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Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

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Re: Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#31

Post by kiba »

crote wrote: post #14
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #3

I think especially since the UI overhaul in Blender 2.8 the project has been on a steep upwards trajectory. The software was always amazing, especially since it was free and open source, but the new UI and all subsequent improvements really put Blender on the map as a serious tool and not just an alternative for when you don't have money for the big players.

It's a self-reinforcing loop. Once a FLOSS tool becomes good enough , it'll start to attract professional users, who are willing to invest in it, which makes it even better. And it is quite hard for commercial players to compete with free. But FLOSS software is mainly made by developers. Who like writing new flashy features, but are awful at UX, and making sure all the small kinks are worked out. So most FLOSS softwa…

We should consider public funding for open source projects.

Creating something for the benefit of humanity is great and all but ultimately, programmers need to eat.

Re: Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#32

Post by roflcopter69 »

WhoCaresAboutIt wrote: post #6

Very cool news. Personally, I'd love to see some more focus on game-dev workflows. The game asset pipeline still feels janky: texture painting exists, but not great, and baking textures/previewing results or baking from high poly to low poly involves a lot of manual node fiddling and rewiring. Export/iterate/build/test cycles are also pretty painful still.

Yes I think there's still a lot of potential upside.

But check out this collaboration between Blender and Godot https://godotengine.org/showcase/dogwalk/ I could imagine that in the not too distant future we might really have a completely open tools stack for making up to AA games (minus console SDKs which always are under NDA I guess).

Re: Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#33

Post by bzzzt »

Jedd wrote: post #19
crote wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a self-reinforcing loop. Once a FLOSS tool becomes good enough , it'll start to attract professional users, who are willing to invest in it, which makes it even better. And it is quite hard for commercial players to compete with free. But FLOSS software is mainly made by developers. Who like writing new flashy features, but are awful at UX, and making sure all the small kinks are worked out. So most FLOSS softwa…

> but are awful at UX This is such a weird trope. For those of us who've used microsoft teams, jira, servicenow, salesforce, or basically any insanely popular (in the commercial if not upvote sense) products, it's unclear what is being compared to with these tired claims.

> This is such a weird trope.

No, it isn't. Lots of non-trivial OSS desktop applications are clearly made by people with no interest in aligning with expected desktop GUI behavior. From Gimp with dozens of windows to LibreOffice which is slow and has bad font rendering. And those are the 'poster apps' for FOSS desktops, lots of apps are worse.

Re: Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#34

Post by savolai »

Jedd wrote: post #19
crote wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a self-reinforcing loop. Once a FLOSS tool becomes good enough , it'll start to attract professional users, who are willing to invest in it, which makes it even better. And it is quite hard for commercial players to compete with free. But FLOSS software is mainly made by developers. Who like writing new flashy features, but are awful at UX, and making sure all the small kinks are worked out. So most FLOSS softwa…

> but are awful at UX This is such a weird trope. For those of us who've used microsoft teams, jira, servicenow, salesforce, or basically any insanely popular (in the commercial if not upvote sense) products, it's unclear what is being compared to with these tired claims.

These are all products the ux direction of which is likely influenced more by corporate power dynamics. Sure, uxers are involved, the real power they have is a different question.

Everyone’s got their preferences, quality of ux is by definition subjective. That is what makes these discussions hard. Naming any examples will always have ”nah i don’t like that product” as counterpoint.

An equally weird trope us UX practitioners dumbing down UIs. It simply depends on who we are designing for.

As soon as developers actively hang out with real users in real life and genuinely observe them without intervening, i’m all for oss projects without uxers.

Disclaimer: did my master’s thesis on OSS UX.

Re: Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#35

Post by pennomi »

jandrese wrote: post #18
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #3

I think especially since the UI overhaul in Blender 2.8 the project has been on a steep upwards trajectory. The software was always amazing, especially since it was free and open source, but the new UI and all subsequent improvements really put Blender on the map as a serious tool and not just an alternative for when you don't have money for the big players.

To be fair animated 3D modeling is a complex task so the UI can only get so simple. Even commercial tools require training and have challenging interfaces. Another example is Gimp. People like to bag on it for having a terrible interface, but when they say Photoshop is so much better I have to wonder what magical version they are using. For me the differences between the two are marginal, but that may be because I le…

GIMP fought against single window mode for ages despite the majority of people wanting it.

