[HN Gopher] Apple Joins Blender Development Fund
___________________________________________________________________
Apple Joins Blender Development Fund
Author : dagmx
Score : 607 points
Date : 2021-10-14 14:48 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.blender.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.blender.org)
| xvilka wrote:
| Hopefully, projects like Krita[1] and GIMP[2] would get more
| funding like Blender as well.
|
| [1] https://krita.org/en/support-us/sponsors/
|
| [2] https://www.gimp.org/news/2021/07/27/support-gimp-
| developers...
| ognarb wrote:
| Krita also has a nice funding website: https://fund.krita.org/
| (forked from the blender one)
| tdrdt wrote:
| While I agree I think the reason a lot of big companies are
| funding Blender is because they use it internally as tool. I
| can imagine Photoshop is used internally at Apple and they will
| just pay a license for this. So there is no reason they would
| start funding Krita or Gimp.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| Imagine if companies who heavily used Photoshop funded GIMP
| at half the license rate, and companies who used Illustrator
| funded Inkscape at the same half license rate.
|
| Donating to LibreOffice at half the rate you pay to office
| 365.
|
| The free alternatives would surpass the paid versions.
| hallarempt wrote:
| If Apple gave me 120k a year and made a merge request for a
| Metal backend for Krita, I wouldn't say no to either, being
| Krita's maintainer.
| philovivero wrote:
| ^ Can someone get this over to Apple stat? This would be
| amazing.
| ur-whale wrote:
| This is great news. IMO, Blender is a greatly under-rated FOSS
| story, on par with the kernel and firefox.
| defaultname wrote:
| Apple's software and hardware arcs are coalescing into them going
| all in on AR/VR. Things like LIDAR, Photogrammetry, spatial
| mapping, USDZ / PBR and friends all come across as pretty
| marginal novelties on smartphones, but they are all a part of
| that strategy, and will make much more sense with a headset.
| They're coming out of the gate with a robust ecosystem.
|
| Blender is obviously a huge component of the software stack.
| onelovetwo wrote:
| It also helps blender is a competitor to Epic's Unreal
| schmorptron wrote:
| Epic doesn't seem to think so, since they majorly funded it
| just two years ago.
|
| https://www.blender.org/press/epic-games-supports-blender-
| fo...
|
| The only area I could see this in is in high-end movie
| production, like they did with The Mandelorian for the
| digital green screen stuff, but the distinction between real-
| time and non-real-time rendering seems pretty strong.
| Miraste wrote:
| Blender does have a real-time engine called Eevee which is
| pretty powerful, although I don't think the use cases
| overlap enough to bother Epic.
| Arelius wrote:
| Sort-of? They both compete in rendering, specifically for
| ArchVis. But otherwise they complement each other more than
| they compete. Likely why Epic is also a member of the Blender
| Development Fund.
| SXX wrote:
| I guess you confuse Blender 3D editor with Godot game engine.
|
| Blender had built-in game engine, but it's been frozen and
| removed few years ago.
|
| Also Epic is sponsoring Blender Fund too.
| benjaminjackman wrote:
| And Epic granted money to Godot:
|
| https://godotengine.org/article/godot-engine-was-awarded-
| epi...
| Miraste wrote:
| While it's great that Godot is getting better funding,
| that's about the worst insult I can think of. Epic is so
| confident that Godot will never be a serious competitor
| that they're giving them charity money. We'll see; there
| was a time when Autodesk viewed Blender as an also-ran
| too.
| onelovetwo wrote:
| I was thinking about Godot!
| potatolicious wrote:
| Wait, how so? Isn't Blender a pretty direct competitor to 3D
| modeling and rendering tools like Maya and 3dsmax?
|
| AFAIK you can't directly author 3D models in Unreal, if
| anything Unreal has a dependency on tools like Blender.
|
| There is _some_ competitive overlap, but that seems mostly
| within the realm of real-time vs. offline render for
| producing video content?
| dragontamer wrote:
| That's almost like saying Internet Explorer is a competitor
| to Microsoft Word because they both share text documents with
| pictures.
|
| Yeah, Blender and Unreal kinda-sorta do the same thing (3d
| rendering). But their applications are completely
| different... and you'd be more likely to see people use both
| tools together on one project rather than a competition
| between the tools.
| [deleted]
| jereees wrote:
| Not to mention the platform wide rollout of spatial audio.
| planb wrote:
| And the text and object detection in real world scenes that
| is the most underrated feature in iOS 15
|
| Edit: this tweet I just found shows exactly what I meant:
| https://twitter.com/juanbuis/status/1448686889158983681?s=21
| chmsky00 wrote:
| Interesting. I was working on an app that would let users
| scan logos and return company data; carbon footprint other
| industrial impact metrics, individual investors, board,
| C-suite... into a shared repo of oligarchs who have chosen
| celebrity and visibility by "leading" us with our own data.
|
| I was going to send images to Google to pull objects and
| text from, but if I could just send text to search for,
| that would be great.
| novok wrote:
| I wonder when apple will start taking the 'serious games'
| segment seriously. Like being able to play nintendo switch
| quality games on your iPad, AAA games on a laptop or some sort
| of apple TV++++ device and such.
| dTal wrote:
| I would bet my life savings that Apple are developing some form
| of VR - maybe headsets, maybe something more interesting like a
| lightfield display. They're clearly very interested in this
| space.
| tonightstoast wrote:
| I'd say that's a safe bet considering there are 90 job
| openings when you search "VR" on their careers page. Exciting
| to see what the future holds.
|
| https://jobs.apple.com/en-
| us/search?search=VR&sort=relevance...
| fsloth wrote:
| Well, yes. The current gen AR tech in the IPhone is direct
| enabler of AR once they get the glasses out (which have been
| rumored for years).
| Applejinx wrote:
| I like the sounds of that. I like the prospect of Apple
| competing with Facebook on AR/VR. It's an area I was quite
| interested in some years ago, but firstly wasn't well supported
| on the Mac, and secondly it got bought up by Facebook to a
| large extent.
|
| I've been wishing for a modern Playstation so I could try the
| limited bit of Gran Turismo that's VR and uses their headset. I
| know the Nurburgring fairly well by now but would love to play
| there 'for real'. Quite an environment to be whizzing through:
| that and the tricky rally circuits would be real interesting to
| get more immersion in.
| pradn wrote:
| I want to share an amazing experience I recently had. I was
| looking through TV consoles on Crate & Barrel and found one I
| liked. I was unsure if it'd be too tall for my room (it's an
| extra 9 inches of height over my current TV stand, which is
| actually just a coffee table repurposed.) The listing page had
| a QR code I could scan with my iPhone. I was taken to a page
| that asked me for camera permissions and I said yes. In a few
| seconds, it placed a 3D model of the TV console in my room and
| I was able to get a good idea of how it looked. All so quick
| and easy - no extra apps to download - and actually useful.
| Putting Pikachu in my space is fun, but this is actually worth
| the extra lidar tech in the iPhone Pro.
