[HN Gopher] Blender Lab
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       Blender Lab
        
       Author : radeeyate
       Score  : 183 points
       Date   : 2025-11-13 13:38 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.blender.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.blender.org)
        
       | raxxorraxor wrote:
       | I think there is some problem loading CSS for this site. Could be
       | my current network though...
       | 
       | edit: you might need to auth yourself as human to cloudflare on
       | blender.org for the site to display correctly.
        
         | LukaD wrote:
         | Yeah, it's indeed broken because of cloudflare... I directly
         | navigated to the stylesheet that wouldn't load
         | (https://www.blender.org/wp-
         | content/themes/bthree/style.css?x...) and got the cloudflare
         | captcha thing. Now all the assets are loading for me.
        
         | ethmarks wrote:
         | I had the same problem and authing on the main page fixed it.
         | 
         | If they're going to block unauthed stylesheet requests, surely
         | they could at least make sure that the CF authenticator shows
         | up on every page.
        
       | frustracean wrote:
       | If anyone else is having trouble loading the CSS for the page, go
       | to https://www.blender.org/wp-
       | content/themes/bthree/style.css?x... to be Captcha'd by
       | Cloudflare - it should load fine after that.
        
         | blensor wrote:
         | +1 on that. Works for me after that
        
         | Joeboy wrote:
         | Yeah the page is currently loading very quickly and is very
         | easy to read due to an issue with Cloudflare.
         | 
         | Edit: If I'm honest, I find this specific css fairly innocuous.
         | I have a more general grudge that raw HTML is easy, free and
         | accessible but we collectively insisted that it's not OK to use
         | it.
        
           | latexr wrote:
           | I tested repeatedly, always clearing the cache, and there was
           | essentially no speed difference in loading with or without
           | the CSS. In one instance, loading with CSS was even faster.
        
           | sim04ful wrote:
           | It's actually funny, the lack of styling actually makes
           | consuming the info alot easier.
        
             | badosu wrote:
             | Funny if not tragic. I was impressed at how good the
             | styling of the page was until I realized the css did not
             | load.
        
             | yuters wrote:
             | It is way more readable with CSS, I don't know what you're
             | all on about.
             | 
             | The font is bigger, the lines are shorter, the navigation
             | doesn't take half the page. The only thing worse would be
             | the contrast but it's not that bad.
        
               | a2128 wrote:
               | On mobile it's actually super readable and lines are a
               | perfect length, and having to scroll past the top
               | navigation doesn't affect readability much
        
               | saretup wrote:
               | The top navigation definitely put me off, I immediately
               | came back without even scrolling down.
        
             | hbosch wrote:
             | The page is objectively and substantially better in every
             | aspect of legibility with CSS loaded.
        
               | catapart wrote:
               | Hey, take it easy! It's not nice to pick on those poor
               | developers who can only read text that has been piped
               | into their preferred TUI.
        
               | NewsaHackO wrote:
               | Yea, "Minimalism is better!" is like a reflex for some
               | people
        
               | spiderice wrote:
               | > objectively
               | 
               | I do not think that word means what you think it means
        
               | rendaw wrote:
               | All art is a combination of objective and subjective
               | aspects.
               | 
               | The objective improvements from css here include: shorter
               | lines are easier to read (per multiple legibility
               | studies), the styling distinguishes navigation and
               | secondary site elements from the main content (without
               | css you get a half screen of navigation links), and the
               | visual importance of in-page anchor links is reduced.
        
             | amelius wrote:
             | Except I like to have some margin. And since I have a wide
             | screen, the number of words per line is too large.
        
               | prmoustache wrote:
               | That is a weird take. Having a wide screen doesn't force
               | you to maximize the window.
        
         | matthewaveryusa wrote:
         | So what's the issue here (I know what the issue is in terms of
         | the subresource not loading, a bit like an oauth redirect not
         | executing properly if a user needs to log back in.)
         | 
         | Is it because of a misconfiguration on blender's end that
         | should allow css to passthrough without verification, the query
         | param messing a cloudflare passthrough default, or something
         | else?
        
           | Scaevolus wrote:
           | They might be allowing global public caching of their /news/
           | blog posts (because WordPress is slow?), but not of the
           | static /wp-content/ directory.
        
