20 ms·

Blender 3.0

848 points by marcodiego 5y ago

nn3 5y ago
"Removed features and compatibility" You don't read that very often in changelogs.
dsign 5y ago
Is it just me or they added antialising/Lanczos resampling to the render window?
jokoon 5y ago
Please check freemocap, I guess it exports blender files but I'm not sure. I really hope it would enable people to make better animation.
daraosn 5y ago
This is the most inspiring and well done open source project I've used. An example for other open source areas to follow, such as operative systems, virtualization software, 2d graphic manipulation software, etc.
Shadonototra 5y ago
My wish list for the future is a better API story And the ability to write plugins in C, or rather offer a native api so i can use my language of choice, i despise python..
JBits 5y ago
An interesting area I know of where Blender is used professionally is rough animation: such as the French film 'I Lost My Body'; the Irish film 'Wolfwalkers'; and multiple anime, including the recent 'Ranking of Kings'. An animation company in Wales, https://www.clothcatanimation.com/cloth-cat-awarded-epic-megagrant/ https://www.clothcatanimation.com/cloth-cat-awarded-epic-meg..., is using Blender, but I'm not sure what for.
zuj 5y ago
love to see blender popping up here on hacker news and you folks liking it. Blender is awesome and has grown into a really polished piece of software. It would make a really good research/documentary to go behind the history and the growth of blender. I bet we can learn ton of lessons in software engineering, open source software management, creative tool creation and herding open source communities.
bschwindHN 5y ago
I don't see much mention in the changelogs for texture baking. I used blender for a website which has 3D models with baked textures, and the workflow for creating those textures was very convoluted. It's a great feature for applications where the lighting doesn't change, it just needs a better UI and workflow on top of it.
adamddev1 5y ago
I'm wanting to get into making 2d-ish explainer videos similar to the 3Blue1Brown math videos but much simpler for language/grammar explanations. Is Blender a good tool for that job or would it be better to use a simpler tool like Apple Motion?
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knolan 5y ago
I adore Blender. I use it for fun, to make animation for lectures (fluid mechanics) and even as a research tool. I’ve helped my colleagues and my students use it for a range of different applications from communication of science to the implementation of simple physics simulations to explore chaos. It’s just amazing.
nukst 5y ago
I've been using Blender for as long as I've been using computers. I learned 3D modelling including level design, learned programming by making small games with BGE, used it to make a client's business card stand out with 3D effects, created 2D and 3D YouTube intros for my brother and a LOT more. I even managed to make some real money in difficult times to support my family, thanks to Blender. Blender is probably the most important part of my life software-wise, and it bugs me that I never managed to use it (even older versions) at its fullest. Congratulations to all the people behind this behemoth of a software who carried and carries many of the best artists out there. If I ever get anywhere in life with game development / 3d art I'll wholehartedly credit Blender.
iainctduncan 5y ago
I've been using Blender for years as a video editor. As a performer, I need to be able to make decent promo videos, but I rarely do this more than once in a year. Blender gives me everything I need to make really nicely edited videos free, with far better control of the timing of audio and video crossfades than other free options (an important part for a promo video).
hackshack 5y ago
Blender's 2.9 release was what did it for me. That team is on fire. I'll hype Krita's 5.0 release (still in beta) - it has the same "turnaround" feel. Thanks, everyone, for plugging the donut tutorial link! Checked it out today. 3D modeling has lots of subtle, jarring nuances and the author addresses them head-on. Recommended. It's exciting to see libre software becoming so refined. Several projects are serious about managing the triangle of UI, stability, and features. These tools aren't "in the artists' way" anymore.
raxxorrax 5y ago
What is wrong with Blender lately? Everyone in a workaholic phase? Much appreciated of course!
- Kelteseth 5y ago
  They are now funded by all major tech companies. So much for not being "industry standard" (by so many Maya or 3ds Max artists I talked to).
  - archerx 5y ago
    I still would rather us 3DS max over blender, it still feels like using GIMP after using Photoshop productively for years.
    - simianpirate 5y ago
      Then use that software if you prefer the UX. As an anecdote, I installed GIMP for my son 6 years ago, who is now going to college to be a graphics designer. He did all of his digital artwork in GIMP and Krita, now Blender as well, for the whole length of that time. He now has to use Photoshop for his classes. There are some tools in it he is impressed with but overall doesn’t care for Photoshop at all.
      - archerx 5y ago
        I want to use blender and I'm sure they would get a lot more acceptance if they fix the one thing people have been complaining about for YEARS! That's great for your son but no credible agency will use GIMP. Krita is awesome and I love it and comes the closest to an open source alternative to PS, it is much better than GIMP in everyway and is actually usable. Unfortunately the industry doesn't care if he doesn't care about photoshop, it cares about it and if he wants to be a part of it he should start learning to care unless his work is beyond amazing and he will only be freelancing then ignore everything I said. Photoshop is not impressive but it gets the job done quickly and smoothly with minimal friction and that's why it is number one.
rytcio 5y ago
Blender is the best open source project around. Major kudos to everyone who works on it for making such an excellent tool
- njharman 5y ago
  Yeah, it's been amazing to watch. I was one of the original funders back in 2002 to open source it. My career took another path and I never did more than mess around with Blender. But that, I think $100 (not small amount for me at the time), is the best, most proud/happy donation I've ever made.
- deleted 5y ago
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Tomte 5y ago
The first three parts of the Donut tutorial, updated for Blender 3, are here, as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw
- dgritsko 5y ago
  I've only done a little bit with Blender as a hobbyist, but Andrew's tutorials are what really made it fun for me and helped things start to "click". If you've never used Blender but wanted to check it out, these are the tutorials you should use.
  - Tomte 5y ago
    They never clicked for me, unfortunately, although I should give them another try. I highly recommend https://academy.cgboost.com/p/resources https://academy.cgboost.com/p/resources Also free of charge, and a very good presenter (if you can excuse the German accent). But most people like the Donut tutorial, that's true.
    - wingmanjd 5y ago
      A friend of mine just finished his Introduction to Blender series on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjcpPOioHUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjcpPOioHUk
    - a1371 5y ago
      Have you tried it after 2.8? The interface is a lot more intuitive now.
- nikodunk 5y ago
  Wow this guy is FUNNY. Thanks for sharing!
- dymk 5y ago
  Blender Guru was my inspiration into Blender as well, but since I've seen the at-worst homophobic and at-best tone deaf comments he's made in tutorials and on Twitter, I can no longer recommend him. Go watch his rant about how he misses using the word "fag" like he used to in highschool. I'm not saying cancel the guy, but I am saying consider seeking out an alternative source of tutorials. https://twunroll.com/article/1347630835235573761 https://twunroll.com/article/1347630835235573761
dljsjr 5y ago
This is the release that rolls out their new rendering engine that they've been working on for a while: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Blender-3.0 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Blender-...
- fulafel 5y ago
  Yep, specifically the offline rendering engine (they have a real time one too)
  - wlesieutre 5y ago
    For anyone not familiar, "Cycles X" is the new offline (not realtime) renderer, replacing Cycles: https://code.blender.org/2021/04/cycles-x/ https://code.blender.org/2021/04/cycles-x/ The realtime renderer is EEVEE, slated for big upgrades in 3.x: https://code.blender.org/2021/06/eevees-future/ https://code.blender.org/2021/06/eevees-future/
    - greenknight 5y ago
      Cycles X, is essentially a rewrite of Cycles. Cycles-X no longer exists as it has been merged back into cycles. Crazy performance gains!
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      Also Cycles is raytraced (or is it pathtraced?) while Eevee is rasterized.
archerx 5y ago
Have they improved the UI/UX since 2.8x? They said it would be much better and it was still driving me up a wall compared to 3DS Max. It still felt like going from Photoshop to GIMP. That's the only thing holding me back from really adopting blender.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  Not an user, but judging from comments, you're part of a small set that still repeats comments like this after 2.8.
  - archerx 5y ago
    What has changed since 2.8 in the UI? When I used 2.8 there were still a lot of pain points with the interface that kept me doing the heavy lifting in 3DS max. It was a cloth sim project and I was using blender to export the files into GLTF and even that was a bit frustrating.
    - DonHopkins 5y ago
      Again, what has changed since 1998 in 3D Studio Max's UI?
    - bogwog 5y ago
      It sounds like you need to spend some more time reading the manuals and less time complaining online.
- valine 5y ago
  I disagree. The 2.8+ UI is well designed and way snappier than 3DS Max.
  - archerx 5y ago
    It is subjective but 3D max interface is much more intuitive. Like when navigating the 3D view ports. UE4 also has a nice interface that is similar to blender but feels better.
Mizza 5y ago
Are there release notes? Blender usually does a really nice release notes page showing off the new features.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0 https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0
  - Mizza 5y ago
    Cheers, thanks. Really looking forward to using the Asset Browser and Geometry Nodes.
- Tomte 5y ago
  This is what happens with long-awaited Linux distribution or web browser releases, as well: final binaries are uploaded, so they can propagate to the mirrors, and someone posts it “prematurely”. (I don't mind, I like this kind of heads-up.) Release notes will be there when the release is officially announced and linked from Blender's home page.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  The link is literally to a release notes page with two demo reels and a description of the new features
TheDesolate0 5y ago
sweet sweet 3d modeling!
ldehaan 5y ago
Yay, this is gonna be sweeeet. I have a render going now on 2.9 and it's so cool. I've been using blender for years and years now, just for fun and in the winters I use it to keep my room warm and my renders 4k baby.
- bibelo 5y ago
  Show me what you got
999900000999 5y ago
