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Japanese anime studio Khara moving to Blender

937 points by robin_reala 7y ago

andybak 7y ago
> 3ds Max is an excellent tool and one of the industry standards, but in some cases it causes a “lack of artists” due to its high costs. A liberal non-commercial offering from Autodesk would at least help. Houdini realized this. Unity and Unreal are both essentially free to learners and hobbyists. You need a pool of talent. And it needs continually refreshing.
- asutekku 7y ago
  A “public secret” is that autodesk pretty much gives free non-commercial student licenses to anyone, no relation to an actual education institution needed. Advertising it better would definitely help them I think:
  - viraptor 7y ago
    It's this actually a student license in their terms? If it is, then there's no difference (legally) to getting a pirated version if you're not a student. (Checked - it is for students/educators)
  - duxup 7y ago
    Lots of places offer student licenses, but any barrier is indistinguishable from the company telling you they don't want you to have it. The other frustrating thing is student licenses usually require some affiliation with a formal school as if that is the only way folks in the world are learning.
  - Jonnax 7y ago
    If you can't sell the art you make with an design application, you would be a fool to invest time in learning it using a student license. Unless you thought it'd get you a job.
    - dylan604 7y ago
      Sell your first commissioned piece of art, use that money to buy the license, (re-render if necessary for higher output), have no money from first sale, continue using that version to create more art.
      - danShumway 7y ago
        Quick look at Autodesk's website lists Maya as costing $1,500 per year. Depending on what your commissions cost, that might not be trivial -- especially since you can't build up to that. You can't do 5 small commissions over the course of two months, you need that money up-front. Plus, you're betting on your commission rate being steady. If your commission rate drops off with Blender, no big deal. If it drops off with Maya, you have to make a decision now about whether it's worth it to renew your subscription, or whether you should drop Maya and start over learning a brand new program. If you value your time at $20 an hour, you could spend 75 additional hours learning to get good at Blender instead of Maya, and you would still break even. And then every year after that for the rest of your career you'd get to save $1500. Take that extra money and put it into buying a better desktop computer, or into upgrading your GPU, or into getting a good drawing tablet, or into buying professional textures, all of which will probably have a much bigger impact on your productivity than Maya will.
  - pfranz 7y ago
    Really? For like a decade they had a PLE (similar to Houdini's Apprentice). As a tech guy in vfx it was awesome that I could fire up a new version at home so I could quickly see if they fixed some long-standing bug or evaluate a new feature. They stopped 3-4 years ago. I remember schools still paying for their educational edition (10-20 years ago) and haven't heard of a free offering--only the discounted LT version. I've only seen the 30-day demo, which I avoid using in case I need it in the future.
- nineteen999 7y ago
  I think the two subreddits (/r/Maya and /r/blender) for those products really illustrate the point further. Blender usage exploded around 2.6 with the first UI revamp, and it seems to have swelled even more as 2.8 approached.
  - realusername 7y ago
    2.8 is packing so much good stuff and new features it does not even feel the same software anymore, they made some amazing work.
  - ioquatix 7y ago
    20k vs 140k, respectively. That's impressive.
  - CodeCube 7y ago
    I keep hearing that blender's UI is no longer the domain of dark wizards ... between the cost of the paid products, and the funky UI of older versions of blender, I could never quite get into 3d modeling and design. Maybe it's time to revisit?
    - sprafa 7y ago
      Absolutely. I just tried it recently after years of shunning it for its UI and it looks and feels fantastically better. It should’ve been like this ages ago but there you go, they’ve finally changed it.
    - nineteen999 7y ago
      I don't mean to sound mean here - 3D art is like any other disicpline here. No software package is going to make good art easy to achieve. Just like any form of programming, making sure that the mesh is rigged correctly, and looks aethetically pleasing, and animates well, takes a lot of hard work. No amount of UI revamps are going to compensate for those who want to do 3D art, but refuse to do the hard yards to make things look good.
      - 7y ago
- void_nill 7y ago
  > Unity and Unreal Unity and Unreal are Game Engines, not 3D Software. Yes, It's possible to use U and U for 3D modelling, but nobody with a chopchop brain do it. If you work with U and U you create the model in Blender/What ever and import it to the engines for the programming backend.
  - baud147258 7y ago
    I think that's not the point the parent is making: his point is that the difficulty of finding people able to use it (because of the cost of the software) could be solved by either offering a free option, with the example of Unity and Unreal, which both have a free option, so you find a lot of people who have used them.
  - andybak 7y ago
    I know exactly what they are. But my point is still valid across related disciplines.
- ethelward 7y ago
  > A liberal non-commercial offering from Autodesk would at least help Granted, my 3D experience is limited to making some custom planes for Flight Simulator 10 years ago; but is that not what Gmax is/was?
- mschuster91 7y ago
  Adobe, back a decade ago, was quite liberal on that front - the stuff was easily crack-able, keygens whever one would look. As a result, whenever I ask colleagues with Photoshop skills how they acquired them, the answer always is "with 14 and a Photoshop crack". Clever move to not stand in the way of cracks for amateurs too much until they introduced an affordable (!) subscription.
  - sprafa 7y ago
    This is still reasonably true for Adobe and C4D (Maxon in particular seem to do virtually nothing to stop piracy)
swebs 7y ago
>Not only with Autodesk but also with other companies, we keep requesting improvements. However, it takes time for those improvements to make it to proprietary software. We expect faster improvements by using open source software. That's pretty cool. I wonder what kind of anime-focused features will come to the next version of Blender as a result.
- nailer 7y ago
  That's awesome. Combine this with Epic's recent investment and it looks like the modelling community may be mobilising behind Blender as an alternative to Autodesk tools.
  - dkersten 7y ago
    Ubisoft too. Blender is really gaining a lot of momentum! I'm not even in the industry, but I'm very excited by this.
- deleted 7y ago
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- samstave 7y ago
