[HN Gopher] Blender 3.4
___________________________________________________________________
Blender 3.4
Author : TangerineDream
Score : 305 points
Date : 2022-12-07 14:50 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wiki.blender.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (wiki.blender.org)
| SnooSux wrote:
| > bpy 3.4.0 is available on PyPi, and can be installed through
| pip install bpy.
|
| Does this mean you can run Blender from Python without the
| command line?
|
| https://docs.blender.org/api/3.4/info_advanced_blender_as_bp...
| aynyc wrote:
| Can blender replace sketchup? I just found out sketchup isn't
| free anymore.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| You're right, it's not free any more: Burger King charges $0.50
| a packet!
|
| But you can make your own using blender:
|
| https://www.food.com/recipe/blender-ketchup-89086
|
| Oh, sketchup, not ketchup. Never mind. ;)
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| I haven't really used blender, but I doubt it would be a great
| replacement for most use cases. Fusion360 on the other hand is
| free and a great replacement!
| aynyc wrote:
| Fusion360 has a big learning curve for me. As a once a year
| hobbyist, not sure if it's worth the investment to learn. I
| think you are right that blender is probably worse than
| Fusion for basic carpentry planning, etc..
| longtimelistnr wrote:
| Blender imo is a much larger learning curve than fusion. In
| my experience Fusion or solidworks are about fundamentally
| how to construct a model. Whereas blender is much more
| oriented towards someone who may be more technically
| minded. As well as being just for surface models not real
| world objects.
| aynyc wrote:
| I suspect that too. If I learn Blender to replace
| Fusion/SketchUp, I can do other stuff with Blender. But
| I'm sticking to basic home DIY. I might just spend some
| time on Fusion.
| somat wrote:
| Blender is an artsy program and development tends to focus on
| the artsy side. fusion360 is an engineering program and
| development tends to focus on that use case. Not to say you
| cant use it for ether purpose. but loosely, blender is better
| when you only really care about what it looks like and
| fusion360 is better when you care not how it looks but about
| the details of the dimensions of your thing.
|
| personally I enjoy modeling in a parametric program like
| fusion360 more, I guess it appeals to my inner programmer,
| but nothing I make could reasonably be called "art".
| q_andrew wrote:
| Sort of. It can do much more than sketchup, but the interface
| is not designed for quick drafting like sketchup is. Blender
| doesn't shield you from the more complex parts of 3D design
| like sketchup does, but if you learn it you will have a better
| grasp of the system as a whole.
| kuboa wrote:
| Depends on what you're doing with it. I'm an architect who have
| been using SketchUp professionally for 20 years now, and I use
| Blender for hobby (Geometry Nodes stuff). For architecture
| work, Blender absolutely can NOT replace SketchUp,
| unfortunately (it doesn't even have a universal Section tool,
| for example), even though it's an incomparably more powerful
| program in every other area.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > universal Section tool
|
| Can't you get the same thing with a boolean modifier?
|
| Illustration: https://i.stack.imgur.com/FlM1E.png
| aynyc wrote:
| DIY home repair. Right now, I need some fences repair, just
| want sketch that out, plus a couple of small container sheds.
| kuboa wrote:
| In terms of ability, sure, Blender can replace SketchUp
| (and more), but I don't think it'd be worth the learning
| hassle just for that. The free SketchUp web version should
| suffice for small DIY stuff. You can always bring your
| model into Blender for further refining/rendering anyways
| (there's a good import addon).
| aynyc wrote:
| There is a free version? Link?
|
| I want a low learning curve application for home DIY
| stuff. I tried Fusion, just a bit more complex that I
| would like, I supposed Blender is ever more so.
| kuboa wrote:
| Free web version:
| https://www.sketchup.com/products/sketchup-for-web There
| is a list of differences between this and their more
| professional versions if you scroll down. It doesn't
| support more advanced stuff (like plugins) but all the
| fundamentals are there and it is pretty performant.
| moffkalast wrote:
| It can do that to some extent, though the CAD side of it is
| still a very lacking.
| boppo1 wrote:
| I love Blender and hope to contribute some day soon. But hoo-boy
| the codebase is intimidating.
| capableweb wrote:
| A great way to get started is to write your own addon and get
| familiar with the Python API. Then as you come across bugs or
| missing features, you'll have a concrete goal on what you could
| contribute to, with a anchor to something you're doing "from
| the outside".
|
| If I remember correctly, Geometry Nodes got started as a
| Blender addon (called "animation nodes") which eventually the
| Blender organization went as far as employing the creator of
| the addon and including it in the main release.