Thank you Blender! I'd like them to bring back some more of the game engine components. I use Unity, but seeing what Blender can do, via their demo movies, I'd love to see a Blender Game Engine!
- haxiomic 5y ago
  Definitely, I’m very interested in blender as a better Unity There’s armory3d which is impressive but it’s still early days
- TT-392 5y ago
  There is a project called UPBGE, it is a fork of the old game engine and being actively maintained. https://upbge.org/ https://upbge.org/
  - 999900000999 5y ago
    Thank you, however as far as I know it's only one dev. Blender would probably need to pull this back into the core product for it to be useful. A powerful mature engine with Python, one can dream.
- prox 5y ago
  There is a lot of effort to get Godot in that spot. 4.0 is going to be really good, especially for 3d.
  - 999900000999 5y ago
    How does Godot handle terrain ? Unity is mainly useful since if you're willing to drop a few thousand dollars on assets, plus about 200 hours of your own personal time, you can have a shipable game in a month or so. Godot looks really neat, but at least with my skill level I need a starter kit to get going on most projects. Then again, I know Godot's gotten a ton of funding lately so we'll see what happens.
    - moron4hire 5y ago
esistgut 5y ago
AMD HIP/ROCm support is there but AMD still hasn't released drivers supporting it.
- gc9 5y ago
  AMD Blog: "Our AMD Radeon™ Software Adrenalin 21.12.1 or Radeon PRO Software for Enterprise 21.Q4 (or newer) drivers are required to use Cycles in Blender 3.0. Support is currently validated on AMD Radeon PRO W6800 and AMD Radeon RX 6000 series desktop GPUs and enabled on other AMD RDNA™ and AMD RDNA 2 architecture graphics cards." https://community.amd.com/t5/radeon-pro-graphics/blender-3-0-and-amd-creating-a-new-performance-path/ba-p/499333 https://community.amd.com/t5/radeon-pro-graphics/blender-3-0...
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  Funny -- going on a decade ago, Blender had OpenCL support, but the AMD drivers were so bad that OpenCL support was only usable on NVidia cards. Still not as good as CUDA, though. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
- slavik81 5y ago
  There are beta drivers available for testing. https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-21-40-beta-blender-3-0 https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-2...
open-source-ux 5y ago
I always post this link when Blender is discussed because it's so impressive. It shows what a single person can achieve in Blender. The visual effects and compositing have been created by Blender expert Ian Hubert. The video shows a (grimy) futuristic city scene. Green screen footage and the final shots created are shown side-by-side: VFX Breakdown - Dynamo Dream Teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFJ_THGj72U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFJ_THGj72U The full short Dynamo Dream was posted a few months ago by Hubert on his YouTube channel: Episode 1 : Salad Mug - DYNAMO DREAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsGZ_2RuJ2A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsGZ_2RuJ2A
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  His series of one-minute "Lazy" tutorials are fantastic! Make Nightmare Men in Blender - Lazy Tutorials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgfJIZEDY44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgfJIZEDY44 Edit: Yes, I subscribe to his Paetron series to -- such awesome stuff!
  - anotherjesse 5y ago
    He has a great Patreon series too https://www.patreon.com/IanHubert https://www.patreon.com/IanHubert I just dabble with blender but really enjoy his videos showing how he goes about various vfx with blender
TT-392 5y ago
Oh shit oh shit, so I don't have to use prerelease versions to use my new nodes setups anymore soon.
serverholic 5y ago
Honestly I'm a bit disappointed with their geometry nodes project. I went into it expecting a generic visual scripting language aimed at generate geometry. That IS what it is to an extent, but the design decisions are strange and limiting to say the least. The main issue is that data is only stored in the geometry itself, per-vertex. So if you just want a single variable you're out of luck. Math operations operate on vertices so you can't just multiply two numbers, you have to store a number in each vertex, then multiply all vertices by the same value. It's like every node is for-loop that loops over vertices. This limited design is useful for certain things like scattering rocks over terrain but not much else.
- hrnnnnnn 5y ago
  Check out the Nodevember geometry nodes entries this year. You can accomplish quite a lot with it as it is. Also, the implementation in 3.0 is very different from the one in 2.93. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23nodevember2021%23geometrynodes https://twitter.com/search?q=%23nodevember2021%23geometrynod...
- deleted 5y ago
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- pmichaud 5y ago
  I think what you wrote here is just straightforwardly not correct, eg. you can absolutely set a variable and multiply arbitrary numbers in addition to working with vertex data. There are also a lot of other ways to store and interact with data, eg. textures (either procedural or painted). Maybe you should have another look.
ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago
Why are there no torrents offered? The server is clearly under load. If anyone already has the files and cares to share the magnet, I'll gladly help with seeding.
- redrobein 5y ago
  Steam is another way to get it if you have it installed.
  - razster 5y ago
    Thank you, I completely forgot it was on Steam.
  - alvarlagerlof 5y ago
    Such a weird way to me.
vadansky 5y ago
I'm noticing a lot of interesting extensions coming out for Blender, especially in the Retogo and skinning area which was always a headache. I guess being able to code in Python instead of MaxScript or MEL (althought it looks like Maya does support python now?) gives you a healthier ecosystem.
- CanceledAccount 5y ago
  High performance Maya and Max plug-ins are written with C++ APIs. Blender doesn’t have a binary plugin API because of GPL.
  - franga2000 5y ago
    Surely licensing can't be the reason. Firstly, there is no distribution happening here - a plugin written against the Blender API and shipped separately is no different from NVIDIA's proprietary driver for Linux. The usual GPL issue around plugins is whether program+plugin are a "mere aggregate" or a "derivative work". This doesn't really matter if they aren't distributed together, but even if it did, the question is no easier to answer in the case of interpreted vs compiled code. They are still running in the same process, exchanging internal data structures through direct procedure calls. It just so happens that one is running through a translation layer. If that translation layer protects you, then you could just as easily enjoy that protection by running binary plugins through a no-op emulator. And regardless of all of this, there's no reason Blender Python plugins can't use Python native extensions for performance. FLIP Fluids, for example, has a C++ fluid sim engine and uses Python just for the interface to Blender.
- Marcan 5y ago
  Maya has been supporting Python for a long long time, it even supports Python 3 now. There is no more need to use MELscript to develop tools for it anymore, even though some commands are run using the MELscript wrapper in Python, but even then it's very rare. Pretty much all the tools I've developed in the past couple of years for AAA games have been almost exclusively made with Python. One of them we even developed tools to be DCC agnostic, which means that they could run both in Maya and 3ds Max flawlessly.
beckman466 5y ago
How different is Blender to 3DS Max and Maya? Anyone have experience with both?
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  I didn't use 3DS MAX for 15 years so I can't tell you how it is now. Maya is the videogame industry standard for modeling, just like ZBrush is the industry standard for sculpting. It is almost 100% non destructive-editing and integrate with studios asset pipelines perfectly in various ways. It's paid and closed source. Blender is a jack of all trades, master of none. Aside from a game engine (removed since 2.8) it has basically all that you need to do modelling, sculpting, physics,3D painting, 2D and 3D animation, compositing and even some quirky video editor with audio. And it's free and open source and it has the largest community, by far, since version 2.8.
  - beckman466 5y ago
    awesome, thank you
- dagmx 5y ago
  Depends at what level you're talking about. In the abstract? No, most 3D concepts are pretty much standard across all of them. In the nitty gritty, they're all substantially different and have very different views of scenes, data representations and workflows. It's easy enough to jump between all three, at least for me, but they each have their respective strengths and weaknesses, that lend themselves better to different kinds of work.
runevault 5y ago
I haven't had much time for Blender lately and need to correct that. I also need to look more closely at the changes. I know something about an asset manager and a bunch of new nodes in the procedural geometry work, but beyond that I'm behind. And sadly Steam hasn't gotten the new binaries yet and I am lazy so like letting steam manage this one for me.
hrnnnnnn 5y ago
The release notes and features highlight reel page is now live! https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-0/ https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-0/
- dang 5y ago
  Ok, we'll change the URL to that from https://download.blender.org/release/Blender3.0/ https://download.blender.org/release/Blender3.0/. Thanks!
tracerbulletx 5y ago
Blender is an inspiring open source project. Absolutely killing it.
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danboarder 5y ago
I find it amazing what open source and community can create! Here is a video of 20 interviews with people around the world on how they use Blender now: https://youtu.be/rJ48-SYY1sQ https://youtu.be/rJ48-SYY1sQ Also here is a link to their download page as the Blender home page seems to be slammed today: https://www.blender.org/download/ https://www.blender.org/download/
- happyweasel 5y ago
  I would rather say it is amazing what €1.7mio of founding per year can do to a piece of software that has been lingering around for 26 years. https://fund.blender.org/ https://fund.blender.org/ The support for the software is based on the hate of cloud-based subscription models of Autodesk et al.
  - makapuf 5y ago
    Blender has all but lingered in the last 26 years. It gas been opensourced, The 2.3 - 2.5 transition (Sintel) was huge, the next versions have been super nice, with many important upgrades on editor, ui, a new cycles renderer...
- acomjean 5y ago
  I remember visiting Mexico from the US at the beginning of the current century and walking through a market and seeing bootleg DVDs for sale, nestled among the movies copies of AutoCad and Maya. Thinking, huh this software is really quite expensive and there must be demand for it world wide. Being excellent, open source and free it pretty much changed the 3d software landscape globally. I found it odd they didn't include that video on the homepage. Its pretty great showcase of the tool (I learned its python scriptable!)
robertbmenke 5y ago
It is truly amazing that I can download and use a tool with this much capability for free. What a time to be alive.
trynewideas 5y ago
