The press watching side of me only has questions. Why was this published by Blender and not Anthropic? What does this actually mean? That the blender team gets free claude code max subscriptions?
Blender [0] and also Autodesk Fusion [1]
Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron
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Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron
#92> improve foundational features like the Blender Python API, which enables developers and artists alike So they want claude to be able to talk to blender
Yeah, Google has MuJoCo so it seems natural to get hooks into Blender.
MuBlE: MuJoCo and Blender simulation Environment and Benchmark for Task Planning in Robot Manipulation: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.02834
Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of those companies likely sponsor it because they use it themselves, and actively benefit from its continued development. The incentives are at least somewhat aligned. I doubt Anthropic has much use for such a tool internally. They're sponsoring it because they want to inject their slop into it and replace the people who do use it.
> They're sponsoring it because they want to inject their slop into it and replace the people who do use it. Oh, noes, the horrors of democratising access to an expert tool. What will onshape do now, that the free one is accessible to oom more regular people that could use a 3d shape but don't have the time to learn a very complicated yet powerful tool? I guess people have said the same about game engines / coding to…
It's not democratising access to an expert tool, it's devaluing the skill, expertise, and hard work required to create art.
edit: I seem to be rate limited and unable to reply? I'll paste it here:
I'm sorry but I don't agree. People care about art when it is extraordinary, in the same way people watch professional sport because it is extraordinary, or they watch cooking shows because it's extraordinary. What you call "democratisation" I would call the trivialisation of something which used to take effort into something which does not. People don't watch random people who have never played soccer before at the World Cup, they don't watch someone who can barely cook Kraft dinner cook on MasterChef, and they don't go to museums to look at someone's first sketch. There is no reason to assume that the trivialisation of art wouldn't simply devalue the medium to the point of irrelevance. However since people seek what is extraordinary, you will always have gates which are kept, and for good reason.
edit 2, responding to hbosch:
You don't have to be an extraordinary soccer player to enjoy playing soccer, but that doesn't mean we should develop a pill that makes everyone a great soccer player with no skill development or effort required. We don't watch professional sports just to see a ball move fast, we watch to see what a human is capable of through discipline and hard work. If everyone could take a pill to become an elite athlete, the sport wouldn't be democratized, it would be deleted.
When you remove the effort barrier you don't make art easier, you collapse the meaning of striving for excellence. If the 'expert' and the 'novice' produce the same result with the same button press, we haven't empowered the novice, we’ve just made the expertise irrelevant.
Tools like Blender are force multipliers for human intent, generative AI is a replacement for it. If you use Blender to make a "stupid little game," you’ve gained a skill. If you use AI to generate the assets for that game, you haven't gained a skill, you’ve simply acted as a manager for an automated system. The value of that game to the creator isn't just the code, it’s the fact that they built it. I find it really hard to believe that people find value besides the initial novelty in having a computer generate stupid little games - for what purpose? If nobody is going to play it, and you haven't built it, precisely where does the value in it come from? It's like a simulacrum of human creation.
What I actually see is people who are unwilling to put in the effort but seek the rewards anyways. They want the accolades from creation but without the hard work. I dont see the value in enabling this.
Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron
#94Not sure why this is getting backlash. Just look at https://fund.blender.org . Other corporate sponsors are Google, Meta, Nvidia, Netflix, even Adidas. This just means more support for a major OSS project.
A lot of those companies likely sponsor it because they use it themselves, and actively benefit from its continued development. The incentives are at least somewhat aligned. I doubt Anthropic has much use for such a tool internally. They're sponsoring it because they want to inject their slop into it and replace the people who do use it.
There is no scenario where more people using Blender is bad for Blender.
Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron
#95Can you imagine going to a football match and second-guessing which are the players who look human, but skin-deep are actually androids made at a factory? This is what it feels like with music and literature right now with so much AI. There are some pockets where you still can say "that's human-made", like 3D-rendered feature films with some particular artistic direction. That, it seems, AI companies also want it to…
No-one cares dude. People like good enough, convenient things that serve their entertainment needs, which is shaped by said entertainment, so there is not really an issue here.
Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron
#96People seem not to be aware of this: https://fund.blender.org/funding-policy/
I agree that it's not a good look for Blender, but I don't think that something actually bad will come from this. (Other than maybe a negative impact to Blender's reputation.)
Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
The pearl clutching over the pedigree of art is getting tiring. No one has really ever cared. Most mainstream music is written by corporate teams. Elvis didn't write his own music. Frank Sinatra didn't write his own music. Nearly all pop artists don't. But suddenly, people are now clamoring for art, but they never gave a shit to begin with. Most people can't tell AI written music from anything else if a human perform…
It’s subjective, because it’s art. There’s no right answer. If you like listening to AI generated content, then that’s fine! I’m glad you found something you enjoy. For me, I consume art because I want to understand other people. For example, when I go to an art museum I want to emotionally connect with the artist: to feel what they were feeling, or understand an idea they’re conveying. I have little desire to emotio…
You still assume the artist in those examples is real. It could be a team, a ghost artist, etc - yea it's less likely than music, but still. The connection itself is quite difficult too, given the ease in which someone could plagiarize others work - sure they have mechanical skill, but did they really invest in the painting or was it ripped off from others ideas?
I suspect your connection to real artists won't be impacted. This, like the music example, just highlights our assumptions.
I'm not defending this AI garbage fwiw, i just don't think it's as interesting as most people make it out to be. I adore music, and i connect with songs i connect with. I don't typically think about the possible ghost writers, teams of writers, ghost players, etc. The music either speaks to me or it doesn't.
Though i'm not trying to connect to the musician as a person. However, as i was illustrating - if i really wanted to connect to musicians at face value, that ship sailed many, many years ago. Far before AI.
There are ways to mitigate this, but that balance will always be there - it was before AI, and it will be after. It's an evolution. Not an enjoyable one perhaps, but it is nonetheless.
Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. Anthropic's motives are obviously self-interested (Cluade Blender integration), but I'm not donating to Blender, are you? That's the problem, we all want Blender to be able to pick and choose donations, but when all OSS is cash-strapped, it is easier said than done. I'd prefer Blender get some additional funding out of this AI bubble at least.
> I'm not donating to Blender, are you? Exactly right. Everyone online is all to happy to proclaim what hill other people should die on, but is rarely willing to go up there themselves.
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Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron
#99> improve foundational features like the Blender Python API, which enables developers and artists alike So they want claude to be able to talk to blender
We (I) need that. "Some software" is approaching levels of complexity where, perhaps, it gets to a point where a human is barely able to even use it. At the same time (brave new world) LLM assisted software opens up the possibility of levels of complexity we would not have considered before.
Why do we need that?
Art should demand more of the creator than the person experiencing it.
The alternative is 9 billion who cares slop things.
Re: Anthropic Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think they can tell Blender what to do. As such it's just more money for Blender! Yes, Anthropic can use the Python API to do their AI BS, but an improved Python API is also good for anyone else. This doesn't mean that Blender themselves are integrating any gen AI (if you don't already count the denoise filters). Do you really think Blender should have denied the donation?
I think they should have, it does not align with their community. Could they have denied, I am not sure about the legalities. Money is good. But not antagonizing your community (as an open source project) is better.
Shame that we have to choose between better financing of Blender for features we already want (Python API quality) and placating imo overly dramatic artists.