| amelius wrote:
| If everybody used VR headsets all the time, you wouldn't even
| need a TV console in your room. In fact, you wouldn't need
| much besides a comfy chair.
|
| This whole AR thing is just a transition technology, that
| will go away with time.
| johaugum wrote:
| >If everybody used VR headsets all the time
|
| You just described Ready Player One, which in some sense is
| a dystopian nightmare.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| > VR headsets all the time
|
| I love VR headsets, but that's not going to happen - for so
| many reasons - I want to get up and get a coffee, I often
| read while half watching TV, or sit and chat with the
| family while watching TV and so on, fold the laundry with
| the TV on and so on. You can't do anything else when
| wearing a VR headset.
| nefitty wrote:
| I feel a weird sense of loss for Google Glass. I feel like
| the controversies that set it back also set back the entire
| AR space.
|
| I wonder what life would be like if I could wear a HUD that
| showed me an AR overlay. It might bubble up an alert to
| remind me to drink a glass of water to stay on track for the
| day. A to-do list might slide in from the side if I tap a
| button near my temple. A friend calls and their animated
| avatar hangs out in the corner of my sight while I continue
| doing what I was doing... It feels like these things are very
| close, but society is struggling to integrate the amassing
| tech innovations we're encountering.
| pradn wrote:
| A camera in glasses is always going to be too intrusive I
| think. Norms may change, but even if there's a clear light
| indicating that a photo or video is being taken, it's
| offputting to feel the possibility of a recording happening
| at any moment. Perhaps the middle-ground is to have glasses
| with just a HUD, but no camera. You can still get useful
| info, but without the imposition on other people.
| dagmx wrote:
| Apple also submitted a patch to port Cycles to run on Metal.
|
| https://developer.blender.org/T92212
| valine wrote:
| Cycles is good first step if Apple wants to make blender fully
| functional on Mac. I wonder if they'll ever attempt to port
| Eevee to metal, that seems like the logical next step if Apple
| wants to permanently remove OpenGL from macOS.
| outworlder wrote:
| > that seems like the logical next step if Apple wants to
| permanently remove OpenGL from macOS
|
| They should just allow third-party OpenGL implementations.
| OpenGL on OSX is stuck in the past.
|
| It would be great to see Metal die a fiery death too, and
| Vulkan being adopted. The current situation is just DirectX
| once again.
| user-the-name wrote:
| "Allow"? They aren't doing anything to disallow them?
|
| You can use ANGLE if you want, for instance?
|
| I wouldn't recommend using OpenGL for any new software,
| though, it is hopelessly clunky and outdated for modern
| applications.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| "Apple wants to permanently remove OpenGL from macOS" - that
| would be a poor decision.... although, they really don't care
| for the pro market in any case.
| striking wrote:
| They've already deprecated OpenGL. Drivers on macOS are
| locked at OpenGL 4.1, which is missing a whole lot of nice
| features. Not because the hardware doesn't support them,
| but because Apple doesn't want to keep maintaining OpenGL.
|
| And why would they? OpenGL is really unpleasant from a
| hardware manufacturer's / integrator's / OS author's
| perspective, it makes app ports for mobile that much harder
| unless you're using GL ES, and Metal works and many apps
| have a Metal renderer now. If you find the mere idea of
| Metal distasteful because it's an API that can't be used on
| other platforms, you can use Vulkan and MoltenVK to get
| there.
|
| You're confusing not caring for the pro market with their
| approach to vertical integration. They care for the pro
| market, but they're not willing to compromise on ripping
| out what they consider to be dead weight.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> And why would they? OpenGL is really unpleasant from a
| hardware manufacturer's / integrator's / OS author's
| perspective
|
| That's exactly why they should keep it. Now all those CAD
| programs that use older OpenGL features have to figure
| out how to do things that are not supported by Metal.
| Vulkan initially forgot about this market as well and had
| to add some things back in.
|
| There is Zink to handle compatibility, but that should
| have come from the organizations and companied
| deprecating OpenGL. It should probably be standard on new
| platforms so they can keep OpenGL at the API level.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| >You're confusing not caring for the pro market with
| their approach to vertical integration.
|
| Apple knows exactly what they need to do to keep the pro
| market on MacOSX, they are not interested in doing that
| at all. And that simple thing is standardization, not
| exclusive API. So they don't even have to support
| OpenGL... just not make it even harder for CAD/CAM makers
| to port their software/features back to MacOSX.
|
| Lack of a good pro device for years already got a lot of
| pros off Macs, so companies like Autodesk have less and
| less value in supporting Mac. And the gap in
| functionality is already massive! Their vertical
| integration, aka platform lock-in, is impossible for
| companies that have majority of their customers on a
| different platform.(and again - Apple knows that)
|
| You know, I'll just switch to Windows to have my designs
| automatically validated for code compliance... and I'll
| just stay with Windows for software development as well.
|
| (I'm a software engineer studying structural engineering)
| samhw wrote:
| > already got a lot of pros off Macs
|
| What is your quantitative evidence for saying this?
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Opinion and personal experience.
| hulitu wrote:
| > And why would they? OpenGL is really unpleasant from a
| hardware manufacturer's / integrator's / OS author's
| perspective
|
| That's why it must be deprecated. Why do we need to
| reinvent the wheel over and over again ? I get it, X
| sucks and the answer to this is .... wayland. OpenGL
| sucks and the answer to this is ? DirectX ? Vulkan ? SDL
| ? Libcaca ? ( sorry i forgot ncurses). Just like an old
| builder: you have some bricks, use them.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Carmack, miniGL and Carmacks position regarding OpenGL is
| what made it relevant in first place.
|
| In 2011, Carmack would have gone with DirectX instead.
|
| https://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/pc/carmack-directx-
| bett...
|
| > The actual innovation in graphics has definitely been
| driven by Microsoft in the last ten years or so,'
| explained AMD's GPU worldwide developer relations
| manager, Richard Huddy. 'OpenGL has largely been tracking
| that, rather than coming up with new methods. The
| geometry shader, for example, which came in with Vista
| and DirectX 10, is wholly Microsoft's invention in the
| first place.' > > 'It is really just inertia that keeps
| us on OpenGL at this point,' Carmack told us. He also
| explained that the developer has no plans to move over to
| Direct3D, despite its advantages.
|
| ARB, Long Peaks failure, not defining SDKs and leaving to
| ecosystem to create tools on their own, making into a
| rite of passage that each graphics programming student
| needs to create their own SDK from scratch, is anything
| but appealing.
|
| If ARB/Khronos would standardize networking protocols, we
| would have only IP, and then each developer would create
| their own networking stack on top of raw IP.
| rudedogg wrote:
| I've only dabbled in GPU programming, but I think the
| issue is more serious than this. It's not really
| pointless churn.
|
| OpenGL was released 29 years ago, and the way GPUs work
| now vs then is massive. Apparently developers want low
| level access, and that is what Vulkan/Metal give them.
|
| As a user I wish Vulkan had a path without so much setup.