If you want to see a different angle of what Blender is capable of, see Worthikids' channel, where almost every 2D cel-style and Rankin/Bass stop-motion style animation is made with Blender, and at least some (maybe all?) videos are also cut with Blender's video editing tools. https://youtube.com/c/Worthikids https://youtube.com/c/Worthikids
- dimgl 5y ago
  In addition, there's an incredible 3D character creator named FlyCat who makes some absolutely insane timelapses. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnXU0MjnApXHZkf3uGYbLSA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnXU0MjnApXHZkf3uGYbLSA
  - ur-whale 5y ago
    Wow, just wow. This is simply amazing. If you want to learn digital sculpting and proper meshing (manually unfortunately, but still), this is a fantastic resource. Thanks for the link.
  - uptownfunk 5y ago
    Is there work in AI/ML that is working to try and do this? Watching one of FlyCat's timelapses, I have no idea how you would go about that but it's incredible to dream of the possibility.
    - schleck8 5y ago
      I don't think machine learning is necessary. There are tools like Character Creator and Metahuman.
- tombert 5y ago
  I remember seeing their videos mimicking Rankin/Bass and (at least initially) did not believe that they were done in Blender. They looked so much like the actual stop motion that it just didn't seem right. After a minute or two I would occasionally find something that looked "CG-ish", but I wouldn't have found anything if I weren't looking. It's amazing how good Blender has gotten.
markdog12 5y ago
Check out the improvements that can be done by simply doing the sensible thing and using zstd: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0/Core#Blend_file_read_.26_Write https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0/Co...
greggman3 5y ago
Blender is one of the open source projects I'm super happy to sponsor. Please consider sponsoring it too (and/or any other open source projects you really like) https://fund.blender.org/ https://fund.blender.org/
dnadler 5y ago
I've been using blender to prototype an addition to my house. It was surprisingly easy to pick up and I'm frankly astounded by the polish and capabilities of this tool. It's possibly the most complete and professional open source project that I have ever used. Not only did I have fun using learning how to use Blender, but the model of my home that I built has actually turned out to be very useful. The VR support is especially neat, as I can take out a wall in my living room and then stand in the new space and see if it the changes I made work in (virtual) reality. Highly recommended for anyone else thinking about doing work on your house. I'm also thinking about using it to design some simple furniture that I could build, though haven't looked much into that yet.
dang 5y ago
Recent and related: Blender 3.x roadmap - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024572 - Oct 2021 (114 comments)
Lwepz 5y ago
Can seasoned Blender users can visualize and compose Geometry Node graphs in their minds? It seems to me that it would be pretty hard, simply because of their clunky design. In my opinion, the only thing missing from Blender's amazing Geo Node system is icons, i.e. something compact and symbolic that one can store in their mental space as they would a word when composing a sentence. I do also feel like a top down flow is more conductive to "process-oriented" or procedural design. I've done my fair share of procedural visual scripting with nodal systems such as UE4's Blueprints, PopcornFX or Blender's Geometry Nodes and none of them feel as "natural" as Houdini's. It almost feels as though vertical lines occupy less space in my mind than horizontal lines do. Perhaps it's because our brains are hardwire to deal with lots of top down structured environments (plants, tree-trunks, other Sapiens).
- cthalupa 5y ago
  I started with Blender, but have been working a bit in Houdini over the past quarter. I feel like both models work for both programs, and I find it pretty natural to work in a vertically oriented system in Houdini (outside of VOPs) and the horizontally oriented system in Blender.
- dkersten 5y ago
  > I do also feel like a top down flow is more conductive to "process-oriented" or procedural design. I've done my fair share of procedural visual scripting with nodal systems such as UE4's Blueprints, PopcornFX or Blender's Geometry Nodes and none of them feel as "natural" as Houdini's. I agree with this. I've never used Houdini, but I have used Max/MSP and after using that, always found the horizontal visual programming systems very clunky and, as you say, they just feel like they take up a lot lot more space. Of course, Max's nodes are quite compact in comparison to something like Blueprints, but horizontal ones always are because each additional input/output makes the node one connection taller, while with a vertical layout you tend to fit many connections in the available width (of course, connection labels aren't clearly visible in that case, but I find that's something you get accustomed to). Personally, I greatly prefer a vertical layout for visual programming systems.
- creativenolo 5y ago
boppo1 5y ago
I'm new to programming and always hear that it's a good idea to contribute to active open source projects you care about to show what you know. I think Blender is a project I'd be really excited to contribute to. Are there any tasks that might be worthwhile for a beginner? Or am I aiming out of my league?
- follower 5y ago
  FWIW I would encourage you to start by seeing if you can find an answer to your first question. As a general tip over recent years there has been a growth in "standard" ways that a project can communicate tasks/bugs/issues that are particularly well suited for people to start their involvement with a Free/Open Source project by highlighting ways someone can get involved as new contributor.
  - boppo1 5y ago
    I've actually already read the 'getting started with development' pages. I just want to take HN's temperature on how challenging it would be/ the likelihood of that project accepting submissions from a novice.
pfist 5y ago
I'm a solo game developer working in Unreal Engine. I typically buy environments and props from the Unreal Marketplace and modify them to meet my needs. Unreal's built-in modeling tools are usually enough for my purposes so I rarely open Blender, but when I do, I am so appreciative that this software exists and is free to use. It's incredible how far Blender has come. I remember the days when time between significant releases was measured in years, not months. The progress they've made in recent years — particularly since Epic Games gave them a $1.2 million Epic MegaGrant — has been impressive, and encouraging to watch. Thank you to all who fund Blender, and thank you especially to the people who make it. You're making a difference in the lives of many indie developers.
- moffkalast 5y ago
  While there are so many things to dislike about Epic, I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day.
  - m00x 5y ago
    You can't really call them a broken clock for your own subjective view. Epic games makes good games and a phenomenal game engine that's allowed countless devs to make great games with great graphics. A big plus for me is that they used their massive force to sue, and eventually budge Apple of their 30% revenue cut on their walled garden, but that's subjective.
    - AJ007 5y ago
      PC gamers just hate having any other game stores besides Steam. In the long run, a Steam only world is not good for anyone.
    - moffkalast 5y ago
      They've also been subject to a class action lawsuit, the Epic Games Store they set up was so barebones and badly put together that there were major security breaches in the first few weeks. Refunds still don't work properly. They eventually resorted to bribing people with free games to join their platform, and pressuring devs into exclusive deals with lower platform cuts instead of fixing their damn product. Their handling of problems has usually been dismissive and out of touch and seems to lead to toxic communities around their games. They're as anti-consumer of a company as it gets, although nobody really beats EA there I guess. I mean congrats, they sued Apple adding a precedent to let devs use external ways of paying for microtransactions, something 99% of actual devs don't have the infrastructure to do anyway. It only helps Epic stuff their face a bit more. Like winning a lawsuit that lets you run self-refined gas in your car or something. Also they're owned by Tencent, so yeah.
webwielder2 5y ago
Is Blender substantially different/better than, say, Cinema 4D? Or are people more excited about it because it's free/open source?
- dagmx 5y ago
  A mix of both. It does do somethings much better (like the 2D drawing etc) and viewport quality, but lags in others (like pipelinability, renderer integrations, materials etc...). The free part is a big draw of course.
  - cthalupa 5y ago
    >materials Not sure I agree here! I work primarily in Substance Designer and Painter these days because I want more portability and basically everything has a substance plugin, or at worst I can export them for a regular PBR workflow, and I've played around with mari, and there's yet to be a situation where I thought I couldn't do the same thing with blender's node system.
    - dagmx 5y ago
      I guess I should have elaborated more, but I meant extensible materials. Other DCCs let you extend them with custom material types that map to renderers. Blender is kind of "use our tools or fork the app" instead.
- CyanBird 5y ago
  It is mainly a side grade, if you are a 3D modeler by trade then I would tell you to learn it anyway because blender is being developed at a *far* faster pace than any other dcc packages maybe other than Houdini
doctoboggan 5y ago
Blender is such an incredible piece of software. It’s a great example to show people what open source can be. I have a company where I design custom jewelry with my customers fingerprints (https://lulimjewelry.com https://lulimjewelry.com) and I use blender on the backend to automate it. NYTimes maintains a blender docker container and I run it on google cloud run to take displacement maps and use them to “engrave” my jewelry and output an STL file. The displacement maps are generated client side using fabric.js It’s awesome that blender can be run headless in a docker container. I’ve also been looking forward to these new blender apps. It seems like you can specify a paired down interface for blender so you could have it purpose built for a single task.
- hnaccount141 5y ago
  > NYTimes maintains a blender docker container Interesting, anybody know what NYTimes uses it for? Can't find much information about it.
  - dagmx 5y ago
    The New York times does various 3D graphics for some of their pieces, and has some very cool use of three.js etc.. They have an R&D page that goes into some of their 3D endeavours too https://rd.nytimes.com/projects/reconstructing-journalistic-scenes-in-3d https://rd.nytimes.com/projects/reconstructing-journalistic-...
    - hnaccount141 5y ago
      Wow, had no idea they had an R&D page. There's some pretty cool stuff in there, thanks!
gtsop 5y ago
Side note: It is very interesting to see how pro-blender everyone is. You know how there is almost always a group of people who will say something bad about an open source project (disclaimer: not judging the people or their potentially legitimate complaints, also I may be part of such groups). With blender, it's hard to see such a group. Maybe I am missing it? Maybe blender is actually doing incredibly well compared to othee projects? Not sure
