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Blender 5.0

blender.org

271–280 of 377 posts

Re: Blender 5.0

#271
post #225
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.

> 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 ac…

Good to know!

> Presto, which is an in-house tool Pixar has developed

> Dreamworks is similar with their tool, Presto, IIRC.

I guessed that's a typo though and yeah, the Dreamworks animation tool is called Premo.

Re: Blender 5.0

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There are fully open adaptations of VS Code.

I use VSCodium.

Re: Blender 5.0

#274
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you draw the line between tool and application? Even the qualifier "end user" application doesn't seem obvious to me. Is Photoshop an end user application or a tool for artists?

It’s debatable. Everything is layered, and one layer’s application/product is the higher layer’s tool/platform. In the context of understanding where and why OSS is dominant, I think the tool/app distinction is whether the thing solves a software problem or whether it solves a business problem. Through that lens, Photoshop is an application, while VSCode is a tool.

Tool, application, utility... sighs

Why is not Photoshop considered a tool? You use it to [...], as a tool. But then I do not see the difference between application, like an application can be a tool, can it not? It makes my head spin and English is not my native language.

Re: Blender 5.0

#275
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder what will be the next category of open source to pull ahead? KiCad, for PCB design. They have been making massive improvements over the last few years, and with proprietary solutions shutting down (Eagle) or being unaffordable (Altium) Kicad is now by far the best option for both hobbyists and small companies. With the release of KiCad 5 in 2018 it went from being "a pain to use to, but technically suffici…

the epiphany moment was when the dev team stopped listening to the neckbeards that wanted things different for the sake of them being different, and started listening to professionals that wanted more sane workflows. There must be a reason if all industry does things simillar ways, other than inertia. Guess what, user adoption increased dramatically, because it became pleasant (or tolerable) to use by people that use…

"Complaining neckbeards" are a part of the problem, but the bigger issue is often developer-users that has oversight (or preference due to "control") with shitty UI-decisions that have little interest or agency in fixing them. The non-movment complainers are more of an alibi for those developers with little UI improvement interests.

GIMP is just bad sadly even when it comes to basics, it has nothing to do with wanting Adobe products but more about GIMP just being a "coders-tool".

Every time in the last decade I checked, i still had to input a resolution when creating a new image layer.. that's a fundamental operation that hasn't been that clumsy in Photoshop since the 90s (Photoshop has "infinite" layers, they can be larger than the image, yes it's "bloated" but that's what you want as an artist 90% of the time.. not an annoying border).

Re: Blender 5.0

#276

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…

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Re: Blender 5.0

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a scale from "big chunk of work" to "complete rewrite", how much work would it take to fix those issues in Open Cascade?

It would probably fall somewhere between "substantial architectural overhaul" and "partial rewrite" because it’d require redesigning the topological representation to eliminate seam edges. Some of these issues are long standing and really hard to solve. Someone could probably defend an entire PhD thesis on “redesigning the topological representation to eliminate seam edges” without making much practical progress

How do the other kernels e.g. Parasolid work without seam edges? Without a seam the 2D parametric boundary is not closed.

Re: Blender 5.0

#278
post #53
post #26

I’d really like to see something like blender come for the 3D CAD industry, at the moment it feels like the only people who would lose out are AutoDesk. The amount of money that flows in and out of 3D cad (as subscription and then value created) having a first class open source kernel and tooling, would be giving big industrial players freedom to modify and tailor to their needs as well as smaller / hobbyists get sta…

Probably requires something that is almost there then a sponsor(s) to throw in developers or funding to get the rest of the way. On the EDA side CERN did a lot to lift Kicad to the point of being a credible alternative that could breakthrough like Blender. Both those projects are over 30 years old and for a lot of that time were dismissed as too difficult to use or lacking in features. FreeCAD is only 23 years old. I…

[dead]

Re: Blender 5.0

#279

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.

OpenSCAD is great, I’ve made some very complex stuff in it that would be hard to make even in professional tools like Fusion. For some reason the main OpenSCAD releases don’t seem to get updated (the current version on the site is 2021.x). The nightly builds are great though, and I recommend getting one and turning on the Manifold backend since it is MUCH faster than the default CGAL one.

There is also:

https://pythonscad.org/

Re: Blender 5.0

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind sharing what you were trying to do? I love FreeCAD so I'd be happy to help you do it if you'd be willing to give it a second try.

My main goal is to reproduce the floor plan of my house, so I can figure out how to best layout the furniture.

For that purpose Sweet Home 3D might be easier to use, especially if one has not that much CAD experience.

https://www.sweethome3d.com/

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