| I'm not sure if that's possible, or maybe it would defeat
| the purpose. It seems like it would be nice for
| hobbyists/beginners like me who just want to get a
| triangle on the screen and play with shaders though.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| And OpenGL changed massively. Going from fixed function
| to programmable hardware.
|
| I understand that a lot of developers want low level
| access to hardware - that's great for a lot of
| applications. But that low level access means that
| software is tied to hardware... and software is not
| forward/cross compatible. Which is a VERY big deal for
| pro market.
|
| Remember when Apple just "forgot" to release a pro grade
| desktop for years? Do you think those pros just stayed
| with their outdated hardware?(they didn't, they moved to
| Windows)
|
| Do you think that there's a good reason for many pro
| software vendors to jump to Metal, when the majority of
| their customers are on Windows with Vulkan support?
|
| I mentioned this on another subthread - Apple just needs
| to offer a cross platform API, to prove that they want
| pro software to be developed on Macs.
| ynx wrote:
| > But that low level access means that software is tied
| to hardware... and software is not forward/cross
| compatible. Which is a VERY big deal for pro market.
|
| As a game dev - hardware dependence has been a fact of
| life for a very long time. There are too many useful
| extensions not included in the base profiles, and enough
| video cards combinatorically combined with those - that
| the most tractable path is to actually care about the
| specific device's capabilities.
|
| The best way forward is to be as detailed as possible
| than to come up with a new albatross to hang around one's
| neck for the next 30 years. A thin driver with a fatter
| app stack is probably more manageable going forward than
| a very fat driver with a continually aging app stack, so
| long as appropriate care is paid to forward
| compatibility.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Game devs are free to use whatever API you wish. You
| create entertainment, not design buildings that have to
| last decades or industrial systems.
|
| You have the benefit of abandoning your product 3-5 years
| after it's published, without anyone caring.
| viktorcode wrote:
| Apple had their answer in form of Metal. Vulkan, DX12
| came out later.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| If memory serves - they introduced Metal as a high
| efficiency low level API for games, not a generic
| rendering API.
|
| Deprecating opengl was confusing for me.
| user-the-name wrote:
| No, Metal is a general purpose 3D API, and has always
| been. Games are just one of the biggest things 3D APIs
| are used for, but Metal is for all uses.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Apple could just use the vendor-provided OpenGL (AIUI
| most of the code is common between Windows and Linux for
| the major vendors), which e.g. for nvidia still happily
| supports everything from 1.0 to the present.
| my123 wrote:
| > Apple could just use the vendor-provided OpenGL
|
| They are their own GPU vendor nowadays.
| mrpippy wrote:
| On Apple GPUs (including M1 Macs), an OpenGL->Metal layer
| is used.
| criddell wrote:
| Are there Metal compatible renderers on non-Apple
| platforms?
| pjmlp wrote:
| The pro market that matters has already added Metal support
| long time ago.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Blender's UI would also need to be ported to Metal, as that's
| currently OpenGL if I'm not mistaken.
| hallarempt wrote:
| Everything Blender shows on screen is rendered using
| OpenGL.
| progbits wrote:
| I guess some will see this as good news, but further
| entrenching Metal is just sad in my opinion. So much wasted
| effort just because they can't admit they lost the standards
| game and won't move to Vulkan.
|
| The generous interpretation is they just don't want to invest
| into that if it isn't "broken" but the cynic in me can't help
| but think at least part of the motivation is being different
| and maintaining the wall around the garden.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| I don't know why we have to keep having this discussion but
| Metal pre-dates Vulkan. It shipped to developers in June
| 2014. Vulkan didn't ship until Feb 2016.
|
| Metal is the reason Vulkan exists: Apple announced Metal in
| June 2014 and the first Khronos meeting about a replacement
| for OpenGL was hosted at Valve in July 2014 so they could
| rush to announce an "open standard" under development at
| SIGGRAPH later that year. The only reason it managed to ship
| a final spec in 2016 was because AMD donated Mantle to boot-
| strap the process.
|
| When you make your own GPUs and have sufficient scale to get
| developer adoption owning your own API can let you move much
| faster than others while avoiding vendor extension hell (that
| turns into a bespoke API-within-an-API at the extreme end).
|
| Besides which MoltenVK effectively allows Vulkan software to
| run against Metal anyway. In that sense it's also better for
| Vulkan because it can ship API updates whenever Khronos feels
| like it.
| hvis wrote:
| > Metal is the reason Vulkan exists
|
| That seems to give way too little credit to Mantle. Which
| was released in 2013 and became the basis for Vulkan.
| lonjil wrote:
| For Cycles, Vulkan is simply not an option. Metal compute is
| capable of everything OpenCL is, but is more modern / nicer /
| whatever, while Vulkan Compute is pretty crap and definitely
| can't be used as a replacement for OpenCL.
|
| The only cross platform alternative that actually works is
| OpenCL, but Blender is moving away from OpenCL, mostly
| because literally every GPU vendor is doing so as well.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| AIUI, Vulkan Compute is just missing a few math-focused
| extensions compared to OpenCL. The OpenCL memory model is
| also more full-featured (i.e. it allows for general
| pointers) but that can be addressed via other Vulkan
| extensions.
|
| The more annoying variation between the two is the need to
| refactor the code from using "kernels" to "compute
| shaders", but that's just a difference in the underlying
| programming model.
| Encounter wrote:
| Metal is by far a much friendlier API than Vulkan. Its
| approach with opt-in complexity is arguably the correct one.
| (Ever tried writing a Vulkan "Hello triangle" from scratch?)
|
| It's also gaining some nice features that are usable out of
| the gate, rather than waiting on Vulkan extension
| standardization and adoption. It simply makes the most sense
| for Apple.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Metal is by far a much friendlier API than Vulkan
|
| Sure, but that was hardly the point of Vulkan in the first
| place. The point is to have cross-platform 3D grahipcs, but
| since Apple never gave a shit about anything cross-
| platform, they chose to write their own stuff.
|
| And if they actually did care, they could have modeled the
| same API as they have with Metal, but over Vulkan, so the
| engine is the same but the API is "much friendlier".
|
| It simply makes the most business sense for Apple, but as
| is tradition, the whole software ecosystem is worse off
| because of their choices.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Vulkan isn't a viable alternative for Apple. Apple wants to
| give developer an easy to use API to encourage them to use it
| as much as possible. Vulkan does not offer that.
| heartbreak wrote:
| This is fantastic news. On Big Sur currently, it's very
| difficult to get GPU rendering working with Blender.
| npteljes wrote:
| It's very validating to see FOSS become industry standard. It's
| well deserved, and people also deserve to have legitimate free
| access.
| elil17 wrote:
| They may want to use it for TV production as well.
| schleck8 wrote:
| The patrons are now: -Nvidia -Facebook -AMD -Amazon -Epic -Unity
| -Apple
|
| ... with Google, Intel, Microsoft and Adobe among the other
| sponsors.