- jolmg 5y ago
  I think I remember seeing people complain about its interface, but it's changed so much since then, I don't know if there are still people complaining.
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    Yeah they've done a remarkable job with the 2.80 update, the UI is pretty decent now. Also its competitors are buggy-ass insanely overpriced monthly subscription proprietary editors, so no surprise there. There are still things to complain about, like the undo speed, CSG modifier unreliability, lack of certain features, but none of them are strict deal breakers.
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    Well, i do have complains about Blender's new interface: the new one feels "off" compared to 2.7x (something i never felt with the 2.4x -> 2.5x transition). But it is minor... and i can still use 2.79 anyway :-P
- themodelplumber 5y ago
  IMO the Blender project psychology gets this reception in part because it works very similar to general "doin' business" service psychology. Features requested are built; money requested is donated; resources are used for additional upgrades; industry-cooperative movements are made; progress is tracked, open, and accountable. If you want a critical take on Blender therefore, for one you ought to look outside a community of business-minded devs. Look where artists hang out and you'll find a less rational take that is based on individual likes and dislikes. Where logic doesn't matter so much--it's how you feel. That's where you'll get into it. And if you look at other FOSS graphics software communities where the project lead is someone who just does whatever they want, even better, you'll find a group of users who either adapt or leave, and that's quite different from Blender's psychological development ecosystem in a lot of ways. Alternately you could go more-business and go ask a SolidWorks user group to tell you how great Blender is. They will probably tell you how business is done properly and why the Blender way is clueless in various ways. It so happens I ran an online community for another FOSS 3D package for over a decade. We got some people who were anti-Blender, and some who were pro-Blender. Often the anti-position was based in prefers-underdog reasons, which I understand. Even in FOSS there are some clear underdogs and people get upset when they like the underdog and continually see another project winning attention instead. We also got some people who were pro-Blender, who thought that our community must be anti-Blender, because we were obviously "competitors in the space." In fact there was never a competitive mindset, it's more that people who lean into that business psychology of "here's how you win" think more often in terms of competition. BTW Blender is definitely an awesome project, I've used it since 2002 and on various commercial projects in addition to hobby stuff.
Thoreandan 5y ago
Related: Shout out to Blender's Open Movie Project https://www.blender.org/about/studio/ https://www.blender.org/about/studio/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_Foundation
nsxwolf 5y ago
How many years of study and practice would it take to do anything shown in that demo reel? I have downloaded Blender several times over the last decades, thinking I would watch some tutorials and learn something, but always gave up having failed to model so much as a solid cube.
- Taywee 5y ago
  Do some tutorials, or even a paid course. Just like no DAW will replace the need to understand and practice music theory, Blender will never replace the need to understand and be able to work properly with 3D space.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- themodelplumber 5y ago
  You have to find your path, that's where the subjective energy comes from. The thing about a demo reel is that you're automatically focusing in on someone else's deep and subjective set of interests (or a group of users' various sets). So it's often way too objective (in terms of psychological distance) a lens through which to be able to see a good starting point for one's humble own self. Personally I eventually found my way in by focusing on lighting and procedural textures. I got really good at making decked-out spheres. :-) It's still a favorite doodling activity. In the process of learning I ended up contributing to Wikipedia articles on things like global illumination, and some of my texturing images are still up there. (And to this day I don't find the modeling part that interesting. One of my projects was in the 2005 Blender showreel I think, it was just a simple project that seemed fun and I couldn't wait to have the modeling part complete)
authed 5y ago
Blender is great... I just tried a bunch of free/open apps to do boolean operations on complex STL files, and it was the best performing one... most completely failed.
a1371 5y ago
I LOVE Blender, like, a kind of love that's embarrassingly too much for a software. No to mention that my work or hobbies don't often interface with 3D modeling. So I have been thinking about what makes this project so special. I think it's the fact that the community owns it. So you don't have to ask for permission to do anything. Mix that with inherently creative people who approach the tool and you get: AI-generated Kanye West rap teaching you how the modifiers work - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7Nn5Uilso0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7Nn5Uilso0
- tdrdt 5y ago
  I have been using Blender for over 15 years and I also love it but also for different reasons. When I started using Blender I came from 3DsMax. Max took almost half aminute to start, Blender maybe 2 seconds. And now, years later, Blender is still fast. The architecture is just very good. And maybe it's one of the best in the wold. A lot of people hated the UI, but I always loved it. I love that you can arrange the panels the way you like. I wish programs like Photoshop could do this as well. And yes, since v2.8 everything became even better and the learning curve was lowered. I also love all shortcuts and user interactions. This was really made for users. And maybe that's because Blender is mostly made by users. And now v3.0! I am excited about two things: Cycles X (very fast rendering) and the overhauled Geometry Nodes. I believe Geometry Nodes are the next big thing because this is Blender's answer to Houdini. Edit: if you are interested in Geometry Nodes you should check out Erindale @ YT https://youtube.com/c/Erindale https://youtube.com/c/Erindale He creates complete scenes without modeling a thing. The models are all procedurally built.
  - black_puppydog 5y ago
    OMG Erindale's voice is so soothing. I have nothing to do with blender or animation at all and I've just watched half of his hexagon video and it's just soo relaxing!
- jansan 5y ago
  It has been a few zears since I used Blender, because I don't do 3D modeling anymore. But I am following its development and man, this has become such an awesome project. I would not say that I "love" Blender, but I highly admire what has become of this software that when I worked with it was actually quite hard to use.
selecsosi 5y ago
I have used Blender running headless to generate automated slideshow service for a custom gifting song startup I was a part of. After some initial hiccups getting it packaged (running a 2.78 version while cycles was being rewritten). I can't not speak highly enough about the tools and ecosystem that the community has assembled. There is no other tool that was suitable for the type of dynamic video editing via script control that is also open source. Congratulations on the new release team!
nl 5y ago
My son ran a render last night using the e-Cycles render engine: 12 minutes. Same scene today on Blender 3 with the new version of Cycles (aka Cycles-X): 5 minutes. 12 mins to 5 mins with a software upgrade is pretty good!
BSOhealth 5y ago
This has nothing to do with Blender specifically: is there, or why isn’t there, a DAW (Pro Tools, Logic Pro, etc.) that is relatively comparable with closed-source tools? I’ve often heard the sound/plugin packs for DAW keep people on the paid products. Why shouldn’t there be a competitive open source option? Edit to contextualize, and maybe an added question: Blender is amazing and competes in so many ways with high-cost, industry-standard software. How is the DAW world not a great analog and opportunity?
- TheSeth 5y ago
  for a fully-featured DAW there's Ardour https://ardour.org/ https://ardour.org/ which supports lots of the proprietary plugins (VST etc.)
- urbdbdkxkd 5y ago
  I think there's a couple of reasons. 1) Blender is ~25 years old and has been open source for ~20. That's a lot of development hours. 2) Blender marketplace and the acceptance of the existence of paid addons by (most) of the Blender community means that addon developers can actually be paid for their work and to maintain their addons. Addons add a lot of features that Blender doesn't have out of the box and if you're using blender professionally you are probably reliant on addons for your workflow and it is a pain when they break (which they do frequently because the API is so unstable). Not being attacked, and even being encouraged to charge for open source software (and adddons are all open source) on the understanding that not all devs are lucky enough to work for faangs, be tenured professors or still live with our parents, and that we need to eat is something that is pretty unique in my experience.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  Ardour is pretty good. I use it for audio production on Linux and it has quite a few powerful features that many commercial DAWs don't. With Ardour 6 it introduced end to end latency compensation, which is a must have for complex projects, and the current development trunk includes a complete revamp of tempo handling that fixes longstanding issues with rounding error on MIDI region edges and such. I'm very much looking forward to the next release from that branch; it'll have solved all gripes I had with Ardour until now. They keep adding handy features, like the recent volume normalization feature that automatically ajusts your master gain to produce a master at the correct level for different streaming services. Granted, it's not perfect - some people like some of the workflows, some don't - but I find it very good, especially if you spend some time customizing keyboard shortcuts and maybe adding a script or two (it's scriptable in Lua, and you can even write audio plug-ins in that) It supports LV2 and VST2/3 plug-ins natively, and with Yabridge you can bridge Windows VST2/3 plug-ins very seamlessly. (Full disclosure: I have a few bugfix patches in Ardour; I'm fairly committed to it for my needs and happy to help debug crashes and such, though these days they're very rare; the developers are very responsive on IRC though!)
josefrichter 5y ago
Is this the most successful ones source software in history? I mean one that might be considered on par with the very top of the commercial software, maybe even better? Has there ever been anything like that?
- budoso 5y ago
  Linux
- krapp 5y ago
  Firefox and Linux come to mind...
  - floatboth 5y ago
    And LibreOffice
anon_cow1111 5y ago
For more experienced users, I have a question; Does anyone have an index of blender guides and tutorials, that are *NOT* hosted on youtube? Literally everything I'm finding insists on using a video for something that could be explained with a few images and paragraphs of text. It's incredibly frustrating.
dustractor 5y ago
https://i.imgur.com/Ikx12dL.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Ikx12dL.jpg