  Dude, I was an EXPERT in Autocad from 1992 on.... I was the fastest ever to complete the ACAD design challenge (3 - hour test, finished it in 33 minutes) I was the only person to have ever completed the autocad design interview test at the first architectural firm I worked at.... (8 minutes) I came is second in the US CAD Olympics (only second because I skimmed the notes and it also required me to draw a bolt and I didnt notice that req in the directions) --- I love autodesk --- but I hate their arrogance. They have lightened up a bit with 360 and such.... But I am rooting for Blender. The amount of amazing talent around the world that will blow shit up is immense. We will see some guy from freaking thailand or something just come out with something unbelievable. I was asked to design a rendering factory in asia for lucas film some years ago... (I was the designer for the Lucas Presidio Complex's Data Center) -- their comment was "US 3D designers are over-paid pre-madonnas and complain too much" --- So, I hope blender kicks some fucking ass and that we see some amazing shit come out from a completely unknown person as of yet.
deleted 7y ago
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ramigb 7y ago
I am sorry to be the guy who does that, but do you know what does Khara mean in Arabic? this brings back memories of the app that went successful in Brazil because the name meant something "naughty".
- ripdog 7y ago
  Khara is the name of the Japanese anime studio, not the tool. The tool is called Blender. I'm not sure why Khara would care what their name means in Arabic.
  - Arnavion 7y ago
    (Though they do care what it means in Greek, since that's where they took the name from. It also happens to be spelled the same as "color" in kana.)
  - needle0 7y ago
    According to them it's meant to be the Greek word for Joy. Interestingly, in their native Japanese katakana notation, カラー is indistinguishable from the English word "Color" due to the lossiness of katakana sounds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara_(studio) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara_(studio)
- flyingfences 7y ago
  > The name khara comes from the Greek word χαρά, meaning joy.
graphicsRat 7y ago
Blender would give Maya a real run for its money if it had an API.
- mattmar96 7y ago
  https://docs.blender.org/api/current/ https://docs.blender.org/api/current/
  - Asooka 7y ago
    That's just for scripting. A proper C API is needed for plugins that do more than the simplest edition operations. At one point I wanted to write a plugin that let you model distance field fractals and would make meshes from them, but there's no way I'll write something that computationally intensive in python. And if I do it in C with a python bridge, it would have meant copying mesh data to and from blender over python. That's not even going into stuff like custom intersectable primitives. Blender would really benefit from exposing its inner data structures in a way that lets people write high performance plugins.
    - UncleEntity 7y ago
      ...or you could do a C to python bridge and use the C++ API like cycles does. I worked a bit on a "proper" API but there was zero interest from anyone so found something better to do with my time.
    - snuxoll 7y ago
      > Blender would really benefit from exposing its inner data structures in a way that lets people write high performance plugins. Not that I want to dismiss the benefit of plugins, but why not just work on getting the new features merged in instead if the Python API isn't sufficient for the task? Unless you have something the maintainers really don't want to deal with long-term there's little benefit to keeping your functionality out-of-tree.
    - yuhe00 7y ago
      You do have the C API in the form of source code. You just can't distribute your changes as a plug-in.
ttflee 7y ago
Perhaps a better title should be phrased like that the studio producing Rebuild of Evangelion is moving to blender.
- 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
  I hope somebody is still actually producing it. The final episode has been "in production" for almost 7 years now.
  - looperhacks 7y ago
    Well, there have been teasers recently, and I think a 2020 release date is confirmed
    - hex12648430 7y ago
      Not only that but the first 10 minutes of the film were released during a special projection in France and Japan.
  - vangelis 7y ago
    I'm sure Anno has another project to direct in between.
    - robin_reala 7y ago
      He directed Shin Godzilla at least, and was the voice actor for the main character in Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises.
- Smithalicious 7y ago
  Should it? I don't like the trend of referring to companies/organisations/individuals as "those who made X thing". People aren't defined by one specific thing they did and also I think people would generally do well to be somewhat more aware of who actually makes the things they like anyways.
roboyoshi 7y ago
As someone who worked in a similar section (animation), this is great news. Autodesk tools (especially Maya) are way too expensive in what they deliver. I'm glad many big studios realized this in that they either build their own tools (Pixar/Dreamworks) or they adapt Open Source (Blender) and help improving it. There is still other tooling (Cinema4D, ZBrush) but those are actually working.. Maya has failed me so many times, I cannot recommend it in any way other than it is still (sadly) used very commonly among studios. And artists do not like to learn new toolings, that I also know from experience.. edit: grammar
- santaclaus 7y ago
  > Autodesk tools (especially Maya) are way too expensive in what they deliver. I'm glad many big studios realized this in that they either build their own tools (Pixar/Dreamworks) or they adapt Open Source (Blender) and help improving it. Cost isn’t the issue, it’s mainly the fact that Autodesk effectively put Maya on life support. Pixar is paying hundreds of software engineers in the Bay to develop their proprietary animation tools, which is most definitely not cheaper than a few hundred Maya seats per show.
  - Asooka 7y ago
    If Maya is on life support, then is 3ds Max the only actual product Autodesk intend to develop?
    - dagmx 7y ago
      Don't listen to the person you replied to. They're completely full of it.
    - santaclaus 7y ago
      Autodesk is doubling down on CAD and engineering (their leadership has even said so publicly) — VFX and animation is just a much smaller market. I personally think this is very short sighted.
      - 7y ago
boyadjian 7y ago
I love Blender, but knowing how to use it is a real profession. So many functionalities ... Even reading a book on Blender is not enough.
- mdtusz 7y ago
  "I love $PROFESSIONAL_SOFTWARE_TOOL, but knowing how to use it is a real profession. So many functionalities ... Even reading a book on $PROFESSIONAL_SOFTWARE_TOOL is not enough." In our current age of endless SaaS tools that bill themselves as being made for professional use, it's somewhat frustrating encountering this attitude that things are too complex or "overkill" to be worth learning. I understand that isn't the intention of your comment, but it's something I've struggled with at my work where co-workers seem to have no interest in learning new and powerful tools if it might take them more than a day to master.
  - siffland 7y ago