|
| https://fund.blender.org/
| masalah wrote:
| Great news, Blender is an amazing piece of software that I always
| wanted to do more with but never eventually get the time/effort
| to learn.
| yrgulation wrote:
| This is great news. Two features i'd love to see implemented are
| a dedicated retopo view and a sketchup like modelling view. I'd
| be willing to contribute financially to these two (don't have
| deep pockets but i'd spend 1k or two to have native support
| implemented).
| heldrida wrote:
| Great news! Always been a fan of Blender Foundation :)
| programmarchy wrote:
| Would be awesome if Blender got native support for exporting to
| USDZ.
| [deleted]
| tomxor wrote:
| html, body { cursor: default;
|
| whyyy!?
| mathnode wrote:
| This is great.
|
| Highly unlikely, but maybe Apple could release some gems from the
| Shake code base into the Blender compositor?
| ink404 wrote:
| What is the Shake code base?
| ur-whale wrote:
| > What is the Shake code base?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Real
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shake_(software)
| ur-whale wrote:
| > Apple could release some gems from the Shake code base into
| the Blender compositor
|
| You're assuming they still have a copy of the source code :(
|
| I'd love to see some of the Shake feature set make it into
| Blender: - node-to-code + code-to-node
| - 2.5D motion blur for transforms - general
| concatenation of image transforms for single pass resampling.
| - general C-style code expressions available in any text field
| of the UI and being able to reference any other variable in the
| entire UI - ability to call any function from libc /
| external DSO's directly from any text field in the UI.
|
| etc ...
| mathnode wrote:
| I'd love to take a look at it. Some bigger studios did buy
| copies of the source for $50k pet-site. It's probably long
| gone.
| berkut wrote:
| Very unlikely they'd use that code directly - would likely be
| easier to re-implement the features wanted natively in the
| blender codebase...
|
| On top of that, there were always suspicions that some of the
| Shake codebase didn't come from perfectly 'legal' origins from
| an IP perspective in the early days (its API was very similar
| to something Alias was working on at the time, and became
| Maya). I've heard rumours that was a reason the people
| responsible for Shake were never considered for SciTech awards.
| mathnode wrote:
| That's disappointing to hear. At least The Art and Science of
| Digital Compositing, I find, is still a good read.
| netol wrote:
| In the website, Apple lists "Alex Bender" as press contact.
| Interesting coincidence.
| amelius wrote:
| The "problem" I have with Blender is that I can use it about once
| or twice a year, and of course every time I forget how it works
| (or the UI has been updated to include an even bigger maze of
| options). It would be great if Blender had an API on which
| someone could develop a more beginner-friendly UI. (Curious to
| know if that happens to be the case).
| outworlder wrote:
| I have the same problem, but I am not sure other software is
| much better. Say Maya or 3DS Max. Try spending an year away and
| then come back to them :)
|
| Blender does seem to have a UI that's optimized for power
| users. It's amazing to see someone that's experienced working
| with it, seems to be very practical. Maybe there should be a
| 'beginner' view though, hiding some more 'esoteric' options.
| dorkwood wrote:
| This guy has made a bunch of custom pie menus, which seems to
| be the kind of thing you're describing.
|
| https://github.com/HEAVYPOLY/HEAVYPOLY_Blender
| frayesto wrote:
| I think Blender does have a Python API [1]. I used this
| somewhat during my graduate school days to do rendering.
|
| [1]: https://docs.blender.org/api/current/index.html
| dsizzle wrote:
| Kind of funny that the name of the Apple press contact person for
| this story on Blender is... Bender.
| recentdarkness wrote:
| First thing that popped into my too
| halfdaft wrote:
| yeah, noticed that :)
| yardshop wrote:
| He's got an L in his first name, so a good anagram for him
| would be: Axe Blender!
| mekster wrote:
| I'm not a user but I know Blender had existed for quite a while
| but how is it gaining traction a lot these days suddenly?
|
| Is there something that makes it a first choice for many
| professional users?
| nightcracker wrote:
| From what I have read (I don't do 3D modeling myself) Blender
| has overhauled its UI significantly over the past couple of
| years to great praise of a lot of people.
| sbuk wrote:
| This is exactly the reason. Most 3D software has esoteric
| UIs, but Blender's workflow was _extreme_. Since its initial
| OSS release (2.4?) the UI has matured and changed
| significantly for the better. Its far more approachable now,
| and follows paradigms that every other solution does. It fits
| nicely in the pipeline alongside tools like Houdini.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Probably just to make sure that Blender remains available for
| their platform. If popular programs aren't available for their
| ARM / macOS platform, it can hurt them. Good for Blender.
| all2 wrote:
| Another comment in this thread speaks directly to this concern.
| Though, I would argue the move is likely also part of a larger
| move back into the "creative market" of designers,
| cinematography, etc.
| outworlder wrote:
| > If popular programs aren't available for their ARM
|
| Not a problem. M1 blender benchmarks were already smoking the
| x86 Macs, despite the fact Blender was running on M1 with
| Rosetta.
|
| A native build is obviously better of course. But OSX ports are
| a bigger deal, in general, than the CPU architecture.
| mimsee wrote:
| > ... Apple has joined the Blender Development Fund as a Patron
| Member.
|
| To find out what "Patron Member" means, it's 120k or more per
| year[0]. It's the highest corporate tier Blender has. Nice to see
| Apple supporting open-source.
|
| [0]: https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/
| ksec wrote:
| This is especially interesting because Blender is GPLv2. And
| AFAIK apart from Webkit which for historical reason it is LGPL,
| all other open source software Apple support are BSD / MIT /
| Apache.
|
| It is also exceptionally rare Apple donate this amount of money
| to any open source organisation. To the point I would argue
| this is very non-Apple. There could be some strategic interest
| for Blender, although I haven't figure it out what it is.
|
| Edit: Someone mentioned AR/VR. Which could be the case here.
| tdrdt wrote:
| Well I guess they also donate a ton of money to Adobe each
| year in the form of licenses.
|
| Companies like Apple also need software. To me this donation
| to Blender is just a gesture to show they like to use Blender
| in-company.
| concinds wrote:
| Yeah, the interests are probably:
|
| 1) Attracting pro creators to MacBooks requires having top-
| tier Blender support and performance on Mac, so Apple's
| interest is in making it run as well as possible
|
| 2) some future AR/VR tie-in
|
| This is very un-Apple-like, but I really, really, really,
| really hope they keep going in this direction. There's zero
| reason for Apple to keep being this stodgy. Why aren't they
| doing "cool nerdy things" anymore? Their built-in apps are
| fine but why don't they try to make an Apple-sanctioned macOS
| package manager, with Apple repos and third-party repo
| support? Don't they understand the incalculable goodwill and
| excitement that would generate? That by doing this, making
| Safari a top-tier browser with the best standards support,
| implementing zero-knowledge iCloud encryption, working with
| Docker to improve performance, improving Xcode stability, and
| refreshing Pro Mac hardware _minimum_ yearly even just to
| keep them competitive, as opposed to letting them languish,
| like the Mac Pro (2019) and MacBook Pro 16 " (2019), they'd
| more than make up for every bit of illwill they earned with
| the post-2015 MacBooks and come out ahead of Microsoft with
| their WSL2 and new Windows Terminal? Apple knows how to be
| cool to "average people" but they've forgotten how to be cool
| to nerds, when it used to be effortless for them!