Blender 3.0

848 points by marcodiego 5y ago

nn3 5y ago

"Removed features and compatibility" You don't read that very often in changelogs.

dsign 5y ago

Is it just me or they added antialising/Lanczos resampling to the render window?

jokoon 5y ago

Please check freemocap, I guess it exports blender files but I'm not sure. I really hope it would enable people to make better animation.

daraosn 5y ago

This is the most inspiring and well done open source project I've used. An example for other open source areas to follow, such as operative systems, virtualization software, 2d graphic manipulation software, etc.

Shadonototra 5y ago

My wish list for the future is a better API story And the ability to write plugins in C, or rather offer a native api so i can use my language of choice, i despise python..

JBits 5y ago

An interesting area I know of where Blender is used professionally is rough animation: such as the French film 'I Lost My Body'; the Irish film 'Wolfwalkers'; and multiple anime, including the recent 'Ranking of Kings'. An animation company in Wales, https://www.clothcatanimation.com/cloth-cat-awarded-epic-megagrant/ https://www.clothcatanimation.com/cloth-cat-awarded-epic-meg..., is using Blender, but I'm not sure what for.

zuj 5y ago

love to see blender popping up here on hacker news and you folks liking it. Blender is awesome and has grown into a really polished piece of software. It would make a really good research/documentary to go behind the history and the growth of blender. I bet we can learn ton of lessons in software engineering, open source software management, creative tool creation and herding open source communities.

bschwindHN 5y ago

I don't see much mention in the changelogs for texture baking. I used blender for a website which has 3D models with baked textures, and the workflow for creating those textures was very convoluted. It's a great feature for applications where the lighting doesn't change, it just needs a better UI and workflow on top of it.

adamddev1 5y ago

I'm wanting to get into making 2d-ish explainer videos similar to the 3Blue1Brown math videos but much simpler for language/grammar explanations. Is Blender a good tool for that job or would it be better to use a simpler tool like Apple Motion?

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knolan 5y ago

I adore Blender. I use it for fun, to make animation for lectures (fluid mechanics) and even as a research tool. I’ve helped my colleagues and my students use it for a range of different applications from communication of science to the implementation of simple physics simulations to explore chaos. It’s just amazing.

nukst 5y ago

I've been using Blender for as long as I've been using computers. I learned 3D modelling including level design, learned programming by making small games with BGE, used it to make a client's business card stand out with 3D effects, created 2D and 3D YouTube intros for my brother and a LOT more. I even managed to make some real money in difficult times to support my family, thanks to Blender. Blender is probably the most important part of my life software-wise, and it bugs me that I never managed to use it (even older versions) at its fullest. Congratulations to all the people behind this behemoth of a software who carried and carries many of the best artists out there. If I ever get anywhere in life with game development / 3d art I'll wholehartedly credit Blender.

iainctduncan 5y ago

I've been using Blender for years as a video editor. As a performer, I need to be able to make decent promo videos, but I rarely do this more than once in a year. Blender gives me everything I need to make really nicely edited videos free, with far better control of the timing of audio and video crossfades than other free options (an important part for a promo video).

hackshack 5y ago

Blender's 2.9 release was what did it for me. That team is on fire. I'll hype Krita's 5.0 release (still in beta) - it has the same "turnaround" feel. Thanks, everyone, for plugging the donut tutorial link! Checked it out today. 3D modeling has lots of subtle, jarring nuances and the author addresses them head-on. Recommended. It's exciting to see libre software becoming so refined. Several projects are serious about managing the triangle of UI, stability, and features. These tools aren't "in the artists' way" anymore.

raxxorrax 5y ago

What is wrong with Blender lately? Everyone in a workaholic phase? Much appreciated of course!