    I work IT and have the same issues, coworkers dont want to learn new tools. This is a huge issue, if your employer wants you to learn a new peice of software, that is your job. It annoys me here at work, i go home and watch videos, download demos and put the effort in (and it is noticed at work) and some of my coworkers dont and then get annoyed when they dont understand how the new software works. it is just frustrating, glad it is not just where i work.
    - tangue 7y ago
      I don't want to watch videos and read books when I'm going home. I have a thing called life and actually love it. If a PM wants me to learn a new tool (I'm thinking especially of useless migrations to Grunt, Gulp, Broccoli, Rollup, Webpack ...) or the f*ing js framework of the day, I had to do it during my working hours. I'm with your coworkers.
      - jlg23 7y ago
        The comment you responded to was not about "learning in billable hours" Vs "learning in your spare time" but about the willingness to learn at all.
open-source-ux 7y ago
This a good video overview of the new features and improvements to Blender 2.8 - whether you're a new user or an existing one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyxWDHy4ppY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyxWDHy4ppY
rpastuszak 7y ago
I needed 3D software to create a bunch of models for a RealityKit demo and the only usable version of Maya was $200 per month (Maya LT doesn't support plugins). I gave Blender another shot (Blender 2.8 to be specific). The new UI is just fantastic! And it's actually usable with a touchbar-only setup. I wish GIMP progressed so much—*nix environment + Adobe CC are the two main reasons I'm sticking to MacOS.
- VMG 7y ago
  I hope Blender will include more GIMP features in the future
  - brachi 7y ago
    Such as? I get annoyed as well coming back and forth for simple tasks in image manipulation.
- bparsons 7y ago
  Creative cloud runs wonderfully on a cheap gaming PC.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    I think they're saying that they want to use Linux exclusively. So running CC on Windows is just as bad in their mind as running it on Mac. (Actually, now I think about it, it's worse than running CC on Mac. Because on Mac at least they get a *nix based OS.)
    - ygra 7y ago
      On Windows you get WSL.
      - brianwawok 7y ago
        You also get all the baggage that comes with windows. Very few people that are hanging onto OsX for Photoshop are wanting to switch to Windows.
jarsin 7y ago
Autodesk is responding to all this blender news by releasing full versions of Maya and 3dsMax for $250/yr for indies. It's the full versions not the LT versions. I think too little too late. https://area.autodesk.com/maya-indie/ https://area.autodesk.com/maya-indie/
- philtar 7y ago
  If you don't turn off the auto-renewal, it actually charges you for a full year of NORMAL priced Maya.
  - jarsin 7y ago
    I think it's because they threw this whole thing together in a panic and they are not sure if they are going to keep the indie option. My guess is they will continue the indie program and this wont be a problem, but ya if they don't then that would suck to have to upgrade to full price.
- Majestic121 7y ago
  "Currently, this pilot offering is only available in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. We are currently piloting indie versions of 3ds Max and Maya so that recent graduates, freelancers, hobbyists and those starting out in the industry have a more affordable option to use our tools. We hope that this pilot performs as expected and can be expanded to other countries in the future." No thanks
- hajile 7y ago
  > Your annual gross revenue from design work must be less than USD$100,000/year $100K gross.... That basically means you are self-employed and undercharging, you are going broke, or you are a startup using some creative accounting.
  - pfranz 7y ago
    Yeah, it sucks (dealing with licensing sucks from the producer and tech side). But Houdini has had that structure for awhile: https://www.sidefx.com/buy/#houdini-indie https://www.sidefx.com/buy/#houdini-indie
mogpt 7y ago
Some friends of mine recently launched the pilot episode of their independent series, Culturesport, all done completely in Blender. https://youtu.be/UEcNEO3fVF8 https://youtu.be/UEcNEO3fVF8 They've been proselytizing Blender for years now, seems like the tide is rising.
- justinclift 7y ago
  Just watched it. That was brilliant. :) Must have taken tonnes of effort.
- yowlingcat 7y ago
  Wow, what a coincidence! I saw a live screening of this in NYC -- nice to have a permanent way to see it again when I please.
- KuhlMensch 7y ago
  That was pretty mind-blowing.
- mhh__ 7y ago
  Amazing lighting although one of the characters looks exactly former British prime minister John Major which broke the immersion
- lioeters 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing this pilot episode made with Blender. Woo, what a trip! Great use of colors and sounds. I recognized some Scheme code scrolling by in the futuristic synthesizer.
fortran77 7y ago
Blender, despite its "odd" UI, is the best open source GUI software out there. I don't use any other GUI open source software -- I pay for Microsoft Office and Adobe Applications -- but I find Blender to be useful, productive, and complete. It's solid, and has a very good community. Unlike other open source "alternatives" to commercial software (like, say Gimp or Open Office), it's actually _better_ in many ways, and not just FUD or useful to casual users.
- hesdeadjim 7y ago
  Version 2.8 addressed the odd UI issue didn’t it? I think they have a fully supported “industry standard” keybinding mode now.
  - sprafa 7y ago
    Yes it did. Much improved.
  - Applejinx 7y ago
    That and they've made some of the modality visible (different workspaces for different modalities, on a sort of menu thing). These were always the dealbreakers for me: it required a sophisticated mental model to do the smallest things, and almost everything was hidden. You just had to know it by heart. It sounds like they have specifically attacked that as a problem (they used to embrace it, as a uniqueness)
ngngngng 7y ago
What an amazing story of human cooperation. One on hand, everyone wants to make boatloads of money, on the other hand, sometimes we realize that if we all pitch in to a shared resource, we can make something better and cheaper than otherwise possible. There are so many things I wish humanity could apply this to, glad to see it working in practice!
- devoply 7y ago
  All things are made this way... Not because of money. It's just that in order to make them often you need money before the fact, and people with money get ownership and credit. The workers never make boat loads of money or get acknowledged for actually making it happen.
  - deleted 7y ago
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- MrLeap 7y ago
  Pretty sure blender started out as the product of a company that went out of business in the 90's, for whatever reason, they decided to open source the product instead of let it die. I'm not countermanding you. Blender is awesome, the volunteers who make it perpetually better are awesome.
  - Topgamer7 7y ago
    Yep, however ton bought the rights by crowd funding it. part of the agreement was to open source it.
- VikingCoder 7y ago
  The one that kills me is textbooks. I mean... WTF.
tylerl 7y ago
Probably the most compelling feature of Blender being open source with a significant community is that it's the one 3d tool that Autodesk can't simply buy out.