| TillE wrote:
| That's exactly how I've wound up contributing to a couple
| large open source projects. Try to build somewhat unusual
| stuff on top of it, find bugs/deficiencies, fix them.
| boppo1 wrote:
| I'm pretty handy with the API, but the C behind it all feels
| pretty byzantine. I'm newish to OOP and C/C++ so before I can
| worry about interacting with systems like the window manager,
| internal database, depsgraph, renderers, RNA/DNA, etc. I
| gotta understand the paradigms that underpin its
| organization. Documentation is pretty light (but devs are
| very helpful in chat!).
|
| I guess Python has just spoiled me. I need a class and
| "everything is right there". In Blender's C/C++,
| functionality always seems spread across a variety of files
| and callbacks in a variety of folders. I tried to follow the
| main loop through an extremely simple action (select a cube
| onscreen) to see how the stuff I know happens, happens (draw
| orange outline, highlight in outliner, update undo history,
| etc.) I knew it would be a lot, but geez, even one of those
| things is like a week of reading through code.
|
| I do remember how intimidating Blender was the first time I
| used it though, vs how easy and natural it is now. I'm
| looking forward to when it will 'click' enough that I can
| find my way around even though I don't know how everything
| works. A 'core workflow' to trace through how stuff happens,
| if you will.
| cheeselip420 wrote:
| Blender is one of the most capable open source projects around. I
| wish the GIMP would take a few lessons...
| dedukto wrote:
| Please, draw a circle.
| nine_k wrote:
| > Blender as a Python Module
|
| https://xkcd.com/353/ draws nearer and nearer.
| [deleted]
| elil17 wrote:
| Blender as a Python module is extremely helpful to me as someone
| who is allowed to install Python modules but not software on my
| work computer.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I really love Blender! Now I just need to get back into it now
| that they've made it so fast on M1. It can be really fun if you
| have the time for it
| sdkgames wrote:
| I want them to support a textual shading language for all render
| engines. Instead, they cultivate graphical programming. From a
| programmer's point of view, this is a significant drawback.
| dagmx wrote:
| How would you propose that? Cycles uses OSL, whereas Eevee is a
| raster OpenGL renderer. There's very few things that can target
| both.
|
| Unless you mean a different implementation per renderer?
| pkaye wrote:
| Blender is the one program where features are added faster than
| one can learn them.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| Reminder, if you'd like to support Blender financially you can
| at: https://fund.blender.org/
|
| I've been getting into Blender for the last few months.
| Previously i was used to paying ZBrush, Modo and etc 500+ dollars
| for Licensing, and it's kinda shocking how much functionality you
| get in Blender for free.
|
| I just signed up for the lowest tier. Not sure how much i want to
| spare a month, but i can definitely spare a coffee and month and
| it is well, well worth it. Much thanks to the entire team on
| Blender, you folks rock :)
| bodge5000 wrote:
| In case anyone prefers the more flashy release notes
|
| https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-4/
| jabiko wrote:
| I'm wondering if this might be the better submission URL. It
| might be a bit lower on details but at the same time it conveys
| a richer overview of what the release is about.
| lucideer wrote:
| Agree.
|
| The submitted URL is high-on-detail (normally good for HN
| audience) but low enough on context that I'd say it's mostly
| of use for frequent Blender users & Blender community members
| (who likely know how to find both URLs).
|
| The flashy URL, while lower on detail, still packs a
| reasonable amount in. Alongside much-needed context.
| kidfiji wrote:
| As someone that has little-to-no knowledge of 3D modeling and
| related software, the "flashier" release notes are catered
| more for me :)
| lvl102 wrote:
| I am pretty convinced Blender will be one the most important
| tools over the next decade. They should teach kids how to use it
| in middle/high school. Also a great gateway to learn coding with
| geometry node.
| keepquestioning wrote:
| Nah, GPT will eventually learn how to 3d model.
| capableweb wrote:
| That's great (except probably Stable Diffusion and similar
| approaches are better than GPT). What about the bazillion
| other features that Blender has as well? You think
| AI/ML/magic will replace that too in the future?