Kelteseth 5y ago
They are now funded by all major tech companies. So much for not being "industry standard" (by so many Maya or 3ds Max artists I talked to).
- archerx 5y ago
  I still would rather us 3DS max over blender, it still feels like using GIMP after using Photoshop productively for years.
  - simianpirate 5y ago
    Then use that software if you prefer the UX. As an anecdote, I installed GIMP for my son 6 years ago, who is now going to college to be a graphics designer. He did all of his digital artwork in GIMP and Krita, now Blender as well, for the whole length of that time. He now has to use Photoshop for his classes. There are some tools in it he is impressed with but overall doesn’t care for Photoshop at all.
    - archerx 5y ago
      I want to use blender and I'm sure they would get a lot more acceptance if they fix the one thing people have been complaining about for YEARS! That's great for your son but no credible agency will use GIMP. Krita is awesome and I love it and comes the closest to an open source alternative to PS, it is much better than GIMP in everyway and is actually usable. Unfortunately the industry doesn't care if he doesn't care about photoshop, it cares about it and if he wants to be a part of it he should start learning to care unless his work is beyond amazing and he will only be freelancing then ignore everything I said. Photoshop is not impressive but it gets the job done quickly and smoothly with minimal friction and that's why it is number one.

rytcio 5y ago

Blender is the best open source project around. Major kudos to everyone who works on it for making such an excellent tool

njharman 5y ago
Yeah, it's been amazing to watch. I was one of the original funders back in 2002 to open source it. My career took another path and I never did more than mess around with Blender. But that, I think $100 (not small amount for me at the time), is the best, most proud/happy donation I've ever made.
deleted 5y ago
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Tomte 5y ago

The first three parts of the Donut tutorial, updated for Blender 3, are here, as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw

dgritsko 5y ago
I've only done a little bit with Blender as a hobbyist, but Andrew's tutorials are what really made it fun for me and helped things start to "click". If you've never used Blender but wanted to check it out, these are the tutorials you should use.
- Tomte 5y ago
  They never clicked for me, unfortunately, although I should give them another try. I highly recommend https://academy.cgboost.com/p/resources https://academy.cgboost.com/p/resources Also free of charge, and a very good presenter (if you can excuse the German accent). But most people like the Donut tutorial, that's true.
  - wingmanjd 5y ago
    A friend of mine just finished his Introduction to Blender series on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjcpPOioHUk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjcpPOioHUk
  - a1371 5y ago
    Have you tried it after 2.8? The interface is a lot more intuitive now.
nikodunk 5y ago
Wow this guy is FUNNY. Thanks for sharing!
dymk 5y ago
Blender Guru was my inspiration into Blender as well, but since I've seen the at-worst homophobic and at-best tone deaf comments he's made in tutorials and on Twitter, I can no longer recommend him. Go watch his rant about how he misses using the word "fag" like he used to in highschool. I'm not saying cancel the guy, but I am saying consider seeking out an alternative source of tutorials. https://twunroll.com/article/1347630835235573761 https://twunroll.com/article/1347630835235573761

dljsjr 5y ago

This is the release that rolls out their new rendering engine that they've been working on for a while: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Blender-3.0 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Blender-...

fulafel 5y ago
Yep, specifically the offline rendering engine (they have a real time one too)
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  For anyone not familiar, "Cycles X" is the new offline (not realtime) renderer, replacing Cycles: https://code.blender.org/2021/04/cycles-x/ https://code.blender.org/2021/04/cycles-x/ The realtime renderer is EEVEE, slated for big upgrades in 3.x: https://code.blender.org/2021/06/eevees-future/ https://code.blender.org/2021/06/eevees-future/
  - greenknight 5y ago
    Cycles X, is essentially a rewrite of Cycles. Cycles-X no longer exists as it has been merged back into cycles. Crazy performance gains!
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    Also Cycles is raytraced (or is it pathtraced?) while Eevee is rasterized.

archerx 5y ago

Have they improved the UI/UX since 2.8x? They said it would be much better and it was still driving me up a wall compared to 3DS Max. It still felt like going from Photoshop to GIMP. That's the only thing holding me back from really adopting blender.

marcodiego 5y ago
Not an user, but judging from comments, you're part of a small set that still repeats comments like this after 2.8.
- archerx 5y ago
  What has changed since 2.8 in the UI? When I used 2.8 there were still a lot of pain points with the interface that kept me doing the heavy lifting in 3DS max. It was a cloth sim project and I was using blender to export the files into GLTF and even that was a bit frustrating.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    Again, what has changed since 1998 in 3D Studio Max's UI?
  - bogwog 5y ago
    It sounds like you need to spend some more time reading the manuals and less time complaining online.
valine 5y ago
I disagree. The 2.8+ UI is well designed and way snappier than 3DS Max.
- archerx 5y ago
  It is subjective but 3D max interface is much more intuitive. Like when navigating the 3D view ports. UE4 also has a nice interface that is similar to blender but feels better.

Mizza 5y ago

Are there release notes? Blender usually does a really nice release notes page showing off the new features.

marcodiego 5y ago
https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0 https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0
- Mizza 5y ago
  Cheers, thanks. Really looking forward to using the Asset Browser and Geometry Nodes.
Tomte 5y ago
This is what happens with long-awaited Linux distribution or web browser releases, as well: final binaries are uploaded, so they can propagate to the mirrors, and someone posts it “prematurely”. (I don't mind, I like this kind of heads-up.) Release notes will be there when the release is officially announced and linked from Blender's home page.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
The link is literally to a release notes page with two demo reels and a description of the new features

TheDesolate0 5y ago

sweet sweet 3d modeling!

ldehaan 5y ago

Yay, this is gonna be sweeeet. I have a render going now on 2.9 and it's so cool. I've been using blender for years and years now, just for fun and in the winters I use it to keep my room warm and my renders 4k baby.

bibelo 5y ago
Show me what you got

999900000999 5y ago

Thank you Blender! I'd like them to bring back some more of the game engine components. I use Unity, but seeing what Blender can do, via their demo movies, I'd love to see a Blender Game Engine!

haxiomic 5y ago
Definitely, I’m very interested in blender as a better Unity There’s armory3d which is impressive but it’s still early days
TT-392 5y ago
There is a project called UPBGE, it is a fork of the old game engine and being actively maintained. https://upbge.org/ https://upbge.org/
- 999900000999 5y ago
  Thank you, however as far as I know it's only one dev. Blender would probably need to pull this back into the core product for it to be useful. A powerful mature engine with Python, one can dream.
prox 5y ago
There is a lot of effort to get Godot in that spot. 4.0 is going to be really good, especially for 3d.
- 999900000999 5y ago
  How does Godot handle terrain ? Unity is mainly useful since if you're willing to drop a few thousand dollars on assets, plus about 200 hours of your own personal time, you can have a shipable game in a month or so. Godot looks really neat, but at least with my skill level I need a starter kit to get going on most projects. Then again, I know Godot's gotten a ton of funding lately so we'll see what happens.
  - moron4hire 5y ago

esistgut 5y ago

AMD HIP/ROCm support is there but AMD still hasn't released drivers supporting it.

gc9 5y ago
AMD Blog: "Our AMD Radeon™ Software Adrenalin 21.12.1 or Radeon PRO Software for Enterprise 21.Q4 (or newer) drivers are required to use Cycles in Blender 3.0. Support is currently validated on AMD Radeon PRO W6800 and AMD Radeon RX 6000 series desktop GPUs and enabled on other AMD RDNA™ and AMD RDNA 2 architecture graphics cards." https://community.amd.com/t5/radeon-pro-graphics/blender-3-0-and-amd-creating-a-new-performance-path/ba-p/499333 https://community.amd.com/t5/radeon-pro-graphics/blender-3-0...
jjoonathan 5y ago
Funny -- going on a decade ago, Blender had OpenCL support, but the AMD drivers were so bad that OpenCL support was only usable on NVidia cards. Still not as good as CUDA, though. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
slavik81 5y ago
There are beta drivers available for testing. https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-21-40-beta-blender-3-0 https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-2...

open-source-ux 5y ago

I always post this link when Blender is discussed because it's so impressive. It shows what a single person can achieve in Blender. The visual effects and compositing have been created by Blender expert Ian Hubert. The video shows a (grimy) futuristic city scene. Green screen footage and the final shots created are shown side-by-side: VFX Breakdown - Dynamo Dream Teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFJ_THGj72U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFJ_THGj72U The full short Dynamo Dream was posted a few months ago by Hubert on his YouTube channel: Episode 1 : Salad Mug - DYNAMO DREAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsGZ_2RuJ2A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsGZ_2RuJ2A

DonHopkins 5y ago
His series of one-minute "Lazy" tutorials are fantastic! Make Nightmare Men in Blender - Lazy Tutorials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgfJIZEDY44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgfJIZEDY44 Edit: Yes, I subscribe to his Paetron series to -- such awesome stuff!
- anotherjesse 5y ago
  He has a great Patreon series too https://www.patreon.com/IanHubert https://www.patreon.com/IanHubert I just dabble with blender but really enjoy his videos showing how he goes about various vfx with blender

TT-392 5y ago

Oh shit oh shit, so I don't have to use prerelease versions to use my new nodes setups anymore soon.

serverholic 5y ago

Honestly I'm a bit disappointed with their geometry nodes project. I went into it expecting a generic visual scripting language aimed at generate geometry. That IS what it is to an extent, but the design decisions are strange and limiting to say the least. The main issue is that data is only stored in the geometry itself, per-vertex. So if you just want a single variable you're out of luck. Math operations operate on vertices so you can't just multiply two numbers, you have to store a number in each vertex, then multiply all vertices by the same value. It's like every node is for-loop that loops over vertices. This limited design is useful for certain things like scattering rocks over terrain but not much else.

hrnnnnnn 5y ago
Check out the Nodevember geometry nodes entries this year. You can accomplish quite a lot with it as it is. Also, the implementation in 3.0 is very different from the one in 2.93. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23nodevember2021%23geometrynodes https://twitter.com/search?q=%23nodevember2021%23geometrynod...
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pmichaud 5y ago
I think what you wrote here is just straightforwardly not correct, eg. you can absolutely set a variable and multiply arbitrary numbers in addition to working with vertex data. There are also a lot of other ways to store and interact with data, eg. textures (either procedural or painted). Maybe you should have another look.

ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago

Why are there no torrents offered? The server is clearly under load. If anyone already has the files and cares to share the magnet, I'll gladly help with seeding.

redrobein 5y ago
Steam is another way to get it if you have it installed.
- razster 5y ago
  Thank you, I completely forgot it was on Steam.
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  Such a weird way to me.

vadansky 5y ago

I'm noticing a lot of interesting extensions coming out for Blender, especially in the Retogo and skinning area which was always a headache. I guess being able to code in Python instead of MaxScript or MEL (althought it looks like Maya does support python now?) gives you a healthier ecosystem.

CanceledAccount 5y ago
High performance Maya and Max plug-ins are written with C++ APIs. Blender doesn’t have a binary plugin API because of GPL.
- franga2000 5y ago
  Surely licensing can't be the reason. Firstly, there is no distribution happening here - a plugin written against the Blender API and shipped separately is no different from NVIDIA's proprietary driver for Linux. The usual GPL issue around plugins is whether program+plugin are a "mere aggregate" or a "derivative work". This doesn't really matter if they aren't distributed together, but even if it did, the question is no easier to answer in the case of interpreted vs compiled code. They are still running in the same process, exchanging internal data structures through direct procedure calls. It just so happens that one is running through a translation layer. If that translation layer protects you, then you could just as easily enjoy that protection by running binary plugins through a no-op emulator. And regardless of all of this, there's no reason Blender Python plugins can't use Python native extensions for performance. FLIP Fluids, for example, has a C++ fluid sim engine and uses Python just for the interface to Blender.
Marcan 5y ago
Maya has been supporting Python for a long long time, it even supports Python 3 now. There is no more need to use MELscript to develop tools for it anymore, even though some commands are run using the MELscript wrapper in Python, but even then it's very rare. Pretty much all the tools I've developed in the past couple of years for AAA games have been almost exclusively made with Python. One of them we even developed tools to be DCC agnostic, which means that they could run both in Maya and 3ds Max flawlessly.

beckman466 5y ago

How different is Blender to 3DS Max and Maya? Anyone have experience with both?

throw_m239339 5y ago
I didn't use 3DS MAX for 15 years so I can't tell you how it is now. Maya is the videogame industry standard for modeling, just like ZBrush is the industry standard for sculpting. It is almost 100% non destructive-editing and integrate with studios asset pipelines perfectly in various ways. It's paid and closed source. Blender is a jack of all trades, master of none. Aside from a game engine (removed since 2.8) it has basically all that you need to do modelling, sculpting, physics,3D painting, 2D and 3D animation, compositing and even some quirky video editor with audio. And it's free and open source and it has the largest community, by far, since version 2.8.
- beckman466 5y ago
  awesome, thank you
dagmx 5y ago
Depends at what level you're talking about. In the abstract? No, most 3D concepts are pretty much standard across all of them. In the nitty gritty, they're all substantially different and have very different views of scenes, data representations and workflows. It's easy enough to jump between all three, at least for me, but they each have their respective strengths and weaknesses, that lend themselves better to different kinds of work.

runevault 5y ago

I haven't had much time for Blender lately and need to correct that. I also need to look more closely at the changes. I know something about an asset manager and a bunch of new nodes in the procedural geometry work, but beyond that I'm behind. And sadly Steam hasn't gotten the new binaries yet and I am lazy so like letting steam manage this one for me.

hrnnnnnn 5y ago

The release notes and features highlight reel page is now live! https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-0/ https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-0/

dang 5y ago
Ok, we'll change the URL to that from https://download.blender.org/release/Blender3.0/ https://download.blender.org/release/Blender3.0/. Thanks!

tracerbulletx 5y ago

Blender is an inspiring open source project. Absolutely killing it.

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danboarder 5y ago

I find it amazing what open source and community can create! Here is a video of 20 interviews with people around the world on how they use Blender now: https://youtu.be/rJ48-SYY1sQ https://youtu.be/rJ48-SYY1sQ Also here is a link to their download page as the Blender home page seems to be slammed today: https://www.blender.org/download/ https://www.blender.org/download/

happyweasel 5y ago
I would rather say it is amazing what €1.7mio of founding per year can do to a piece of software that has been lingering around for 26 years. https://fund.blender.org/ https://fund.blender.org/ The support for the software is based on the hate of cloud-based subscription models of Autodesk et al.
- makapuf 5y ago
  Blender has all but lingered in the last 26 years. It gas been opensourced, The 2.3 - 2.5 transition (Sintel) was huge, the next versions have been super nice, with many important upgrades on editor, ui, a new cycles renderer...
acomjean 5y ago
I remember visiting Mexico from the US at the beginning of the current century and walking through a market and seeing bootleg DVDs for sale, nestled among the movies copies of AutoCad and Maya. Thinking, huh this software is really quite expensive and there must be demand for it world wide. Being excellent, open source and free it pretty much changed the 3d software landscape globally. I found it odd they didn't include that video on the homepage. Its pretty great showcase of the tool (I learned its python scriptable!)

robertbmenke 5y ago

It is truly amazing that I can download and use a tool with this much capability for free. What a time to be alive.

trynewideas 5y ago

If you want to see a different angle of what Blender is capable of, see Worthikids' channel, where almost every 2D cel-style and Rankin/Bass stop-motion style animation is made with Blender, and at least some (maybe all?) videos are also cut with Blender's video editing tools. https://youtube.com/c/Worthikids https://youtube.com/c/Worthikids

dimgl 5y ago
In addition, there's an incredible 3D character creator named FlyCat who makes some absolutely insane timelapses. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnXU0MjnApXHZkf3uGYbLSA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnXU0MjnApXHZkf3uGYbLSA
- ur-whale 5y ago
  Wow, just wow. This is simply amazing. If you want to learn digital sculpting and proper meshing (manually unfortunately, but still), this is a fantastic resource. Thanks for the link.
- uptownfunk 5y ago
  Is there work in AI/ML that is working to try and do this? Watching one of FlyCat's timelapses, I have no idea how you would go about that but it's incredible to dream of the possibility.
  - schleck8 5y ago
    I don't think machine learning is necessary. There are tools like Character Creator and Metahuman.
tombert 5y ago
I remember seeing their videos mimicking Rankin/Bass and (at least initially) did not believe that they were done in Blender. They looked so much like the actual stop motion that it just didn't seem right. After a minute or two I would occasionally find something that looked "CG-ish", but I wouldn't have found anything if I weren't looking. It's amazing how good Blender has gotten.

markdog12 5y ago

Check out the improvements that can be done by simply doing the sensible thing and using zstd: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0/Core#Blend_file_read_.26_Write https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0/Co...

greggman3 5y ago

Blender is one of the open source projects I'm super happy to sponsor. Please consider sponsoring it too (and/or any other open source projects you really like) https://fund.blender.org/ https://fund.blender.org/

dnadler 5y ago

I've been using blender to prototype an addition to my house. It was surprisingly easy to pick up and I'm frankly astounded by the polish and capabilities of this tool. It's possibly the most complete and professional open source project that I have ever used. Not only did I have fun using learning how to use Blender, but the model of my home that I built has actually turned out to be very useful. The VR support is especially neat, as I can take out a wall in my living room and then stand in the new space and see if it the changes I made work in (virtual) reality. Highly recommended for anyone else thinking about doing work on your house. I'm also thinking about using it to design some simple furniture that I could build, though haven't looked much into that yet.

