available tool for the content creation side of things.

> There's no real comparison between a game engine and a modeling/animation package.

Sure there is.

- UE4 needs to move a viewport around 3D space, so does Maya. UE4 uses game controls. Maya you need to hold down something or tweak it to do that.

- UE4 involves creating and manipulating objects in space for BSP. Maya involves creating and manipulating objects in space for modelling.

Maya has a UI that's 20+ years old with minimal changes. UE4 does not.

> They are built to do very different things.

No, they're built to do different but related things. I'm not sure why you would think that modelling and environment creation are very different. For the purposes of gamedev or archvis, they're both tools to support making the environment. And one is a barely maintained cash cow.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#252

Post by BubRoss »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #240
sprafa wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s huge costs to using a non-standard choice like Blender over 3dsMax or Maya. They both have loads of proprietary tools (and are constantly adding one more every couple of cycles or so). 3D DCCs are not equivalent to each other. Financing Blender is indeed a good move for Epic if they believe (and there’s good reason to) it might make Game production toolsets more available.

I was under the impression that Blender was fairly common in the modeling industry. Not a de-facto standard like Microsoft Office or Creative Suite, but one frequently used option among many. Not true?

Not at all. Blender is an important piece of software because it is open and free, which helps lower investment 3D uses like research, but its interface and usability is about as bad as it gets. It takes heat for its interface yet still not enough in my opinion.

You have to experience trying to actually get something accomplished to truly understand how incredibly unintuitive everything from names to button placements to object movement to component selection etc truly is. I've used a lot of different 3D programs in a lot of different domains and nothing comes close to blender. It almost seems to go out of its way to make the most basic excersize a puzzle for the user.

The money for commercial programs is completely necessary in a professional context, since time is money and people have expectations.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#253

Post by BubRoss »

vincentpants wrote: post #172
soulofmischief wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Unreal+Blender just fine. What do you mean?

As an Unreal+Blender user, I would be absolutely interested in anything that can take a step off my toolchain.

What kind of steps slow you down?

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#254

Post by BubRoss »

fsloth wrote: post #174
soup10 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a free open source project blender is always going to be playing catch-up with Maya selling 1K+ licences unless the development is severely mismanaged.

Depends by what you mean by catchup? Complete feature parity hardly is the goal of Blender project so I’m not sure how to figure out what exactly constitutes the feature disparity that should be caught up by blender. One view to look at it is that polygon based modeling, animation and material authoring can be done using a finite feature set, and once that feature set is complete, further enhancements are nice to hav…

> One view to look at it is that polygon based modeling, animation and material authoring can be done using a finite feature set, and once that feature set is complete, further enhancements are nice to have, but not critical.

This is definitely true, if the interface is refined. In this respect, blender doesn't just not hit the bullseye, it's as if someone held the arrow and shot the bow straight in the air.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#255

Post by caspar »

BubRoss wrote: post #252
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that Blender was fairly common in the modeling industry. Not a de-facto standard like Microsoft Office or Creative Suite, but one frequently used option among many. Not true?

Not at all. Blender is an important piece of software because it is open and free, which helps lower investment 3D uses like research, but its interface and usability is about as bad as it gets. It takes heat for its interface yet still not enough in my opinion. You have to experience trying to actually get something accomplished to truly understand how incredibly unintuitive everything from names to button placement…

Have you tried using the Blender 2.8 release candidate UI though? As someone with approximately zero artistic skills and minimal 3D background, I was also turned off by Blender's inscrutable UI patterns 10 years ago.

But with the 2.8 RC news on HN last week I recently tried it again and I have to say that now it seems like the UI is pretty decent. Left click select, a move tool that works like every other move tool in paint, a clear hierarchy view with obvious nestable layers - it seems like many of the weird things I remember (like "drag the divider between the viewport and the menu bar down to see a secret option pane") are gone or redesigned now.

Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBqYTgaFDxU for some example usage or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPVpg4_POww for a preview of the UI/UX changes.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#256

Post by caspar »

ryacko wrote: post #169
jrockway wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows has no lack of power. All this anti-cheating stuff is mostly a scam to stop the dumbest of the dumb cheaters and probably collect information from your computer that's useful to advertisers/investors/law enforcement agencies. If I wanted to aimbot in an FPS, I would just analyze the HDMI output from my computer (via an FPGA) and have it directly create the necessary USB transactions to move my mouse to the ta…

Next generation aiming for twitch shooters will use a camera that tracks eyeball movements.

Already available in the form of the Tobii 4C for approximately 150 USD. Only accurate for most people to about a circle with diameter of about an inch on the screen though, and it feels strange to use it for an FPS.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#257

Post by sprafa »

caspar wrote: post #255
BubRoss wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Blender is an important piece of software because it is open and free, which helps lower investment 3D uses like research, but its interface and usability is about as bad as it gets. It takes heat for its interface yet still not enough in my opinion. You have to experience trying to actually get something accomplished to truly understand how incredibly unintuitive everything from names to button placement…

Have you tried using the Blender 2.8 release candidate UI though? As someone with approximately zero artistic skills and minimal 3D background, I was also turned off by Blender's inscrutable UI patterns 10 years ago. But with the 2.8 RC news on HN last week I recently tried it again and I have to say that now it seems like the UI is pretty decent. Left click select, a move tool that works like every other move tool i…

I have high hopes for 2.8 hopefully I’ll get along to testing it soon.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#258

Post by laurentb »

bhouston wrote: post #68

Commoditize one's compliments: https://jasongriffey.net/wp/2012/04/19/commoditizing-our-com... Unreal Engine, like Unity, right now has to be used with Autodesk products like 3DS Max or Maya, or at least that is the case with the large majority of professionals. This is an impediment to using Unreal Engine and thus makes Epic Games sort of dependent on Autodesk. There is probably no coincidence that the new general m…

Interestingly, Marc Petit came to Autodesk after the Softimage acquisition and back in the days was a big figure in the Softimage community. Softimage then died down completely after the Autodesk acquisition in 2015 (being the third wheel of their animation package with Maya and 3DS Max)

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#259

Post by StapleHorse »

KingFelix wrote: post #5
Lowkeyloki wrote: post #3

That's probably a drop in the bucket for Epic, but it's still much appreciated!

Yup! So stoked on the work they are doing. Epic has been funding some awesome projects / people. I am really stoked on what they are doing. I can only imagine if other companies with Epic levels of cash were doing the same thing. I love it, and support all the stuff they are doing. Tim Sweeney is a good guy. Looking forward to see what else they come up with

>Epic levels of cash

do you mean Steaming piles of cash? :)

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#260

Post by BubRoss »

caspar wrote: post #255
BubRoss wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Blender is an important piece of software because it is open and free, which helps lower investment 3D uses like research, but its interface and usability is about as bad as it gets. It takes heat for its interface yet still not enough in my opinion. You have to experience trying to actually get something accomplished to truly understand how incredibly unintuitive everything from names to button placement…

Have you tried using the Blender 2.8 release candidate UI though? As someone with approximately zero artistic skills and minimal 3D background, I was also turned off by Blender's inscrutable UI patterns 10 years ago. But with the 2.8 RC news on HN last week I recently tried it again and I have to say that now it seems like the UI is pretty decent. Left click select, a move tool that works like every other move tool i…

I have not used that particular new version. I hope blender is getting more refined and finally picking all the low hanging fruit. That being said, I have seen this cycle many times over the last 15 years. People say blender is working on its interface, I try it again and my mind is blown by the decisions all over again.
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