- sprafa 7y ago
  I like this comment too much. I pretty much steer clear from Autodesk ever since they detonated softimage.
deleted 7y ago
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sshb 7y ago
Mr. Hiroyasu Kobayashi’s t-shirt is a total swag
parsimo2010 7y ago
Funny aside: Khara means "shit" in Arabic. I don't think it affects Studio Khara's market that much but they'll have to change their name if they want to sell Evangelion in the Middle East.
- arayh 7y ago
  Ironically, it would seem that their name Khara was derived from a greek word (χαρά) meaning "joy".
  - needle0 7y ago
    Not sure if this was intended, but interestingly, the company name in the native Japanese katakana notation, カラー, is indistinguishable from the English word "Color" due to the lossiness of katakana sounds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara_(studio) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara_(studio)
crimsonalucard 7y ago
Anybody from the industry know how much better is the closed source modelling software like lightwave, 3DS, Maya, Softimage compared to Blender. I know they are all different but is blender a peer a step above or a step below?
- ralusek 7y ago
  Blender 2.8 is on par in most areas, better in many. For example, the sculpting tools available right inside of your standard modeling package rival dedicated sculpting programs like ZBrush, and you never have to leave Blender. Likewise, the Cycles render engine is built into the package, without the need to go to VRay or Octane. The texturing pipeline in the modern PBR era make most rendering environments much more of an apples-to-apples comparison. There are other features like particle systems and cloth simulators that are bonuses to have inside of the 3d package, although the best in the business like Houdini are as available to Blender users as they would be to Max/Maya.
- snek 7y ago
  having the option between free maya on an educational license and blender, i still chose blender. before 2.8 the ui in blender wasn't fantastic, but it's always been better in terms of features (at least as long as i've been doing 3d), and the community is super friendly.
- Stevvo 7y ago
  I think it's hard to say which is better, each software has quirks that will drive you insane. In 3ds Max; simple things like selection are broken. You double click to select an object and its children in the Hierarchy (contrary to single click in every other software ever made), the problem is, this is laggy; you get a loading spinner when selecting objects! In blender despite the UI refresh in 2.8, the interface is still horrible. There are hundreds duplicate menu entries, and many functions without any menu entry at all, accessible only by keyboard shortcut. The only software I've use that doesn't drive me mad is Cinema4D, but it's missing some features from other softwares.
  - Doxin 7y ago
orbital-decay 7y ago
>Not only with Autodesk but also with other companies, we keep requesting improvements. However, it takes time for those improvements to make it to proprietary software. We expect faster improvements by using open source software. This is ironic considering that along with Softimage, Maya is the history of CGI, written in software. Most of the features and paradigms we see as classic today have been developed in TAV/TDI Explore/PowerAnimator/Maya and accompanying software either by request of leading animation studios, or by the studios themselves. However, they slowed the cycle down significantly even before they've been bought by Autodesk.
- HelloNurse 7y ago
  Before it was sold to Autodesk, I mean, invaded by barbarians, the Roman Empire was the history of European civilization, written i roads and cities, then it "slowed the cycle down significantly" and began shrinking.
disease 7y ago
It looks like this company is mostly interested in the 3D aspect of Blender, but what's gotten me really excited from viewing the demos is Grease Pencil. I wonder if anyone out there is using it professionally for traditional 2D animation. I also wonder how much attention this cool tool will get in the future.
kazinator 7y ago
Trans{cription,lation} of the image https://www.blender.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/khara_02.jpg https://www.blender.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/khara_02.... > Blenderの開発基金への賛同について Regarding the approval of the Blender development fund, > 本社並びに、本社関連会社の株式会社プロジェクトスタジオＱは、オープンソースの > アニメ‐ジョン制作ツール開発をサポートするため、 Blender開発基金賛同いたします。 This company, as well as this company's affiliated (incorporated, public) company Project Studio Q, in order to support the development of the open source animation creation tool, are approving the Blender development fund. > 今後の３DCGアニメーションの発展を期待しております。 Hencerforth, we look forward to the advancement of "3DCG Animation". > Blender財団の発表 Announcement from the Blender foundation: > https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1154003846718468098 https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1154003846718468098
abledon 7y ago
wheres my anime with programming language gangs who summon mystical spirit animals based off the logos?
trilila 7y ago
Neat, another company exploiting the free work of others.
- deleted 7y ago
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krick 7y ago
Nice to know, but it's kinda unfair of how it's gleefully perceived by many as a success of OSS. I mean, I'm also inclined to feel that way, but every time I remind myself, that except for programming-related stuff there are basically just 2 OSS software packages of competitive quality: Blender and Krita. And Blender was originally created by actual for-profit company and open-sourced later. After 30 years of GNU and all that stuff there's hardly anything else. That's kind of telling.
ur-whale 7y ago
Blender is an amazing open source success story and deserves to be advertized as such. It's an amazing tool. It was always powerful, but used to be very un-approachable (vim-like), but they have made tremendous progress to fix this. The integration with external renders has also been amazing. I am a fan of luxcorerender which - these days - is almost unusable outside of blender. If you like doing 3D work, spend the time to learn Blender, it's a long term investment really worth making.
davidgerard 7y ago
Hiroyasu Kobayashi is the tiredest looking animator I've seen captured in a photo. And all the coffee cups around everyone ...
CodiePetersen 7y ago
The new blender is pretty slick though. They have really cleaned up the interface and made it more user friendly and something that industry artists on other platforms will be more familiar with. I suspect we will probably see a lot of people switching to blender.
faitswulff 7y ago
> Kobayashi: “There are currently some areas where Blender cannot take care of our needs, but we can solve it with the combination with Unity. Unity is usually enough to cover 3ds Max and Maya as well. Unity can be a bridge among environments.” Does anyone know how they're using Unity? I'd be curious to hear more about gamedev tools being used in animation.
- SpliffnCola 7y ago
  Star Wars: Rogue One used Unreal Engine for a few parts where they could get the same fidelity to Renderman output. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnigQTOig8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnigQTOig8k