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| Early in the year I made the switch from Modo (by The Foundary)
| to Blender 3.x, and I've been enjoying it. Since I use 3D
| software for my video games business it's quite daunting to
| switch a significant part of your workflow over, because the
| muscle-memory of all the shortcuts is all there, and you've
| learnt the Way To Do Things(tm) in that particular piece of
| software.
|
| As much as I liked Modo, I was paying a monthly subscription, and
| now with Blender I don't and it's got this enormous open-source
| community that provides a lot of long-term confidence, which I
| wasn't quite getting with Modo. The UI changes going from 2.x to
| 3.x was pretty important in my decision to switch.
|
| One thing I found helpful when moving 3d modelling softwares was
| to setup all the keyboard shortcuts to your previous software's
| bindings, and then you can tackle figuring out the UI, the
| different object modes and the Blender Way To Do Things(tm).
| There's plenty of preference files around on the web that you can
| plug them in and get going quite quickly
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| > Early in the year I made the switch from Modo (by The
| Foundary) to Blender 3.x
|
| Hah, that's me. Except i was out of CG for ~7 years or w/e. I
| used Modo extensively from 1.0 to .. i want to say 5.0 or
| something. Tons of modeling. I adored Modo for modeling. This
| was all before they were bought by Foundary or w/e, though.
| Back when it was Luxology.
|
| Maybe you have an opinion here.. but how is Blender for
| modeling? Specifically when 3D Navigating. So far i've found
| Blender to be .. okay, like it has all or almost all the tools
| i remember from Modo... but something just feels different.
| Modo felt so fluid, intuitive. Especially with 3D navigation.
| Something just doesn't feel as good about 3D Nav compared to
| Modo. But i can't put my finger on it.
|
| Regardless, Blender has so much power i absolutely adore it.
| I'm just trying to capture that fluidness that i had in Modo.
| Yet i can't articulate what it is. Which.. sucks, heh.
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| I'm really just using Blender for modelling and UV unwrapping
| (and I've used the paint-to-texture feature once) and I think
| it's pretty solid, but I really haven't gone near sculpting
| or anything soft-surface/organic. I probably need to model
| another dozen things to get up to my Modo ability though.
| leeches wrote:
| I also used Modo from version 101 to 501. Maybe it's because
| of baby duck syndrome, but I have never found anything that
| even comes close to Modo, in terms of ease of use and
| workflow.
|
| You can get the Blender viewport behaviors to match Modo, but
| you'll need to customize all the Input/Navigation/Keymap
| settings. The modeling tools themselves are mostly kind of
| there at a foundational level, but it's all really clunky in
| comparison. I wish that Blender had the work plane and tool
| pipe. I just learned the Blender way to do things, instead of
| trying to fight it.
| kuboa wrote:
| This is a relatively tame update, but the roadmap for the near
| future is really exciting, with stuff like Simulation Nodes
| (which already has a usable experimental branch) and Blender Apps
| (https://code.blender.org/2022/11/blender-apps)
|
| I'm not a programmer so I struggled with the fundamental concepts
| a bit when learning Geometry Nodes, but it's been the best new
| addition to my life in a long time. I think I haven't watched any
| TV show in a year or two because I prefer to spend my time
| fiddling with GN and answering people's questions about it on
| Blender Stack Exchange (found out that it's a fantastic way to
| learn--they're like little prompts leading you to discover areas
| you hadn't even realized existed). Blender community is so big,
| creative, enthusiastic, and helpful--you go on Blender-Twitter
| and it's people making playful/interesting stuff all day and
| sharing how they did it. I can't stop gushing about it to anyone
| who'd listen.
| pinkwinds wrote:
| Any recommendations as for whom to follow on Twitter?
| [deleted]
| kuboa wrote:
| @erindale_xyz (probably the most well known member of the GN
| community, fantastic YouTube channel as well)
|
| @JacquesLucke (creator of Animation nodes, who was then hired
| by Blender)
|
| @FreyaHolmer (not necessarily Blender stuff, but great game-
| dev geometry/math content)
|
| Tinkerers: @higgsasxyz @cmzw_ @artofriaz3d @WannesMalfait
| @JesseMiettinen @Bbbn192 @Mrdodobird @cgonfire @Sanctus_Art
| [deleted]
| coder543 wrote:
| The wiki still claims 3.4 hasn't released, although the download
| page has been updated. What's weirder is that past releases have
| had a easy-to-consume release notes[0], but 3.4 doesn't? Maybe
| posting it here now is jumping the gun a little?
|
| [0]: https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-3/
| afturner wrote:
| The pretty release notes have been published [1]. Maybe it's
| worth updating the post link to point to it.
|
| (ninja edit, the page is now listed on the releases page [2])
|
| [1] https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-4/
|
| [2] https://www.blender.org/download/releases/
| coder543 wrote:
| yeah, when I tried that link manually earlier, it just
| redirected to the wiki that the OP linked to.
