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Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

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Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#51

Post by hdfbdtbcdg »

wetpaws wrote: post #49
xvilka wrote: post #16

Hopefully, Krita[1], GIMP[2], and Inkscape[3] will get a similar amount of support. [1] https://krita.org/en/support-us/donations/ [2] https://www.gimp.org/donating/ [3] https://inkscape.org/support-us/donate/

Krita is amazing, I switched to it from Gimp and it was a breath of a fresh air. Can't really say the same about the Gimp though, it is a bit redundant given how dated its UI is and how mature Krita is already.

Don't they do different things? GIMP is for general image editing. Krita focuses on painting?

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#52

Post by binthere »

jsgo wrote: post #4

Maybe this new UI change to Blender means it is high time I learn how to use it. Tried it before but couldn't get past left click not doing what I expect left clicking to do, but apparently things are more user friendly now. The influx of money/talent from Epic and Ubisoft is great though. Blender was, from what I've seen from the outside, looked on affectionately as being a good tool, but maybe this leads to them be…

Small survival kit for new 2.8 users (things you'll probably want to change/configure before use):

1. Set spacebar to "Search". A number of features either don't have keybinding anymore or it's hidden in an obscure menu. Search makes things easier like typing Spacebar > "Walk" > enter to WASD the scene (before it was just Shift-F).

2. Set "F" to focus (like any other 3D tool), in Blender it's still the Numpad . (dot)... never understood this decision. You probably want to change this.

3. Get used to the most used transform keybindings: Move (G), Rotate (R), Scale (S). You can type: `R, X, 45` if you want to Rotate in X 45 deg. This is one of the reasons I like to do basic modeling in Blender and not in Maya. If you need to bring the manipulator like in other 3D software tools, you can right click the manipulators on the left and add them to Quick Favorites (I prefer) or assign them new shortcuts.

Alternatively, you can just change your keyboard bindings to the "Industry compatible" preset in preferences, although I don't recommend this as you lose some of the good keybindings from blender.

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#53

Post by wetpaws »

hdfbdtbcdg wrote: post #51
wetpaws wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Krita is amazing, I switched to it from Gimp and it was a breath of a fresh air. Can't really say the same about the Gimp though, it is a bit redundant given how dated its UI is and how mature Krita is already.

Don't they do different things? GIMP is for general image editing. Krita focuses on painting?

I would not say so. Gimp is (arguably) a very long evolution of an mspaint that copyied many tools and workflow from a Photoshop, Krita is an attempt to re-implement Photoshop from scratch.

I wouldn't say Krita is not suitable for general editing, because Photoshop is also dual purpose tool - it is an industry standard both for digital artists and general photo manipulation.

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#54

Post by bluedino »

Ralfp wrote: post #33
bluedino wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is 'good' for the users of the software, isn't it 'bad' for the software industry? Community funded projects will never match the salaries that companies like AutoDesk pay their developers.

Ton Roosendaal (Blender creator) estimated in 2018 interview that 3D software market is very small, and pulled up Autodesk's (3DsMax/Maya, etc) business results from that time, which amounted to 25000 - 30000 yearly licenses. He also claimed that Maya has "maybe 20" developers behind with things being similar for other products. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg (jump to 1h mark)

At $1500/yearly subscription, 30,000 licenses is $45 million a year. Don't foreget about everyone who works at Autodesk that isn't a developer but stil involved with the product. And then there are plugin writers (are there commercial plugins for Blender?) and resellers etc

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#55

Post by mikepurvis »

laputan_machine wrote: post #47
panpanna wrote: post #45

Didn't Epic just made a similar announcement? Anyway, I wish more FOSS projects could copy blenders way of working. They start a very big and ambitious project then update the code to support it. For example Elephants Dream gave them character animation. Big Buck Bunny gave them hair rendering & animation. https://www.blender.org/about/projects/

I believe this is also the same approach Mozilla have taken with Rust & Servo (although Servo is not quite as production-ready as I was expecting this long down the line, although re-reading the description, perhaps it was always meant to be a cute project, not a browser for the masses)

I think the history of Servo has been retconned a bit. See for example this fluff piece from late 2012, shortly after the project was publicly announced:

https://www.geek.com/chips/new-firefox-rendering-engine-serv...