937 points by robin_reala 7y ago

> 3ds Max is an excellent tool and one of the industry standards, but in some cases it causes a “lack of artists” due to its high costs. A liberal non-commercial offering from Autodesk would at least help. Houdini realized this. Unity and Unreal are both essentially free to learners and hobbyists. You need a pool of talent. And it needs continually refreshing.

asutekku 7y ago
A “public secret” is that autodesk pretty much gives free non-commercial student licenses to anyone, no relation to an actual education institution needed. Advertising it better would definitely help them I think:
- viraptor 7y ago
  It's this actually a student license in their terms? If it is, then there's no difference (legally) to getting a pirated version if you're not a student. (Checked - it is for students/educators)
- duxup 7y ago
  Lots of places offer student licenses, but any barrier is indistinguishable from the company telling you they don't want you to have it. The other frustrating thing is student licenses usually require some affiliation with a formal school as if that is the only way folks in the world are learning.
- Jonnax 7y ago
  If you can't sell the art you make with an design application, you would be a fool to invest time in learning it using a student license. Unless you thought it'd get you a job.
  - dylan604 7y ago
    Sell your first commissioned piece of art, use that money to buy the license, (re-render if necessary for higher output), have no money from first sale, continue using that version to create more art.
    - danShumway 7y ago
      Quick look at Autodesk's website lists Maya as costing $1,500 per year. Depending on what your commissions cost, that might not be trivial -- especially since you can't build up to that. You can't do 5 small commissions over the course of two months, you need that money up-front. Plus, you're betting on your commission rate being steady. If your commission rate drops off with Blender, no big deal. If it drops off with Maya, you have to make a decision now about whether it's worth it to renew your subscription, or whether you should drop Maya and start over learning a brand new program. If you value your time at $20 an hour, you could spend 75 additional hours learning to get good at Blender instead of Maya, and you would still break even. And then every year after that for the rest of your career you'd get to save $1500. Take that extra money and put it into buying a better desktop computer, or into upgrading your GPU, or into getting a good drawing tablet, or into buying professional textures, all of which will probably have a much bigger impact on your productivity than Maya will.
- pfranz 7y ago
  Really? For like a decade they had a PLE (similar to Houdini's Apprentice). As a tech guy in vfx it was awesome that I could fire up a new version at home so I could quickly see if they fixed some long-standing bug or evaluate a new feature. They stopped 3-4 years ago. I remember schools still paying for their educational edition (10-20 years ago) and haven't heard of a free offering--only the discounted LT version. I've only seen the 30-day demo, which I avoid using in case I need it in the future.
nineteen999 7y ago
I think the two subreddits (/r/Maya and /r/blender) for those products really illustrate the point further. Blender usage exploded around 2.6 with the first UI revamp, and it seems to have swelled even more as 2.8 approached.
- realusername 7y ago
  2.8 is packing so much good stuff and new features it does not even feel the same software anymore, they made some amazing work.
- ioquatix 7y ago
  20k vs 140k, respectively. That's impressive.
- CodeCube 7y ago
  I keep hearing that blender's UI is no longer the domain of dark wizards ... between the cost of the paid products, and the funky UI of older versions of blender, I could never quite get into 3d modeling and design. Maybe it's time to revisit?
  - sprafa 7y ago
    Absolutely. I just tried it recently after years of shunning it for its UI and it looks and feels fantastically better. It should’ve been like this ages ago but there you go, they’ve finally changed it.
  - nineteen999 7y ago
    I don't mean to sound mean here - 3D art is like any other disicpline here. No software package is going to make good art easy to achieve. Just like any form of programming, making sure that the mesh is rigged correctly, and looks aethetically pleasing, and animates well, takes a lot of hard work. No amount of UI revamps are going to compensate for those who want to do 3D art, but refuse to do the hard yards to make things look good.
    - 7y ago
void_nill 7y ago
> Unity and Unreal Unity and Unreal are Game Engines, not 3D Software. Yes, It's possible to use U and U for 3D modelling, but nobody with a chopchop brain do it. If you work with U and U you create the model in Blender/What ever and import it to the engines for the programming backend.
- baud147258 7y ago
  I think that's not the point the parent is making: his point is that the difficulty of finding people able to use it (because of the cost of the software) could be solved by either offering a free option, with the example of Unity and Unreal, which both have a free option, so you find a lot of people who have used them.
- andybak 7y ago
  I know exactly what they are. But my point is still valid across related disciplines.
ethelward 7y ago
> A liberal non-commercial offering from Autodesk would at least help Granted, my 3D experience is limited to making some custom planes for Flight Simulator 10 years ago; but is that not what Gmax is/was?
mschuster91 7y ago
Adobe, back a decade ago, was quite liberal on that front - the stuff was easily crack-able, keygens whever one would look. As a result, whenever I ask colleagues with Photoshop skills how they acquired them, the answer always is "with 14 and a Photoshop crack". Clever move to not stand in the way of cracks for amateurs too much until they introduced an affordable (!) subscription.
- sprafa 7y ago
  This is still reasonably true for Adobe and C4D (Maxon in particular seem to do virtually nothing to stop piracy)

swebs 7y ago

>Not only with Autodesk but also with other companies, we keep requesting improvements. However, it takes time for those improvements to make it to proprietary software. We expect faster improvements by using open source software. That's pretty cool. I wonder what kind of anime-focused features will come to the next version of Blender as a result.

nailer 7y ago
That's awesome. Combine this with Epic's recent investment and it looks like the modelling community may be mobilising behind Blender as an alternative to Autodesk tools.
- dkersten 7y ago
  Ubisoft too. Blender is really gaining a lot of momentum! I'm not even in the industry, but I'm very excited by this.
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samstave 7y ago
Dude, I was an EXPERT in Autocad from 1992 on.... I was the fastest ever to complete the ACAD design challenge (3 - hour test, finished it in 33 minutes) I was the only person to have ever completed the autocad design interview test at the first architectural firm I worked at.... (8 minutes) I came is second in the US CAD Olympics (only second because I skimmed the notes and it also required me to draw a bolt and I didnt notice that req in the directions) --- I love autodesk --- but I hate their arrogance. They have lightened up a bit with 360 and such.... But I am rooting for Blender. The amount of amazing talent around the world that will blow shit up is immense. We will see some guy from freaking thailand or something just come out with something unbelievable. I was asked to design a rendering factory in asia for lucas film some years ago... (I was the designer for the Lucas Presidio Complex's Data Center) -- their comment was "US 3D designers are over-paid pre-madonnas and complain too much" --- So, I hope blender kicks some fucking ass and that we see some amazing shit come out from a completely unknown person as of yet.