|
| This post should _definitely_ be updated to point to that
| release notes page, if @dang sees this.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Any idea on what happened with Apple becoming a sponsor? Apple
| Silicon compatibility is achieved but I don't see Apple in the
| sponsor list: https://fund.blender.org
| dagmx wrote:
| I don't think Apple were ever listed even though they're a
| sponsor (probably due to some desire for branding)
|
| However they're still contributing to porting it to Metal and
| improving that support, among other things. You can see various
| things in progress on the Blender dev pages
| catach wrote:
| Either they ended sponsorship, the list isn't updated in a
| timely manner, or Apple didn't want to be listed.
| kuboa wrote:
| It's optional and Apple didn't want to be listed. Their logo
| has never been displayed on the page. They collaborated with
| devs from Apple quite closely though, they used to put the
| meeting notes and updates on devtalk.blender.org
| catach wrote:
| That did seem most likely to me, thanks for the
| confirmation.
| bitigchi wrote:
| They still do. Latest[1] from just a week ago.
|
| [1] https://devtalk.blender.org/t/2022-11-30-render-cycles-
| meeti...
| phkahler wrote:
| Any word about the CAD Sketcher addon?
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Interesting, I hadn't heard of this before. As a mechanical
| engineer, it seems like it wouldn't be able to compete with the
| free (non-open source) CAD platforms - as much as I would
| absolutely love to see an open source CAD software grow out of
| something like Blender.
|
| What is your use case for it?
| SxC97 wrote:
| I wanted to get back into CAD stuff for 3D printing, what
| free platforms are out there? In my research, I've only come
| across freeCAD and Fusion360.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> what free platforms are out there? In my research, I've
| only come across freeCAD and Fusion360.
|
| Try Solvespace. It's not as complete as those, but a hell
| of a lot more fun!
|
| https://solvespace.com/index.pl
| somat wrote:
| give solvespace a try. it is very limited compared to the
| ones you listed. however I find it enjoyable, fun you may
| even say, to use. But I have to admit I would have a hard
| time using it professionally.
|
| https://solvespace.com/index.pl
| phkahler wrote:
| >> What is your use case for it?
|
| It uses the geometric constraint solver from Solvespace,
| which is OSS CAD that I contribute too. The same solver has
| also been integrated into one workbench in FreeCAD. It makes
| a lot of sense to me that someone wants it directly in
| Blender for simple parametric designs. Not everything is
| character animation after all! :-)
| darkteflon wrote:
| I listened to an interesting interview[1] this week with
| Blender's creator (and current foundation chairman) Ton
| Roosendaal.
|
| He thought that one of Blender's major challenges was recent
| developments in the real-time rendering space - notably Unreal
| Engine.
|
| They're not direct competitors, of course (and Epic has donated
| to the foundation) but it does speak to how impressive UE's
| render pipeline is.
|
| Again, it's not a direct comparison, but it's remarkable what UE5
| can do at 60fps on a mid-range Nvidia 30 series card (even
| without DLSS) versus how long it takes Cycles to render a single
| frame.
|
| I've no doubt Blender will be a future innovator in this space
| too.
|
| [1] https://overcast.fm/+mSOZes2FM
| somat wrote:
| Blender has a realtime renderer. it is known as eevee.
|
| https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/eevee/intro...
| darkteflon wrote:
| Yes, I'm aware of eevee. Would you say that eevee produces
| output of a comparable quality to Cycles or UE5 with Lumen?
| somat wrote:
| I have no idea, I only use blender rarely and almost never
| render. eevee is intended to be compatible with cycles, I
| would guess that if your scene does not depend on the
| advanced lighting that a forward renderer like cycles
| enables it could replace cycles. I also expect it to be as
| good, if not better than ue5 as it does not have to hit the
| framerates that ue5 has to achieve.
| darkteflon wrote:
| Yes, eevee can look great with the right settings. I
| guess the devil in the detail is what we respectively
| mean by "great", and "better". Context is crucial: what
| you're trying to do, where you're doing it and with what
| constraints, etc.
|
| I guess I would just then reiterate the context of my
| original comment, which is that the creator of Blender
| and current foundation chairman is looking at UE's real-
| time render pipeline and coming away very impressed, even
| to the extent that he thinks it should influence the
| future direction of Blender's own real-time pipeline.
| naikrovek wrote:
| yeah. they are wildly different approaches to rendering, with
| the realtime stuff taking shortcuts in the name of performance,
| whereas the non-realtime stuff isn't making the same choices.
| accuracy rules with path tracers like Cycles.
|
| realtime 3D engines have gotten extremely good at
| approximation, though, and they get better all the time.