|
| None of this has to do with core strategy. I'm not asking
| them to open-source macOS here. It's just the basic ability
| to execute on obvious things that's missing.
|
| For example, in Windows 11 Microsoft really opened up the
| Microsoft Store, by loosening the eligibility requirements.
| As a result, it has tone, tons of apps like Creative Cloud,
| Discord, LibreOffice, VLC, that would never come to the Mac
| App Store in a million years. _That_ creates pro-user
| goodwill. So does this Blender news by Apple. I hope Apple
| realizes how much money they 're leaving on the table,
| because often they don't seem like they give enough of a
| fuck.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Apple has never had problems with GPLv2. The problem was
| always GPLv3 and that's why all their GNU tooling was frozen
| for a very long time at the last GPLv2 version of those
| tools.
|
| Apple prefers BSD/MIT/Apache because that's just easier for
| developers to reason about but GPLv2 code that's a standalone
| binary is generally not a problem. Besides, Blender is a tool
| you use to generate non-GPL work product. From the
| perspective of authoring 3d content, GPL doesn't pose any
| kind of problem for them, even if they also needed to use
| Blender as part of an automated toolchain somehow for ARVR.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Pretty sure blender switched over to GPLv3 about 12 years
| or so ago.
|
| Something, something linked libs something...
| my123 wrote:
| It's GPLv2 or later, with some parts such as Cycles being
| permissively licensed. (Apache 2)
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Nice to see Apple supporting open-source.
|
| ... in a domain where they have either no products or their own
| products have clearly failed to obtain traction.
|
| Not going to happen for anything where there's an even
| reasonably successful Apple product, I think we can be sure of
| that.
|
| So yes, it is really nice to see Apple supporting Blender but
| let's not confuse that with open source/libre software in
| general.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| No damnation involved. Just clarity about what "supporting
| open source" means in the context of Apple.
| zepto wrote:
| See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28866458
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You mean a comment that listed several open source
| projects _started_ by Apple?
| justicezyx wrote:
| And: Downvoted whatsoever...
|
| Edit: And it indeed is downvoted whatsoever...
| zepto wrote:
| WebKit, Clang, LLVM
| heavyset_go wrote:
| WebKit is a fork of KHTML and the source had to be released
| in order to comply with the LGPL.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Apples builds of Clang and LLVM are not open source by
| default.
|
| Edit: No amount of downvoting makes me wrong, they aren't
| open source. The AppleClang != Clang trunk
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Swift, FoundationDB, Obj-C, Darwin...
| tombert wrote:
| CUPS, Cassandra, FreeBSD
|
| I know they didn't start those, but they all have major
| contributions from Apple.
| prox wrote:
| It's great positive advert for Apple, and also no money for
| them. Not even a blip on their balance sheet. If they are going
| to contribute, that would be interesting.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Kudos to the creator for pursuing his original vision. Immense
| success :)
| creamytaco wrote:
| Blender won, in a few years it will kill every and all
| competition. It is a great example of open source disrupting
| markets that have been traditionally entirely dominated by
| proprietary software.
| cdiamand wrote:
| It's great to see Blender get the support. The user numbers seem
| to be arcing upwards.
|
| https://www.blender.org/news/blender-by-the-numbers-2020/
|
| If you've ever had a passing interest in Blender or 3d modeling I
| recommend checking out the donut tutorial, which is fast becoming
| the "hello world" of blender -
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPrnSACiTJ4
|
| And check out all the donuts -
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/BlenderDoughnuts/
| degenerate wrote:
| Better link ( _includes the tutorial playlist in the sidebar_
| ):
|
| https://youtu.be/TPrnSACiTJ4?list=RDCMUCOKHwx1VCdgnxwbjyb9Iu...
| Tomte wrote:
| Another good one by Grant Abbitt:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn3ukorJv4vs_eSJUQPxB...
|
| And my favorite tutorial if you don't mind the strong German
| accent: https://academy.cgboost.com/p/resources
|
| (Also available on YouTube, but on cgboost.com is the updated
| version for Blender 2.8).
|
| I did the latter some time ago. No artistic talent, cannot find
| my way around even 2D software, and the result was really
| respectable. Zach is a really good teacher.
| tenaciousDaniel wrote:
| I just went through this video earlier this week, and while it
| assumes a bit of knowledge, the modeling is as simple as
| possible and I found it to be a very good introduction:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBdGm_d_8XE
| eddieh wrote:
| _> If you 've ever had a passing interest in Blender or 3d
| modeling I recommend checking out the donut tutorial, which is
| fast becoming the "hello world" of blender -_
|
| _> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPrnSACiTJ4_
|
| Is there a good written tutorial? I can't sit through video
| tutorials.
| heartbreak wrote:
| I went through the donut tutorial on 2x speed. If you're
| interested in learning modern visual arts (computer graphics,
| photography, videography, etc.) you're going to have to deal
| with video tutorials. Make them work for you.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| This is a polite version of "suck it up" and about as
| helpful.
| Miraste wrote:
| There are official written docs
| (https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/) but they
| would be difficult to learn from by themselves. There
| isn't a more helpful answer because the fact is >99% of
| Blender content is video.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Yes, that's the problem. There needs to be more
| text/image guides as eddieh said. This used to be the
| norm. Now everything is a video. Worse, existing
| text/image guides are allowed to rot or removed outright
| in favor of video. Not everyone learns well from video.
| heartbreak wrote:
| I'm sorry that the free content isn't in your desired
| format. I offered a genuine suggestion that helps me use
| it.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Your genuine suggestion was that they do something they
| plainly said doesn't work for them. Doing something that
| doesn't work for them at 2x isn't going to help.
| zeroimpl wrote:
| Maybe it will? They didn't say why they can't sit through
| the videos, it might be because they are too slow to get
| to the point?
|
| I don't really see what value your comment is adding. The
| parents' post was reasonable to me.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| It was a patronizing lecture. The followup with more
| patronizing clarified the non-helpful intent.
| homarp wrote:
| Or convert a video one to a written one.
|
| The conversion should do the trick for you to learn Blender
| and the next person will find your written one very useful.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I would be interested in this answer. It seems the era of
| good paper-compatible tutorials may be on the way out in
| terms of popularity of video and monetization.
| pitaj wrote:
| Anyone know a good intro tutorial for using Blender as a video
| editor like Premier?
| halfdaft wrote:
| I recommend looking into the Power Sequencer addon [1] that
| makes editing in Blender's Video Sequence Editor (VSE) a
| better experience. However, it's still pretty clunky so might
| be even better to wait for the upcoming VSE overhaul [2]
|
| [1] https://www.blendernation.com/2020/05/17/blender-power-
| seque... [2] https://developer.blender.org/T78986
| riveducha wrote:
| I used Blender to edit a bunch of my YouTube videos and can't
| really recommend it. (Using Kdenlive now and it's OK.)