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ramigb 7y ago

I am sorry to be the guy who does that, but do you know what does Khara mean in Arabic? this brings back memories of the app that went successful in Brazil because the name meant something "naughty".

ripdog 7y ago
Khara is the name of the Japanese anime studio, not the tool. The tool is called Blender. I'm not sure why Khara would care what their name means in Arabic.
- Arnavion 7y ago
  (Though they do care what it means in Greek, since that's where they took the name from. It also happens to be spelled the same as "color" in kana.)
- needle0 7y ago
  According to them it's meant to be the Greek word for Joy. Interestingly, in their native Japanese katakana notation, カラー is indistinguishable from the English word "Color" due to the lossiness of katakana sounds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara_(studio) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara_(studio)
flyingfences 7y ago
> The name khara comes from the Greek word χαρά, meaning joy.

graphicsRat 7y ago

Blender would give Maya a real run for its money if it had an API.

mattmar96 7y ago
https://docs.blender.org/api/current/ https://docs.blender.org/api/current/
- Asooka 7y ago
  That's just for scripting. A proper C API is needed for plugins that do more than the simplest edition operations. At one point I wanted to write a plugin that let you model distance field fractals and would make meshes from them, but there's no way I'll write something that computationally intensive in python. And if I do it in C with a python bridge, it would have meant copying mesh data to and from blender over python. That's not even going into stuff like custom intersectable primitives. Blender would really benefit from exposing its inner data structures in a way that lets people write high performance plugins.
  - UncleEntity 7y ago
    ...or you could do a C to python bridge and use the C++ API like cycles does. I worked a bit on a "proper" API but there was zero interest from anyone so found something better to do with my time.
  - snuxoll 7y ago
    > Blender would really benefit from exposing its inner data structures in a way that lets people write high performance plugins. Not that I want to dismiss the benefit of plugins, but why not just work on getting the new features merged in instead if the Python API isn't sufficient for the task? Unless you have something the maintainers really don't want to deal with long-term there's little benefit to keeping your functionality out-of-tree.
  - yuhe00 7y ago
    You do have the C API in the form of source code. You just can't distribute your changes as a plug-in.

ttflee 7y ago

Perhaps a better title should be phrased like that the studio producing Rebuild of Evangelion is moving to blender.

0xcde4c3db 7y ago
I hope somebody is still actually producing it. The final episode has been "in production" for almost 7 years now.
- looperhacks 7y ago
  Well, there have been teasers recently, and I think a 2020 release date is confirmed
  - hex12648430 7y ago
    Not only that but the first 10 minutes of the film were released during a special projection in France and Japan.
- vangelis 7y ago
  I'm sure Anno has another project to direct in between.
  - robin_reala 7y ago
    He directed Shin Godzilla at least, and was the voice actor for the main character in Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises.
Smithalicious 7y ago
Should it? I don't like the trend of referring to companies/organisations/individuals as "those who made X thing". People aren't defined by one specific thing they did and also I think people would generally do well to be somewhat more aware of who actually makes the things they like anyways.

roboyoshi 7y ago

As someone who worked in a similar section (animation), this is great news. Autodesk tools (especially Maya) are way too expensive in what they deliver. I'm glad many big studios realized this in that they either build their own tools (Pixar/Dreamworks) or they adapt Open Source (Blender) and help improving it. There is still other tooling (Cinema4D, ZBrush) but those are actually working.. Maya has failed me so many times, I cannot recommend it in any way other than it is still (sadly) used very commonly among studios. And artists do not like to learn new toolings, that I also know from experience.. edit: grammar

santaclaus 7y ago
> Autodesk tools (especially Maya) are way too expensive in what they deliver. I'm glad many big studios realized this in that they either build their own tools (Pixar/Dreamworks) or they adapt Open Source (Blender) and help improving it. Cost isn’t the issue, it’s mainly the fact that Autodesk effectively put Maya on life support. Pixar is paying hundreds of software engineers in the Bay to develop their proprietary animation tools, which is most definitely not cheaper than a few hundred Maya seats per show.
- Asooka 7y ago
  If Maya is on life support, then is 3ds Max the only actual product Autodesk intend to develop?
  - dagmx 7y ago
    Don't listen to the person you replied to. They're completely full of it.
  - santaclaus 7y ago
    Autodesk is doubling down on CAD and engineering (their leadership has even said so publicly) — VFX and animation is just a much smaller market. I personally think this is very short sighted.
    - 7y ago

boyadjian 7y ago

I love Blender, but knowing how to use it is a real profession. So many functionalities ... Even reading a book on Blender is not enough.

mdtusz 7y ago
"I love $PROFESSIONAL_SOFTWARE_TOOL, but knowing how to use it is a real profession. So many functionalities ... Even reading a book on $PROFESSIONAL_SOFTWARE_TOOL is not enough." In our current age of endless SaaS tools that bill themselves as being made for professional use, it's somewhat frustrating encountering this attitude that things are too complex or "overkill" to be worth learning. I understand that isn't the intention of your comment, but it's something I've struggled with at my work where co-workers seem to have no interest in learning new and powerful tools if it might take them more than a day to master.
- siffland 7y ago
  I work IT and have the same issues, coworkers dont want to learn new tools. This is a huge issue, if your employer wants you to learn a new peice of software, that is your job. It annoys me here at work, i go home and watch videos, download demos and put the effort in (and it is noticed at work) and some of my coworkers dont and then get annoyed when they dont understand how the new software works. it is just frustrating, glad it is not just where i work.
  - tangue 7y ago
    I don't want to watch videos and read books when I'm going home. I have a thing called life and actually love it. If a PM wants me to learn a new tool (I'm thinking especially of useless migrations to Grunt, Gulp, Broccoli, Rollup, Webpack ...) or the f*ing js framework of the day, I had to do it during my working hours. I'm with your coworkers.
    - jlg23 7y ago
      The comment you responded to was not about "learning in billable hours" Vs "learning in your spare time" but about the willingness to learn at all.