"A new rendering engine for Firefox is being developed by Mozilla, and it’s being built from the ground up for multi-core computing environments. Mozilla has delivered some pretty major performance improvements to Firefox over the last few versions. The IonMonkey JavaScript engine is firing on all cylinders, and now it looks as though the Gecko engine may soon be replaced by something much more modern."

If this wasn't Mozilla's intention from the beginning, they certainly didn't do much to temper this enthusiasm or clear up the misunderstanding.

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#56

Post by tialaramex »

wetpaws wrote: post #53
hdfbdtbcdg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they do different things? GIMP is for general image editing. Krita focuses on painting?

I would not say so. Gimp is (arguably) a very long evolution of an mspaint that copyied many tools and workflow from a Photoshop, Krita is an attempt to re-implement Photoshop from scratch. I wouldn't say Krita is not suitable for general editing, because Photoshop is also dual purpose tool - it is an industry standard both for digital artists and general photo manipulation.

"Arguably" in the sense that you just decided to claim something that has no relation to reality? Like Ghostbusters 2 was "arguably" the highest grossing movie ever made in Albania by a crew of chipmunks?

Gimp starts off as an emergency last minute replacement project for two undergrads at Berkeley that does basically the same thing as Photoshop. It wasn't ever anything like Microsoft's Paint.

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#57

Post by kuboa »

overgard wrote: post #12
jsgo wrote: post #4

Maybe this new UI change to Blender means it is high time I learn how to use it. Tried it before but couldn't get past left click not doing what I expect left clicking to do, but apparently things are more user friendly now. The influx of money/talent from Epic and Ubisoft is great though. Blender was, from what I've seen from the outside, looked on affectionately as being a good tool, but maybe this leads to them be…

I felt the same way and 2.8 has been a HUGE improvement for me. I have a commercial Maya subscription and I have to admit I almost like Blender better at this point. That's less a knock on Maya which is still great, just acknowledging that Blender has come a really long way. My only small beef is I wish they'd use system dialog boxes for save/load, and texture painting still feels a little clunky.

The file browser interface is one of my least favorite things about Blender too, but apparently they're working on a big "Assets" update (a brand new interface for browsing and managing not only files but any kind of asset, like Materials etc) which will come after the release of 2.8, so, fingers crossed.

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#58

Post by anchpop »

xvilka wrote: post #16

Hopefully, Krita[1], GIMP[2], and Inkscape[3] will get a similar amount of support. [1] https://krita.org/en/support-us/donations/ [2] https://www.gimp.org/donating/ [3] https://inkscape.org/support-us/donate/

Has GIMP meaningfully improved in the last 5 years? Every time I've had to use it I've been confused by the lack of features and strange UI.

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#59

Post by hellofunk »

chriswwweb wrote: post #32
BeefySwain wrote: post #23

"Not only will Ubisoft help funding online support for Blender developers, Ubisoft Animation Studio – a department of Ubisoft Film and Television – will also use Blender for their productions and assign developers to contribute to Blender’s open source projects." This seams like a really big deal. It's one thing to try to create a desert of profitability around yourself, which a lot of huge companies giving money to…

Yes it's a big deal, developers that submit code is probably worth more than the membership which is (only) €30K/year (if my research is correct: https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/ ), so those 30k will allow them to hire a dev halftime, as blender fund says that 30k are equivalent to "half year developer time". Well it depends how much those developers will actually contribute, but it's still very good n…

> For Corporate Patron (120k/year or more) membership please contact us directly.

I suspect Epic obviously fell into that category.

Re: Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation

#60

Post by codetrotter »

Qwertystop wrote: post #27
chronogram wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love those drawn looking animation videos for games like The Burdens of Shaohao https://g.co/kgs/419Tq1 but are there any video game examples where those tools would be beneficial? My video game knowledge is not wide enough. Blender I can definitely see.

Yes? 2D art is useful in both 2D and 3D games (billboard sprites, UI, textures).

In addition to that, a lot of concept art is made with 2D drawing and painting software.
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