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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

#31

Post by DonHopkins »

andybak wrote: post #19
Cyph0n wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they want to save it for Fortnite hats or whatever. You could easily replace "Fortnite hats" with "Pokemon cards", "Yugioh cards", "Gameboy games", "MMO items", "Starcraft expansions", etc. The difference with Epic is that they've managed to take a much larger chunk of the market, which is why parents have started to notice it more.

Yep. And I have qualms over some of those things too. I guess it's a tricky one as toys are not really much different despite having a physical manifestation. I would have happily spent every penny I could get my hands on on Star Wars figures when I was of that age. Is marketing a useless blob of plastic to kids any different to marketing a useless bunch of bytes?

It's better for the environment to market useless bunches of bytes that useless blobs of plastic.

Especially when they use some of that money to support useful bunches of bytes like Blender!

(That said, I sure loved my Star Wars action figures!)

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#32

Post by groovybits »

Andrex wrote: post #29

In the spirit of supporting open software, it would be fantastic if Epic Games Store and its DRM warmed up to Linux next. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844241

"“Open tools, libraries and platforms are critical to the future of the digital content ecosystem,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games."

Contradictory sentiments like these are what lead me to believe this grant is mostly for marketing purposes. (tin-foil hat mode)

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#33

Post by TeMPOraL »

andybak wrote: post #19
Cyph0n wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they want to save it for Fortnite hats or whatever. You could easily replace "Fortnite hats" with "Pokemon cards", "Yugioh cards", "Gameboy games", "MMO items", "Starcraft expansions", etc. The difference with Epic is that they've managed to take a much larger chunk of the market, which is why parents have started to notice it more.

Yep. And I have qualms over some of those things too. I guess it's a tricky one as toys are not really much different despite having a physical manifestation. I would have happily spent every penny I could get my hands on on Star Wars figures when I was of that age. Is marketing a useless blob of plastic to kids any different to marketing a useless bunch of bytes?

> Is marketing a useless blob of plastic to kids any different to marketing a useless bunch of bytes?

The physical blob is, well, physical. It exists for longer, and 20 years later you may dig it out and relive some of childhood memories. Bytes in the cloud tend to have much shorter life, usually defined by how long the vendor bothers to keep the server applications up.

EDIT: Funny I managed to post an exactly opposite opinion to 'DonHopkins at the same time :). Let me just clarify: I prefer no marketing of useless anything, but for toys, I think physical beats digital because digital is ephemeral.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#34

Post by foota »

sgarman wrote: post #26
Rch_East wrote: post #17

Epic are doing a great job improving fairness in the gaming industry, and the economic conditions for developers. I'm looking forward to their Epic Store opening up to more (high quality) Indie games.

The % deal they are offering is a good start but I'm not sure buying exclusivity of game releases is good for "fairness in the gaming industry."

I agree with their stance that exclusives are the only way to break the hold Steam has on the market.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#35

Post by jsgo »

ralusek wrote: post #16
crimsonalucard wrote: post #10

I hope it's no strings attached.

Me too, but I suspect at worst it would be like "and make sure to develop and refine the export to UE4 functionality," which is something the community benefits from anyway.

Let's pretend that's explicitly the case. Is there something inherently wrong with that? How many open source software developers would love it if instead of "please implement x feature" it ends with "...and here's $1.2 million to finance the development of it" at the end?

End users get new features they may actually use, massive OSS gets funding. Win-win for all parties.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#36

Post by ngngngng »

groovybits wrote: post #32
Andrex wrote: post #29

In the spirit of supporting open software, it would be fantastic if Epic Games Store and its DRM warmed up to Linux next. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844241

"“Open tools, libraries and platforms are critical to the future of the digital content ecosystem,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games." Contradictory sentiments like these are what lead me to believe this grant is mostly for marketing purposes. (tin-foil hat mode)

Who cares?

"I don't give a rip whose money it is, mate" - Steve Irwin, when asked about accepting money from "unethical" groups and using it for conservation. https://youtu.be/-1gVkTFam1w?t=753

If it helps a good goal, what does it matter?

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#37

Post by zamalek »

groovybits wrote: post #32
Andrex wrote: post #29

In the spirit of supporting open software, it would be fantastic if Epic Games Store and its DRM warmed up to Linux next. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844241

"“Open tools, libraries and platforms are critical to the future of the digital content ecosystem,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games." Contradictory sentiments like these are what lead me to believe this grant is mostly for marketing purposes. (tin-foil hat mode)

Also considering their behavior regarding platform exclusives. This is at least the second time that Sweeney has said something in contradiction to his company's behavior in the past month.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#38

Post by jonny_eh »

ngngngng wrote: post #36
groovybits wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"“Open tools, libraries and platforms are critical to the future of the digital content ecosystem,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games." Contradictory sentiments like these are what lead me to believe this grant is mostly for marketing purposes. (tin-foil hat mode)

Who cares? "I don't give a rip whose money it is, mate" - Steve Irwin, when asked about accepting money from "unethical" groups and using it for conservation. https://youtu.be/-1gVkTFam1w?t=753 If it helps a good goal, what does it matter?

What matters is if the accepting of the money outweighs the good of turning it down. It's not always an easy equation.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#39

Post by scarejunba »

groovybits wrote: post #32
Andrex wrote: post #29

In the spirit of supporting open software, it would be fantastic if Epic Games Store and its DRM warmed up to Linux next. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844241

"“Open tools, libraries and platforms are critical to the future of the digital content ecosystem,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games." Contradictory sentiments like these are what lead me to believe this grant is mostly for marketing purposes. (tin-foil hat mode)

Often when people see others do a good thing, they argue that those people aren't doing all the good things. They think this incentivizes doing all the good things. They are wrong.

Re: Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2M

#40

Post by binthere »

As someone who's done lots of Blender work as well as Maya and integrations with Unity and Unreal Engine, I still think there's quite a long way to go to make Blender a good option for game development. It's free, it kind of works but it's very painful when it comes to animation, texturing, and details.

Right now, this is what I usually do:

  - Basic Modeling: Blender

  - Sculpting + Details: ZBrush

  - Painting: Substance Painter

  - Animation: Maya
So yeah, the last 3 are paid and it's not cheap. Blender can do all three but not as good. I hope that with this additional money the Blender Foundation team can hire more people to close these gaps. In 2.8 they've improved on different fronts but they are still quite behind in those departments.

Last but not least, they should make more effort to improve their keybindings. They've been monkey patching it in 2.8 with the "industry-compatible" keybindings but when you use it a bunch of other things stop working.

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