open-source-ux 7y ago

This a good video overview of the new features and improvements to Blender 2.8 - whether you're a new user or an existing one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyxWDHy4ppY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyxWDHy4ppY

rpastuszak 7y ago

I needed 3D software to create a bunch of models for a RealityKit demo and the only usable version of Maya was $200 per month (Maya LT doesn't support plugins). I gave Blender another shot (Blender 2.8 to be specific). The new UI is just fantastic! And it's actually usable with a touchbar-only setup. I wish GIMP progressed so much—*nix environment + Adobe CC are the two main reasons I'm sticking to MacOS.

VMG 7y ago
I hope Blender will include more GIMP features in the future
- brachi 7y ago
  Such as? I get annoyed as well coming back and forth for simple tasks in image manipulation.
bparsons 7y ago
Creative cloud runs wonderfully on a cheap gaming PC.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  I think they're saying that they want to use Linux exclusively. So running CC on Windows is just as bad in their mind as running it on Mac. (Actually, now I think about it, it's worse than running CC on Mac. Because on Mac at least they get a *nix based OS.)
  - ygra 7y ago
    On Windows you get WSL.
    - brianwawok 7y ago
      You also get all the baggage that comes with windows. Very few people that are hanging onto OsX for Photoshop are wanting to switch to Windows.

jarsin 7y ago

Autodesk is responding to all this blender news by releasing full versions of Maya and 3dsMax for $250/yr for indies. It's the full versions not the LT versions. I think too little too late. https://area.autodesk.com/maya-indie/ https://area.autodesk.com/maya-indie/

philtar 7y ago
If you don't turn off the auto-renewal, it actually charges you for a full year of NORMAL priced Maya.
- jarsin 7y ago
  I think it's because they threw this whole thing together in a panic and they are not sure if they are going to keep the indie option. My guess is they will continue the indie program and this wont be a problem, but ya if they don't then that would suck to have to upgrade to full price.
Majestic121 7y ago
"Currently, this pilot offering is only available in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. We are currently piloting indie versions of 3ds Max and Maya so that recent graduates, freelancers, hobbyists and those starting out in the industry have a more affordable option to use our tools. We hope that this pilot performs as expected and can be expanded to other countries in the future." No thanks
hajile 7y ago
> Your annual gross revenue from design work must be less than USD$100,000/year $100K gross.... That basically means you are self-employed and undercharging, you are going broke, or you are a startup using some creative accounting.
- pfranz 7y ago
  Yeah, it sucks (dealing with licensing sucks from the producer and tech side). But Houdini has had that structure for awhile: https://www.sidefx.com/buy/#houdini-indie https://www.sidefx.com/buy/#houdini-indie

mogpt 7y ago

Some friends of mine recently launched the pilot episode of their independent series, Culturesport, all done completely in Blender. https://youtu.be/UEcNEO3fVF8 https://youtu.be/UEcNEO3fVF8 They've been proselytizing Blender for years now, seems like the tide is rising.

justinclift 7y ago
Just watched it. That was brilliant. :) Must have taken tonnes of effort.
yowlingcat 7y ago
Wow, what a coincidence! I saw a live screening of this in NYC -- nice to have a permanent way to see it again when I please.
KuhlMensch 7y ago
That was pretty mind-blowing.
mhh__ 7y ago
Amazing lighting although one of the characters looks exactly former British prime minister John Major which broke the immersion
lioeters 7y ago
Thanks for sharing this pilot episode made with Blender. Woo, what a trip! Great use of colors and sounds. I recognized some Scheme code scrolling by in the futuristic synthesizer.

fortran77 7y ago

Blender, despite its "odd" UI, is the best open source GUI software out there. I don't use any other GUI open source software -- I pay for Microsoft Office and Adobe Applications -- but I find Blender to be useful, productive, and complete. It's solid, and has a very good community. Unlike other open source "alternatives" to commercial software (like, say Gimp or Open Office), it's actually _better_ in many ways, and not just FUD or useful to casual users.

hesdeadjim 7y ago
Version 2.8 addressed the odd UI issue didn’t it? I think they have a fully supported “industry standard” keybinding mode now.
- sprafa 7y ago
  Yes it did. Much improved.
- Applejinx 7y ago
  That and they've made some of the modality visible (different workspaces for different modalities, on a sort of menu thing). These were always the dealbreakers for me: it required a sophisticated mental model to do the smallest things, and almost everything was hidden. You just had to know it by heart. It sounds like they have specifically attacked that as a problem (they used to embrace it, as a uniqueness)

ngngngng 7y ago

What an amazing story of human cooperation. One on hand, everyone wants to make boatloads of money, on the other hand, sometimes we realize that if we all pitch in to a shared resource, we can make something better and cheaper than otherwise possible. There are so many things I wish humanity could apply this to, glad to see it working in practice!

devoply 7y ago
All things are made this way... Not because of money. It's just that in order to make them often you need money before the fact, and people with money get ownership and credit. The workers never make boat loads of money or get acknowledged for actually making it happen.
- deleted 7y ago
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MrLeap 7y ago
Pretty sure blender started out as the product of a company that went out of business in the 90's, for whatever reason, they decided to open source the product instead of let it die. I'm not countermanding you. Blender is awesome, the volunteers who make it perpetually better are awesome.
- Topgamer7 7y ago
  Yep, however ton bought the rights by crowd funding it. part of the agreement was to open source it.
VikingCoder 7y ago
The one that kills me is textbooks. I mean... WTF.