|
| Blender's VSE is too unlike normal editing programs and the
| performance is bad as well. It makes your workflow more
| clunky for no gain unless you're also mixing 3D scenes into
| your video.
|
| There are ambitious proposals to overhaul the VSE so hope
| might be on the horizon.
| riidom wrote:
| I forget where I learned VSE, sadly, but came here to say
| that Blenders video editor is not so bad, if:
|
| a) You want to assemble only rendered footage. If you have
| real footage, well the greenscreen node is actually good, but
| for color grading DaVinci or Premiere are more advanced
| (though you can get a lot done in Blender here as well if you
| fiddle with the right nodes compositor).
|
| b) You can accept some limits wrt adding text overlays. There
| is no simple way of doing that like in P or DV. But: You can
| trick with preparing some .png's and fade these in and out
| (which works but limits you on the effects), or add the text
| during render, but that limits you on flexibility (someone
| needs a text change in last second, yay!).
|
| But I think you can go with basically any tutorial you find,
| it is not complicated in general. And a lot of your general
| blender knowledge transfers to VSE, which is a huge bonus in
| comparison to learn DaVinci or Premiere (which are monsters,
| crashy monsters).
| heartbreak wrote:
| Blender's video editing capability is most useful as a
| replacement for After Effects. A free tool like Davinci
| Resolve is a better replacement for Premiere.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| I uncomfortably poked at blender a few times over the years
| until this tut by Imphenzia, which made me comfortable in under
| 2 hours:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jHUY3qoBu8
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| +1 from me as well.
|
| Same channel author's vids on Unity are great too.
| jeffomatic wrote:
| +1, I'd also recommend doing a low-poly lesson before
| attempting the donut tutorial. I did Imphenzia's low-poly
| tutorials after a few false starts with the donut tutorial,
| and found the low-poly approach to be much better at
| establishing a foundation for working with geometric
| primitives.
| 5faulker wrote:
| It's funny how donut and not circle is becoming the norm.
| Joeboy wrote:
| Recommend Ian Hubert's "Lazy Tutorials"[1], although they're
| not really so beginner friendly. More for inspiration and
| entertainment.
|
| [1]
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4Dq5VyfewIxxjzS34k2N...
| q_andrew wrote:
| I'm becoming more and more convinced that Ian Hubert is the
| patron saint of hobby CGI. Everything he touches turns to
| gold.
| misnome wrote:
| This is useful. I used to like, and went through lots of the
| "Blender Cookie" stuff; even got a paid subscription - but
| they pivoted to online courses and lots of their individual
| tutorials and previous work disappeared.
| azalemeth wrote:
| This might be an odd, or unpopular opinion, but I really wish
| there were more tutorials written down, in text, with
| separate images and instructions. I don't like searching
| YouTube videos for specific steps, but plain HTML
| documentation is greppable. Blender does have docs -- and
| they're usually very good, but often out of date. Creatives
| really shine on YouTube, and make amazing things, but _hardly
| anyone_ seems to put together a page of instructions. I have
| memories of using an educational version of Cinema 4D, and
| one thing that struck me was the quality of the written,
| html-based documentation that was readable and educational.
|
| I'm delighted Apple is helping blender, I think it's a
| fantastic amazing project, and I have huge respect for all
| who work with it and make tutorials. I just want to learn to
| get better at it, quickly. I've found that I've got an
| unexpected barrier to entry to get my brain to work with its
| UI -- probably because I'm conditioned by earlier experiences
| -- and I don't think that I've been helped by having to watch
| videos with frequent pausing to see what modifier keys were
| pressed, with little ability to quickly randomly access the
| material afterwards.
| mhd wrote:
| > This might be an odd, or unpopular opinion
|
| Well, that used to be the mainstream opinion until a few
| years ago, when a lot of computer education switched to
| videos. I blame DHH ;)
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| I blame monetization. You can make more on YouTube.
| riidom wrote:
| Blender Secrets is also very good.
|
| One-minute tutorials about a tool, a certain specific way to
| achieve X and alike.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/BlenderSecrets
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| I've been helping add it to University curriculum because it's
| enabled us to contract and hire really talented and motivated
| people without the vendor tax of 3ds Max or Maya, and they
| usually have broader skill sets that we can apply elsewhere.
|
| Not knocking all the amazing people who use other software, but
| if you want new opportunity, use Blender!
| yreg wrote:
| We had a class on Blender in high school (mandatory even!)
| and it was very popular.
|
| A lot of people in our school played with Blender in their
| free time in the following years.
| cmarschner wrote:
| Why would a Blender class in high school be mandatory??
| BossingAround wrote:
| We had a mandatory Java class, why not a 3D modeling
| class?
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Why wouldn't it be? There's far less practical classes
| that were mandatory
| dagw wrote:
| I had mandatory drawing classes.
| midasuni wrote:
| PE, French. I'm sure understanding a bit about computer
| graphics is at least as useful to the average person as
| the quadratic formula.
| agumonkey wrote:
| blender grew beyond words, but I'm still not sure if it does
| reactive DAG propagation for animated attributes (like Maya).
| I was a bit shocked to read that you need to setup
| propagators or controllers (forgot the term tbh) to get a
| similar effect. Maybe I need to RTFM.
| qwertox wrote:
| Maya's API around the DAG is unmatched, which absolutely
| everything in Maya is built around. If Blender would have
| such a thing, it would become pretty hard to justify paying
| the price for Maya.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Give it 10 years. A lot today is revolving around
| reactive, dataflows and dependency graphs .. it will
| probably diffuse everywhere.
| felipemnoa wrote:
| >>If you've ever had a passing interest in Blender or 3d
| modeling I recommend checking out the donut tutorial, which is
| fast becoming the "hello world" of blender -
|
| I can attest to this. The donut tutorial is really good. It has
| all you need to know if you are starting from nothing.
| msci100 wrote:
| First time I'm hearing about Blender. Seems super cool.
|
| With a python API, would there be some automated way to turn
| drone footage into 3D environments?
| ragebol wrote:
| Sure, but it seems you are looking for (monocular) SLAM?
| msci100 wrote:
| I was thinking more so to add 3d objects to previously
| recorded drone footage.
|
| Would SLAM be the best option there?
| zachareid wrote:
| This video is awesome for what it sounds like you're trying
| to do.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY8Ol2n4o4A
| avhon1 wrote:
| SLAM would be to build a 3D model of what you filmed with a
| drone.
|
| Adding CGI to drone footage doesn't require that, and is
| absolutely something Blender can do. Look at its
| motion/camera tracking features.
| syntaxing wrote:
| I really hope this means GPU support on macOS for blender is
| coming soon!