|
| around the time they perfect it, hardware will be able to do
| pathtracing in real time, meaning the shortcut path and the
| long path to the goal of photorealism were about the same
| length, just through wildly different terrain.
| norwalkbear wrote:
| I love blender. Software developers on hackernews HAVE to try out
| the blender python api.
|
| It's just an integral part of my workflow especially for modding
| games.
| coldpie wrote:
| Haha the Blender Python API!
|
| Back in high school, a friend and I wrote a 3D platforming
| video game from scratch. The on-disk 3D model format we used
| was something I just came up with. It was plaintext ASCII where
| we would write in every vertex and tex coord by hand, and the
| engine would turn those over to the obvious OpenGL functions.
| That was obviously stupid, so my friend learned how to use
| Blender and wrote an exporter to my format using its Python
| API. You can read a bit about it here[1] on our old website,
| written in 2005 when we were around 17 years old. Memories.
|
| My friend eventually went on to develop & commercially release
| a 3D platforming game called Poi[2].
|
| [1]
| https://brightnightgames.com/games.php?game=sa&sec=developme...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poi_(video_game)
| ekianjo wrote:
| Funny just stumbled upon Poi yesterday! Small world
| coldpie wrote:
| Hey, you're the Boiling Steam guy :) I used to be the lead
| dev on Proton, I think we emailed once or twice. Small
| world, indeed.
| aliswe wrote:
| Respect!
| worldsayshi wrote:
| What things do you typically use the API for? I can't come up
| with anything off the top of my head where you'd rather use the
| API than the GUI.
| capableweb wrote:
| Less useful since Geometry Nodes were included, but
| generative/procedural stuff was only possible via the API for
| a long time. Besides that, every single addon is leveraging
| the Python API, so basically any functionality you get from
| installing an addon.
|
| Besides that, I've written bunch of macros as basically
| python files I execute in Blender to do repetitive tasks.
| Another thing I've done is writing a distributed render queue
| for headless rendering, using the Python API.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Suppose I want to keyframe 200 birds or something, taking off
| two at at time about every second with a bit of randomness.
| Oh, I want there to be some variation in their colors. And I
| just realized I want the interpolation on all of them to be
| linear, not bezier. That's 50+hours of tedious gui work
| reduced to 4 hours with the API.
| capableweb wrote:
| In reality/right now, you'd probably use either a particle
| system, the boids system or just geometry nodes for
| something like that though, although for earlier versions
| of Blender your solution would probably be needed.
| [deleted]
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| I've been using it to automate behavior of an asset pipeline
| for a game. Basic stuff, like taking many assets and putting
| them in the right location, combining several things,
| rendering, on demand (not at runtime, but based on usage in
| the game), etc.
|
| Neat thing too is it's in Rust, not Python.. because, well, i
| prefer and know Rust, and by doing it in Rust it works with
| the rest of my game code so that on-demand stuff i mention
| plugs in nicely to my existing ecosystem. Note that i'm using
| Py03 for Rust, so it's just Rust<->Python. Not native Rust
| support or anything
| norwalkbear wrote:
| Basically automating variant creation and modifying assets
| for various level of details.
|
| Also automatic fixing of imported models from various game
| ripping sites.
| pwenzel wrote:
| I use Blender's Python API for transforming 3d objects to
| render on my analog oscilloscope.
|
| Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thWgiEtQs7A
|
| Blender Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQLimxRDFWc
| smcnally wrote:
| The oscilloscope visuals makes everything more watchable.
| Everything on your SRS channel looks fun.
| afpx wrote:
| Apologies for the GPT hijack, but I've been having a lot of fun
| creating procedurally-generated scenes in blender using GPT
| Chat.
|
| For example "write code in python using blender libraries to
| create a scene that contains a procedurally-generated mobius
| strip"
|
| Usually the results are pretty good.
| runevault wrote:
| I've pondered learning it but hadn't gotten around to it. Any
| particular resource you recommend as a starting point? Because
| being able to automate certain things myself sounds great,
| though I'm super rusty on python.
| aequitas wrote:
| Blender's API is the entire reason I started venturing into the
| Python ecosystem. Found out I was no good at designing 3D but a
| lot better at programming.
| tapia wrote:
| I love blender, but the Python API is really unpythonic. I
| really wish you could treat the different things as objects and
| not by referencing then by their names. Nevertheless, it's
| pretty cool to automate some things I have to do at work (I am
| a civil engineer working in research)
| FrozenSynapse wrote:
| Same as other posters, I love Blender! Cannot wait for 3.5 with
| simulation nodes.
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