Re: Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#36

Post by bena »

crote wrote: post #14
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #3

I think especially since the UI overhaul in Blender 2.8 the project has been on a steep upwards trajectory. The software was always amazing, especially since it was free and open source, but the new UI and all subsequent improvements really put Blender on the map as a serious tool and not just an alternative for when you don't have money for the big players.

It's a self-reinforcing loop. Once a FLOSS tool becomes good enough , it'll start to attract professional users, who are willing to invest in it, which makes it even better. And it is quite hard for commercial players to compete with free. But FLOSS software is mainly made by developers. Who like writing new flashy features, but are awful at UX, and making sure all the small kinks are worked out. So most FLOSS softwa…

I think it's an issue of "what matters".

FLOSS software is often made people who are interested in the thing being done. The UI to do it is something that can be fixed "later". But later is always later. There's always another feature to implement before you can sit down and really fix that UI.

Re: Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#37

Post by lynndotpy »

BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #3

I think especially since the UI overhaul in Blender 2.8 the project has been on a steep upwards trajectory. The software was always amazing, especially since it was free and open source, but the new UI and all subsequent improvements really put Blender on the map as a serious tool and not just an alternative for when you don't have money for the big players.

This is my perspective as well. I've been a big FOSS junkie and, in ~2015 or so, Blender had a repute similar to GIMP. (A free, worse version of proprietary tools).

By the time I picked Blender up in 2016 (before 2.8!) it felt pretty mature, but I used it (still) because it was the one that was free and which worked on Linux.

The time and energy I put into learning Blender feels like an investment that has paid off amazing dividends.

(I'd also picked up Godot at the same time, with much the same story of elation on its adoption rate).

Re: Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#38

Post by countrymile »

zxcvasd wrote: post #29
margorczynski wrote: post #22

How does that translate into real cash?

well, what happens is netflix gives blender real cash. and thats the entirety of the translation

It's quite a bit of money, but a lot less than the equivalent Maya licenses. It would be great if more studios did this:

$240k "Press release, tech blogpost, dedicated product manager for your area" https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/

Meta are paying $30k per year, which is crazy really, when you think how much Blender has assisted in getting content onto their platform. Nvidia is better at $120k, but again, think how many graphics card buys Blender cycles has driven.

Re: Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#39

Post by raincole »

lynndotpy wrote: post #37
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #3

I think especially since the UI overhaul in Blender 2.8 the project has been on a steep upwards trajectory. The software was always amazing, especially since it was free and open source, but the new UI and all subsequent improvements really put Blender on the map as a serious tool and not just an alternative for when you don't have money for the big players.

This is my perspective as well. I've been a big FOSS junkie and, in ~2015 or so, Blender had a repute similar to GIMP. (A free, worse version of proprietary tools). By the time I picked Blender up in 2016 (before 2.8!) it felt pretty mature, but I used it (still) because it was the one that was free and which worked on Linux. The time and energy I put into learning Blender feels like an investment that has paid off a…

The negative example of Blender is Inkscape. I've used Inkscape in ~2015. I picked it up again in 2025. Surprisingly, it feels even slower and more unstable than a decade ago. I start thinking it's an app that will never reach a mature state.

Re: Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

#40

Post by Sharlin »

jandrese wrote: post #18
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #3

I think especially since the UI overhaul in Blender 2.8 the project has been on a steep upwards trajectory. The software was always amazing, especially since it was free and open source, but the new UI and all subsequent improvements really put Blender on the map as a serious tool and not just an alternative for when you don't have money for the big players.

To be fair animated 3D modeling is a complex task so the UI can only get so simple. Even commercial tools require training and have challenging interfaces. Another example is Gimp. People like to bag on it for having a terrible interface, but when they say Photoshop is so much better I have to wonder what magical version they are using. For me the differences between the two are marginal, but that may be because I le…

> To be fair animated 3D modeling is a complex task so the UI can only get so simple

The interface doesn't have to be simple. What it should be is conforming to established UI patterns and conventions. Blender used to be incredibly unintuitive even to people who had never used any other 3D modeler before.

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