| cmarschner wrote:
| I've spent countless hours learning Blender over the past few
| months (being completely oblivious of other 3D software to that
| point), mostly through many excellent Youtube videos like from
| BlenderGuru, and I think it is the most wicket piece of software
| I have tried to learn in decades. It makes learning the
| fundamentals of vi a piece of cake. It has hundreds of features,
| dozens of property dialogs, and most of all it requires a very
| peculiar interaction style that is very different from 2D editors
| like the ones found in Office/Google docs. The difference is
| similar to switching from a notepad/Word paradigm of being in
| edit mode by default to switching to the command mode in vim.
|
| The most important learnings so far have been:
|
| - Instead of creating objects from scratch, the paradigm is to
| modify shapes, starting from a number of primitives. That's why
| you get the "default cube" when you start it. An important
| operation is extrude, which copies the selected parts of a mesh
| and connects the copies to their original. So if you want to draw
| a curve, you place a default curve and then use an operation like
| extrude or subdivide to add new points.
|
| - There is a heavy interaction between mouse and keyboard.
| Depending on the task, it is vital to learn the keyboard
| shortcuts by heart. Those are often single keystrokes - e.g. tab
| for switching between object and mesh edit mode, 1/2/3 for
| switching between vertex/edge/face selection mode, g for moving
| the selected item, x/y/z to lock to an axis, x for delete, f for
| filling edges or faces into the mesh, e for extrude etc. while
| all of this is also possible to do with the mouse, there is a 10x
| productivity boost from learning the 10, 20 keystrokes that are
| used all the time.
|
| - It is highly extensible through plugins, mostly written in
| Python, though, unfortunately, lower layer operations are only
| exposed in C++. All of the youtube videos use one of the many
| screencasting plugins, which display the recent mouse buttons or
| key presses
|
| - it is a good idea to use a numpad, mainly to switch between
| different views
|
| The benefit: even with minimal manipulations in the lighting
| settings and the materials of the created objects, the renderer
| can already create raytraces that are absolutely jaw-dropping.
|
| But: Even after several months I still often ask myself "how do I
| tell it the computer". I feel like I have barely scratched the
| surface of what the tool can do. Rendering pipelines? Sculpting
| mode? Probably 2022.
|
| Curious about the hottest tips from the HN users :-)
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > It is highly extensible through plugins, mostly written in
| Python, though, unfortunately, lower layer operations are only
| exposed in C++.
|
| Other than cycles all the plugins are written in python--there
| is a C++ api generated at the same time as the python one but
| afaict only cycles uses it. Haven't done any blender stuff in
| quite a while so I could be (hope I'm) wrong.
|
| Though, with a little gumption, it isn't all that hard to
| expose the underlying functionality to python if nobody has
| gotten around to it yet. Most of my contributions were of that
| nature (honestly there were some big gaps and a lot of low
| lying fruit back then).
|
| Interesting(?) side note: the original pie menu script was
| written because my laptop didn't have a numpad and changing
| views is a PITA without one. People ran with it and it became
| really popular so they built pie menus into blender proper.
| quelsolaar wrote:
| Once you start learning 3D applications you realize most other
| UIs are toys in compassion. 3D tools are designed for
| professionals, who take the time necessary to learn how to be
| productive.
| runevault wrote:
| Sculpting mode is worth learning. Grant Abbitt has some great
| tutorials on that front. Though if you dive too far into that
| you may wanna look at getting a Wacom tablet or similar.
| Actually Grant has a lot of good tutorials in general on
| Blender.
| astlouis44 wrote:
| Apple is getting more serious about 3D and the gaming market,
| which isn't surprising considering the market size.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| More and more devices from Apple are getting LiDAR sensors so
| it makes sense to support it.
|
| Apple also is taking open source more seriously .
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Still waiting for FOSS version of Facetime ;)
| wlesieutre wrote:
| You can thank software patents for that
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/01/08/apple-denied-
| new-...
| FreezingKeeper wrote:
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/07/apple_announces_
| o... for those that don't get the reference
| ravenstine wrote:
| It definitely makes sense.
|
| Recently I had a need for a CAD program and rediscovered how
| insanely expensive commercial 3D software is for the average
| person.
|
| Sure, many companies now offer monthly subscriptions, but even
| those subscriptions are ginormous for the amount of relative
| value returned. Like, do I really want to pay $220 a month for
| AutoCAD when I only need to design a part for a non-commercial
| personal project every so often? I'm sure even a lot of small
| companies secretly pirate such software, especially if they are
| relying on something like Solidworks. I really don't know how
| anyone affords that package.
|
| And yes, there are sometimes free student editions of these
| packages, but unlike 15 years ago it's tough to get a hold of
| them without an email from an academic institution the company
| has verified.
|
| In my case, I was looking at AutoCAD because FreeCAD is...
| well, pretty terrible as a n00b. From what I can tell it works
| very differently in many ways from standard CAD applications.
| It's good for converting between formats, but it's not at all
| intuitive and seemingly minor actions with nothing but a _cube_
| in the workspace can cause it to go into a tizzy and completely
| freeze.
|
| EDIT: Ultimately I ended up using OpenSCAD.
|
| Commercial 3D software isn't even necessarily better, though. I
| know I yakked on about CAD, but I have a sort of background in
| Animation and used Autodesk Maya for many years, which would be
| the closest direct competitor to Blender. Dear lord, what a
| _disaster_ of a software package. Granted, I haven 't used it
| since the 2018 edition, but it's astoundingly bad in many
| areas. The main reason it's so widely used is that it's
| established and is capable of just about anything. The downside
| is that, like AutoCAD, the slightest breeze can make it crash
| unexpectedly. Anyone smart will save their scenes in ASCII
| format because who knows, something might go wrong during the
| saving process that makes your scene unable to open when you
| reboot Maya, and looking through the text-version of your scene
| may be the only way to fix or recover anything. That's not even
| all of it. And Maya is also very expensive. Unless you are a
| student, the only way to use Maya on a hobbyist level is to
| pirate it.
|
| Having switched entirely to Blender, although there's things
| about it that I still find unintuitive, it's a breath of fresh
| air having come from Maya. Unlike Maya, it's rare that anything
| I do will cause Blender to freeze or crash. The default
| viewport rendering not only looks better than Maya's "viewport
| 2.0" but just seems snappier.
|
| What I don't like about Blender is that it tries to do too much
| IMO. Does Blender _really_ need a video editor and to clutter
| up the UI with references to it? Not specifically related, but
| what 's with the way that modifiers work? It's kind of like
| Maya's "history" except it's both better and worse. Unlike
| Maya, you can actually change the order of how modifiers are
| applied. But modifiers are really only good for specific
| things. In Maya, the history of an object is far more
| generalized.