         | lastdong wrote:
         | Fixed it for me, much better than having the top navigation
         | element unstyled as a list. In any case, the CSS is pretty much
         | innocuous, feels almost like reader mode (which is my go to).
         | Thanks!
        
         | ModernMech wrote:
         | Thanks it worked but... lol the style doesn't even add
         | anything, it just makes it harder to read by lowering the
         | contrast of the page.
        
         | Archelaos wrote:
         | Another option is to use Firefox and press [F9].
        
           | nashashmi wrote:
           | MS Edge does the same thing.
        
         | nashashmi wrote:
         | Normally I like CSS naked websites. But some of them have
         | multiple SVG icons right at the top that take up the entire
         | width of the page. And that hurts.
         | 
         | Devs: please practice observing your site without css
        
         | ncr100 wrote:
         | As https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45918066 says, go to
         | https://www.blender.org/lab/ instead.
        
       | simgt wrote:
       | If there are contributors to Blender from the industry, who are
       | they? It's easy to understand how big tech can be contributing to
       | Linux, data processing pipelines, web frameworks, compilers etc.
       | but it's harder to see who has both the skills and incentives for
       | design tools. Maybe some game studios have the necessary slack?
        
         | Uehreka wrote:
         | I recall Apple contributing a Metal backend for Cycles back
         | when the M1 Pro/Max came out. That was a big deal, made it
         | actually possible to do renders on a Mac in non-insane amounts
         | of time.
        
         | dagmx wrote:
         | Apple, AMD , Intel, NVIDIA, ILM are companies who have
         | contributed or continue to contribute to Blender development.
        
           | jsheard wrote:
           | What did ILM work on? I'm looking but I can't find anything
           | regarding them even using Blender at any point, nevermind
           | contributing back to it.
           | 
           | Blender has seen more success than most open source art tools
           | but it still seems to be relegated to individuals and small
           | studios, while the ILMs of the world continue to be neck deep
           | in commercial or bespoke tooling.
        
             | dagmx wrote:
             | ILM contributed some changes to the color wheel. Frederico
             | highlighted it during their SIGGRAPH sessions.
        
           | phkahler wrote:
           | Pixar contributed OpenSubdiv and may have helped with
           | integration?
        
             | shrinks99 wrote:
             | Pixar also ships Renderman support for Blender
             | https://rmanwiki-26.pixar.com/space/RFB26
        
       | lfaw wrote:
       | I'm quite interested in the academic research aspect, especially
       | since our computational geometry group uses or plans on using
       | Blender. However, I'm unclear about the details of this
       | announcement. Is it related to funding opportunities or
       | suggesting experimental features?
        
         | Duanemclemore wrote:
         | Can I ask what group you're with? I'm an architecture professor
         | who implements (and teaches undergrads to implement) geometry
         | with computational tool and I'm always trying to keep tabs on
         | who's out there doing interesting work.
        
           | reactordev wrote:
           | Man, to just be a fly on the wall. This is all so interesting
           | to me. I hope these lab projects are open. I'd love to learn
           | more about implementing computational geometry for
           | architecture but lack the ability.
        
       | DonHopkins wrote:
       | This Blender Lab page "Beyond Mouse and Keyboard" page mentions
       | the "wheel menu":
       | 
       | https://code.blender.org/2025/07/beyond-mouse-keyboard/
       | 
       | Here's an wonderful Blender extension, the Sculpt Wheel, that has
       | concentric rings, and is deeply customizable (this video was
       | posted 15 hours ago so it's fresh and current):
       | 
       | Blender 4.5 Sculpt Wheel - Glyph+
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhO-aU512NE&t=1s
        
       | hirako2000 wrote:
       | What's the label "requires funding and stakeholders". I can't see
       | any explanation of that in the announcement
        
       | Kye wrote:
       | It sounds like they're doing their own version of the
       | experimental build thing that's long been popular in the Blender
       | community. That's a good thing.
        
       | xnx wrote:
       | https://www.blender.org/lab/ might be the better link (especially
       | given the CSS ssues)
        
       | potac wrote:
       | Not sure if I understood correctly. Can we as individuals
       | contribute to any of these projects?
        
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       (page generated 2025-11-13 23:00 UTC)