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Blender 5.0

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Re: Blender 5.0

#281

Post by thyristan »

savolai wrote: post #200
omnicognate wrote: post #130

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…

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.

Git ergonomics were far far better than the rest because of one reason that all the supposedly more ergonomic projects like Bazaar, Mercurial, SVN, ClearCase and lots of others failed miserably at:

Performance.

Since the CVS days, Version Control Systems got slower and slower. Centralized servers worsened the problem by doing everything in a synchronous manner, making people wait for locks, wait for checkouts, wait for diffs, wait for everything. But even the distributed ones like bzr or hg were slow as hell. What git enabled was the far superior ergonomics of not having to get a coffee while running a "git diff" on a project the size of the Linux kernel, X.org or LibreOffice. All the whining about inconsistent command line options and weird subcommand naming is totally secondary to this.

Nowadays, many of the aforementioned competitors either died out or worked on their performance problems. Nonetheless, git is still unmatched in this regard.

Re: Blender 5.0

#282

Post by the__alchemist »

gehsty wrote: 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…

As an addition, KiCad is also an example of exquisite Blender-like software for designing things. It solves a simpler problem of note. Both are paragons, and to your point, it would be lovely to have traditional CAD software on its level that's not expensive.

Re: Blender 5.0

#283

Post by monegator »

whizzter wrote: post #275
monegator wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wantin…

> The non-movment complainers are more of an alibi for those developers with little UI improvement interests.

True, but i also remember vehement discussions on everybody else in the world that wanted the scroll / zoom to work as in every other software in the world, and a few vocal users that would spam every thread and discussion insisting that we (the rest of the world) should have been using other software instead.

You know, the usual hostile attitude open source communities are famous for. I guess that for GIMP the moment that will change everything is when they will add a proper circle tool /s

GIMP and Inkscape are already moving in the right direction with the new UIs, fingers crossed

Re: Blender 5.0

#284

Post by the__alchemist »

1220512064 wrote: post #31
gehsty wrote: 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…

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 will phrase my response in an alternative form which, I mean not in a flippant way, but because I think it will clarify this, in complement to the other replies:

> Mom, may we have SolidWorks?

> We have SolidWorks at Home.

>

This is in contrasti to the example the parent comment brought up, and the one I added: Blender and KiCad do not have this concern; there are free (Or you could say inexpensive) high quality tools in their spaces. This is notably not the case for traditional CAD.

Re: Blender 5.0

#285

Post by thyristan »

al_borland wrote: post #81
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #76

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.

There is a blender addon called Bonsai for this:

https://bonsaibim.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXRpDka6gLI

Strong plus is that you can render views of the finished room in Blender. Big problem is that you first have to learn to use Blender.

Re: Blender 5.0

#286

Post by philipallstar »

shirro wrote: post #53
gehsty wrote: 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…

> It must be difficult when so much management is short sighted and focused on delivering short term profits for shareholders. Even academia is run like a business now.

Management just reacts to environments created by governments. When ZIRP was around money was very easy to get hold of - too easy. Now it's really hard because businesses have to beat government bond interest rates, which are guaranteed, to get debt/investment.

> Unless a privately held rogue company like Valve

Valve is not a rogue company.

> Industry, particularly the tech industry, is notorious for leaching of free and open source software and in some cases building entire businesses on it and not giving back

Your premise is wrong. It's impossible to leach off something that is freely given. This is like being angry because people don't all tip a street performer. The deal is it's free.

And your facts are wrong. Businesses fund a giant amount of OSS work.

Re: Blender 5.0

#288

Post by whizzter »

monegator wrote: post #283
whizzter wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 wantin…

> The non-movment complainers are more of an alibi for those developers with little UI improvement interests. True, but i also remember vehement discussions on everybody else in the world that wanted the scroll / zoom to work as in every other software in the world, and a few vocal users that would spam every thread and discussion insisting that we (the rest of the world) should have been using other software instead…

I think it's that phrase, "leading by example".

Blender went from a shitshow way worse than GIMP to almost killing the competition. Those working on GIMP took notice (and perhaps those that had felt sidelined before dared speak up).

Re: Blender 5.0

#289

Post by cornstalks »

rcarmo wrote: post #94
gcr wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agreed! take a look at https://Plasticity.xyz . It's not open-source, but it's got a small, highly dedicated team behind it. It's built on Solidworks' kernel, so it's quite robust. Also take a look at solverspace, caligula, FreeCAD, ...

* Node-locked (up to 2 machines) Hard nope.

Reading the FAQ it doesn't seem to bad. The Indie license allows you to run it simultaneously on 2 machines and the Studio license increases that to 4. You can transfer installations to new computers (or the same computer if doing a reinstall) up to 10 times per year, so you're not locked in to those 2 specific computers for eternity.

Restrictions are always annoying but I think they're striking a reasonable balance.

Re: Blender 5.0

#290

Post by WillAdams »

mijoharas wrote: post #243
WillAdams wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another opensource CAD tool to look at is Dune 3D: https://dune3d.org/ which has been discussed here in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37979758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41975958 which if it just had parameters/scripting would have a lot more potential.

I was somewhat excited about it, but one feature I wanted for the thing I was doing at the time was importing an svg, which it didn't support at the time (and from a cursory github search still doesn't support?). It's a shame, because it looks really nice. Maybe I'll check it out for the next thing I do where that's not a requirement. Might be a shame since I've finally learnt how to (basically) use freecad now!

Importing an SVG will require support for Bézier curves, which is a tough lift mathematically.
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