|
| But overall, I want to see Blender succeed and maybe, just
| maybe knock things like Maya down a peg, even if it takes
| another 20 years.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| I know Blender as a 3D animation creation tool, so you get
| legacy features.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| unfortunate because blender isn't really optimal for cad. Its
| a mesh based modeler which makes it great for animation and
| demonstrations but solid level modeling thats suppose to
| simulate real things isn't its intention.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I kinda realized after the fact that what I wrote made it
| seem like I'm using Blender for CAD. (though it would be
| nice if it had some more CAD capabilities) CAD just happens
| to suffer the same pricing issue general 3D packages like
| Maya do. Both are expensive as hell for non-professionals.
|
| I use Blender these days mainly for direct manipulation of
| meshes in ways that a parametric CAD program won't let you.
| If I was doing character animation again, I'd probably
| still use Blender for that. General modeling, Blender is
| very good. I just hope the UI continues to improve and not
| obscure so many things behind various icons.
| rrrrrrrrrrrrr wrote:
| Wasn't there a headline were it said apple made more on games
| than Nintendo, Sony, blizzard etc. together. Apple is already
| on top of the gaming market.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| I doubt that Apple arcade makes them that much money.
|
| Counting the App Store service fee of 30% as "game revenue"
| is disingenuous, as then we could count every single Windows
| license sale and every single dollar of revenue from hosting
| game servers as "making money from games".
| ksec wrote:
| >Counting the App Store service fee of 30% as "game
| revenue" is disingenuous,
|
| It was total revenue from App Store derived from Gaming
| Apps. I dont see how that is disingenuous. Just like Sony
| makes a cut from games on PS5.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > I dont see how that is disingenuous.
|
| When Apple has a total 0 input in making and marketing of
| said game and just charges for services - that's not
| revenue from games.
|
| And if you want to put a bar that low - Google makes
| billions from ads for games, YouTube play alongs and
| other services purchased by game makers. Let's also no
| forget Starbucks revenues from all the game devs, that
| definitely counts as game revenue.
|
| > Just like Sony makes a cut from games on PS5.
|
| You do realize that all PS5 games get input and support
| from Sony, do you?
| gamacodre wrote:
| Ofttimes Sony's "input" isn't much more than "your
| licensing message needs to stay on-screen for another 0.5
| seconds to pass acceptance test X.X". Maybe they're doing
| more for non-AAA devs these days?
|
| They did help us out when we ran into issues with the dev
| tooling, but then so does Apple.
|
| Source: I was lead engine dev on a couple of mid-cycle
| PS2 games.
| ksec wrote:
| Apple _dictate_ what is inside their App Store. Along
| with tools that partly support the Game Development. i.e
| Development of Metal and their Custom GPU ( At least that
| is the way Apple likes to formalise their argument in
| court ) . In reality there is no different between the
| role of Apple and Sony when viewed from a business
| perspective. No matter how big or small their input into
| Games. They take their Cut on Games purchase. So either
| Sony is not counted as one, and if they do the similar
| revenue counting could also be used for Apple.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Right... "Business perspective". Come back when Apple
| spends marketing resources on literally every single game
| that is published to App Store.
|
| (Also - if you downvote, then don't bother replying)
| Talanes wrote:
| >Apple dictate what is inside their App Store.
|
| Walmart dictates what gets put on their shelves. Should
| we throw them into this contest too?
| easton wrote:
| I wonder if they'll ever add support for Vulkan to macOS/iOS
| then. If Valve can move the Steam Deck, then there could be a
| gigantic boost in the available library of games (since all of
| the big games on Steam will want to target Proton).
|
| Architecture makes that still icky, but MoltenVK running Proton
| (so DirectX to Vulkan to Metal) makes Fallout 4 and Titanfall
| run playable on M1 (with some graphics glitches). If there was
| real funding behind it they'd have a winner on their hands.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Apple could literally print money if they put M1 into a steam
| deck.
| fsloth wrote:
| I doubt about the gaming market. Plausible. But their upcoming
| AR tech needs 3D content and lots of it. Might include gaming
| as well but there are more uses than strictly "game games" for
| game like software and content.
| ryanwhitney wrote:
| This is awesome. While far from a Mac app in terms of UI norms,
| I've found blender to feel more at home on a Mac than expensive
| heavy hitters like Cinema 4D which still fails to render text and
| icons at a native resolution out of the box. I'm a very light 3D
| user, but I've been really impressed with it.
| heartbreak wrote:
| Cinema 4D R25 (released at the end of last month) finally
| overhauled the user interface. It looks much better (and much
| more like Blender) on macOS now.
| illwrks wrote:
| Blender is a fantastic piece of software. I've dabbled with it
| for years but the 3.83 version and higher with the improved UI
| has made it better.
|
| That coupled with some 3d printing marketplaces have made for
| some interesting experiments!
| drawkbox wrote:
| Glad to see Apple supporting more open 3d tools.
|
| Apple was huge in getting open standards funded at Khronos for
| OpenGL ES, WebGL and more. These investments led to lots of great
| things and innovations.
|
| The market for 3d tools is one of the most fixed markets out
| there and the tools are expensive, that has caused
| interoperability issues and standards being more proprietary. For
| instance, COLLADA wasn't great but it was one standard they
| pretty much broke in favor of FBX, which is probably better but
| also less open/standard.
|
| Hopefully these investments can help change that in the 3d tools
| market a bit. Even getting your hands on Maya, 3ds Max, ZBrush,
| Houdini, Cinema4D, etc was difficult until recently. Blender
| might have made the pricing on those more competitive as well as
| Unity/Unreal opening up more on pricing.
|
| Blender is opening up 3d tools for all and that is a good thing.
| The app used to be a usability complexity problem but is getting
| very competitive in usability and less complex on entry. Tools
| are like games, they should be easy to approach and more advanced
| on the backend/detail to master for advanced users, simplicity
| should always be the goal for tools.
| justinclift wrote:
| Wonder if this will lead to a functional iOS port of Blender?
|
| Pretty much the whole reason I went with a MS Surface tablet
| instead of an iPad of some sort, was the lack of Blender.
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| Probably more augmented reality tools
| SXX wrote:
| Not unless Apple open up their locked-in platform. Blender
| licensed under GPLv2 or later and fortunately it's completely
| impossible to change source code license.
| masalah wrote:
| Could you please elaborate how does Blender's license prevent
| them from having an ios port?
| SXX wrote:
| Appstore rules are incompatible with GPL. There a lot of
| past discussions on this topic:
|
| https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-
| store...
| my123 wrote:
| Note that this is no longer true under the App Store
| agreements today, which allow using a custom license.
|
| https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-
| services/itunes/us/term...
|
| > Any App that you acquire is governed by the Licensed
| Application End User License Agreement ("Standard EULA")
| set forth below, unless Apple or the App Provider
| provides an overriding custom license agreement ("Custom
| EULA").
| masalah wrote:
| Thanks for linking this
| singhrac wrote:
| Would be pretty wild to have a full Blender running on my M1
| iPad Pro, though I imagine touch controls are somewhat tricky
| (maybe pen only?).
| bee_rider wrote:
| The UI is pretty flexible -- each panel can be resized and
| the elements of a panel can be blown up/shrunken. It does
| it's best to reflow things sanely... with varying levels of
| success.
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