tylerl 7y ago

Probably the most compelling feature of Blender being open source with a significant community is that it's the one 3d tool that Autodesk can't simply buy out.

sprafa 7y ago
I like this comment too much. I pretty much steer clear from Autodesk ever since they detonated softimage.

deleted 7y ago

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sshb 7y ago

Mr. Hiroyasu Kobayashi’s t-shirt is a total swag

parsimo2010 7y ago

Funny aside: Khara means "shit" in Arabic. I don't think it affects Studio Khara's market that much but they'll have to change their name if they want to sell Evangelion in the Middle East.

arayh 7y ago
Ironically, it would seem that their name Khara was derived from a greek word (χαρά) meaning "joy".
- needle0 7y ago
  Not sure if this was intended, but interestingly, the company name in the native Japanese katakana notation, カラー, is indistinguishable from the English word "Color" due to the lossiness of katakana sounds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara_(studio) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara_(studio)

crimsonalucard 7y ago

Anybody from the industry know how much better is the closed source modelling software like lightwave, 3DS, Maya, Softimage compared to Blender. I know they are all different but is blender a peer a step above or a step below?

ralusek 7y ago
Blender 2.8 is on par in most areas, better in many. For example, the sculpting tools available right inside of your standard modeling package rival dedicated sculpting programs like ZBrush, and you never have to leave Blender. Likewise, the Cycles render engine is built into the package, without the need to go to VRay or Octane. The texturing pipeline in the modern PBR era make most rendering environments much more of an apples-to-apples comparison. There are other features like particle systems and cloth simulators that are bonuses to have inside of the 3d package, although the best in the business like Houdini are as available to Blender users as they would be to Max/Maya.
snek 7y ago
having the option between free maya on an educational license and blender, i still chose blender. before 2.8 the ui in blender wasn't fantastic, but it's always been better in terms of features (at least as long as i've been doing 3d), and the community is super friendly.
Stevvo 7y ago
I think it's hard to say which is better, each software has quirks that will drive you insane. In 3ds Max; simple things like selection are broken. You double click to select an object and its children in the Hierarchy (contrary to single click in every other software ever made), the problem is, this is laggy; you get a loading spinner when selecting objects! In blender despite the UI refresh in 2.8, the interface is still horrible. There are hundreds duplicate menu entries, and many functions without any menu entry at all, accessible only by keyboard shortcut. The only software I've use that doesn't drive me mad is Cinema4D, but it's missing some features from other softwares.
- Doxin 7y ago

orbital-decay 7y ago

>Not only with Autodesk but also with other companies, we keep requesting improvements. However, it takes time for those improvements to make it to proprietary software. We expect faster improvements by using open source software. This is ironic considering that along with Softimage, Maya is the history of CGI, written in software. Most of the features and paradigms we see as classic today have been developed in TAV/TDI Explore/PowerAnimator/Maya and accompanying software either by request of leading animation studios, or by the studios themselves. However, they slowed the cycle down significantly even before they've been bought by Autodesk.

HelloNurse 7y ago
Before it was sold to Autodesk, I mean, invaded by barbarians, the Roman Empire was the history of European civilization, written i roads and cities, then it "slowed the cycle down significantly" and began shrinking.

disease 7y ago

It looks like this company is mostly interested in the 3D aspect of Blender, but what's gotten me really excited from viewing the demos is Grease Pencil. I wonder if anyone out there is using it professionally for traditional 2D animation. I also wonder how much attention this cool tool will get in the future.

kazinator 7y ago

Trans{cription,lation} of the image https://www.blender.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/khara_02.jpg https://www.blender.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/khara_02.... > Blenderの開発基金への賛同について Regarding the approval of the Blender development fund, > 本社並びに、本社関連会社の株式会社プロジェクトスタジオＱは、オープンソースの > アニメ‐ジョン制作ツール開発をサポートするため、 Blender開発基金賛同いたします。 This company, as well as this company's affiliated (incorporated, public) company Project Studio Q, in order to support the development of the open source animation creation tool, are approving the Blender development fund. > 今後の３DCGアニメーションの発展を期待しております。 Hencerforth, we look forward to the advancement of "3DCG Animation". > Blender財団の発表 Announcement from the Blender foundation: > https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1154003846718468098 https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1154003846718468098

abledon 7y ago

wheres my anime with programming language gangs who summon mystical spirit animals based off the logos?

trilila 7y ago

Neat, another company exploiting the free work of others.

deleted 7y ago
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krick 7y ago

Nice to know, but it's kinda unfair of how it's gleefully perceived by many as a success of OSS. I mean, I'm also inclined to feel that way, but every time I remind myself, that except for programming-related stuff there are basically just 2 OSS software packages of competitive quality: Blender and Krita. And Blender was originally created by actual for-profit company and open-sourced later. After 30 years of GNU and all that stuff there's hardly anything else. That's kind of telling.

ur-whale 7y ago

Blender is an amazing open source success story and deserves to be advertized as such. It's an amazing tool. It was always powerful, but used to be very un-approachable (vim-like), but they have made tremendous progress to fix this. The integration with external renders has also been amazing. I am a fan of luxcorerender which - these days - is almost unusable outside of blender. If you like doing 3D work, spend the time to learn Blender, it's a long term investment really worth making.

davidgerard 7y ago

Hiroyasu Kobayashi is the tiredest looking animator I've seen captured in a photo. And all the coffee cups around everyone ...

CodiePetersen 7y ago

The new blender is pretty slick though. They have really cleaned up the interface and made it more user friendly and something that industry artists on other platforms will be more familiar with. I suspect we will probably see a lot of people switching to blender.

faitswulff 7y ago

> Kobayashi: “There are currently some areas where Blender cannot take care of our needs, but we can solve it with the combination with Unity. Unity is usually enough to cover 3ds Max and Maya as well. Unity can be a bridge among environments.” Does anyone know how they're using Unity? I'd be curious to hear more about gamedev tools being used in animation.

SpliffnCola 7y ago
Star Wars: Rogue One used Unreal Engine for a few parts where they could get the same fidelity to Renderman output. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnigQTOig8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnigQTOig8k