dang 5y ago

Recent and related: Blender 3.x roadmap - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024572 - Oct 2021 (114 comments)

Lwepz 5y ago

Can seasoned Blender users can visualize and compose Geometry Node graphs in their minds? It seems to me that it would be pretty hard, simply because of their clunky design. In my opinion, the only thing missing from Blender's amazing Geo Node system is icons, i.e. something compact and symbolic that one can store in their mental space as they would a word when composing a sentence. I do also feel like a top down flow is more conductive to "process-oriented" or procedural design. I've done my fair share of procedural visual scripting with nodal systems such as UE4's Blueprints, PopcornFX or Blender's Geometry Nodes and none of them feel as "natural" as Houdini's. It almost feels as though vertical lines occupy less space in my mind than horizontal lines do. Perhaps it's because our brains are hardwire to deal with lots of top down structured environments (plants, tree-trunks, other Sapiens).

cthalupa 5y ago
I started with Blender, but have been working a bit in Houdini over the past quarter. I feel like both models work for both programs, and I find it pretty natural to work in a vertically oriented system in Houdini (outside of VOPs) and the horizontally oriented system in Blender.
dkersten 5y ago
> I do also feel like a top down flow is more conductive to "process-oriented" or procedural design. I've done my fair share of procedural visual scripting with nodal systems such as UE4's Blueprints, PopcornFX or Blender's Geometry Nodes and none of them feel as "natural" as Houdini's. I agree with this. I've never used Houdini, but I have used Max/MSP and after using that, always found the horizontal visual programming systems very clunky and, as you say, they just feel like they take up a lot lot more space. Of course, Max's nodes are quite compact in comparison to something like Blueprints, but horizontal ones always are because each additional input/output makes the node one connection taller, while with a vertical layout you tend to fit many connections in the available width (of course, connection labels aren't clearly visible in that case, but I find that's something you get accustomed to). Personally, I greatly prefer a vertical layout for visual programming systems.
creativenolo 5y ago

boppo1 5y ago

I'm new to programming and always hear that it's a good idea to contribute to active open source projects you care about to show what you know. I think Blender is a project I'd be really excited to contribute to. Are there any tasks that might be worthwhile for a beginner? Or am I aiming out of my league?

follower 5y ago
FWIW I would encourage you to start by seeing if you can find an answer to your first question. As a general tip over recent years there has been a growth in "standard" ways that a project can communicate tasks/bugs/issues that are particularly well suited for people to start their involvement with a Free/Open Source project by highlighting ways someone can get involved as new contributor.
- boppo1 5y ago
  I've actually already read the 'getting started with development' pages. I just want to take HN's temperature on how challenging it would be/ the likelihood of that project accepting submissions from a novice.

pfist 5y ago

I'm a solo game developer working in Unreal Engine. I typically buy environments and props from the Unreal Marketplace and modify them to meet my needs. Unreal's built-in modeling tools are usually enough for my purposes so I rarely open Blender, but when I do, I am so appreciative that this software exists and is free to use. It's incredible how far Blender has come. I remember the days when time between significant releases was measured in years, not months. The progress they've made in recent years — particularly since Epic Games gave them a $1.2 million Epic MegaGrant — has been impressive, and encouraging to watch. Thank you to all who fund Blender, and thank you especially to the people who make it. You're making a difference in the lives of many indie developers.

moffkalast 5y ago
While there are so many things to dislike about Epic, I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day.
- m00x 5y ago
  You can't really call them a broken clock for your own subjective view. Epic games makes good games and a phenomenal game engine that's allowed countless devs to make great games with great graphics. A big plus for me is that they used their massive force to sue, and eventually budge Apple of their 30% revenue cut on their walled garden, but that's subjective.
  - AJ007 5y ago
    PC gamers just hate having any other game stores besides Steam. In the long run, a Steam only world is not good for anyone.
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    They've also been subject to a class action lawsuit, the Epic Games Store they set up was so barebones and badly put together that there were major security breaches in the first few weeks. Refunds still don't work properly. They eventually resorted to bribing people with free games to join their platform, and pressuring devs into exclusive deals with lower platform cuts instead of fixing their damn product. Their handling of problems has usually been dismissive and out of touch and seems to lead to toxic communities around their games. They're as anti-consumer of a company as it gets, although nobody really beats EA there I guess. I mean congrats, they sued Apple adding a precedent to let devs use external ways of paying for microtransactions, something 99% of actual devs don't have the infrastructure to do anyway. It only helps Epic stuff their face a bit more. Like winning a lawsuit that lets you run self-refined gas in your car or something. Also they're owned by Tencent, so yeah.

webwielder2 5y ago

Is Blender substantially different/better than, say, Cinema 4D? Or are people more excited about it because it's free/open source?

dagmx 5y ago
A mix of both. It does do somethings much better (like the 2D drawing etc) and viewport quality, but lags in others (like pipelinability, renderer integrations, materials etc...). The free part is a big draw of course.
- cthalupa 5y ago
  >materials Not sure I agree here! I work primarily in Substance Designer and Painter these days because I want more portability and basically everything has a substance plugin, or at worst I can export them for a regular PBR workflow, and I've played around with mari, and there's yet to be a situation where I thought I couldn't do the same thing with blender's node system.
  - dagmx 5y ago
    I guess I should have elaborated more, but I meant extensible materials. Other DCCs let you extend them with custom material types that map to renderers. Blender is kind of "use our tools or fork the app" instead.
CyanBird 5y ago
It is mainly a side grade, if you are a 3D modeler by trade then I would tell you to learn it anyway because blender is being developed at a *far* faster pace than any other dcc packages maybe other than Houdini

doctoboggan 5y ago

Blender is such an incredible piece of software. It’s a great example to show people what open source can be. I have a company where I design custom jewelry with my customers fingerprints (https://lulimjewelry.com https://lulimjewelry.com) and I use blender on the backend to automate it. NYTimes maintains a blender docker container and I run it on google cloud run to take displacement maps and use them to “engrave” my jewelry and output an STL file. The displacement maps are generated client side using fabric.js It’s awesome that blender can be run headless in a docker container. I’ve also been looking forward to these new blender apps. It seems like you can specify a paired down interface for blender so you could have it purpose built for a single task.

hnaccount141 5y ago
> NYTimes maintains a blender docker container Interesting, anybody know what NYTimes uses it for? Can't find much information about it.
- dagmx 5y ago
  The New York times does various 3D graphics for some of their pieces, and has some very cool use of three.js etc.. They have an R&D page that goes into some of their 3D endeavours too https://rd.nytimes.com/projects/reconstructing-journalistic-scenes-in-3d https://rd.nytimes.com/projects/reconstructing-journalistic-...
  - hnaccount141 5y ago
    Wow, had no idea they had an R&D page. There's some pretty cool stuff in there, thanks!

gtsop 5y ago

Side note: It is very interesting to see how pro-blender everyone is. You know how there is almost always a group of people who will say something bad about an open source project (disclaimer: not judging the people or their potentially legitimate complaints, also I may be part of such groups). With blender, it's hard to see such a group. Maybe I am missing it? Maybe blender is actually doing incredibly well compared to othee projects? Not sure

jolmg 5y ago
I think I remember seeing people complain about its interface, but it's changed so much since then, I don't know if there are still people complaining.
- moffkalast 5y ago
  Yeah they've done a remarkable job with the 2.80 update, the UI is pretty decent now. Also its competitors are buggy-ass insanely overpriced monthly subscription proprietary editors, so no surprise there. There are still things to complain about, like the undo speed, CSG modifier unreliability, lack of certain features, but none of them are strict deal breakers.
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  Well, i do have complains about Blender's new interface: the new one feels "off" compared to 2.7x (something i never felt with the 2.4x -> 2.5x transition). But it is minor... and i can still use 2.79 anyway :-P
themodelplumber 5y ago
IMO the Blender project psychology gets this reception in part because it works very similar to general "doin' business" service psychology. Features requested are built; money requested is donated; resources are used for additional upgrades; industry-cooperative movements are made; progress is tracked, open, and accountable. If you want a critical take on Blender therefore, for one you ought to look outside a community of business-minded devs. Look where artists hang out and you'll find a less rational take that is based on individual likes and dislikes. Where logic doesn't matter so much--it's how you feel. That's where you'll get into it. And if you look at other FOSS graphics software communities where the project lead is someone who just does whatever they want, even better, you'll find a group of users who either adapt or leave, and that's quite different from Blender's psychological development ecosystem in a lot of ways. Alternately you could go more-business and go ask a SolidWorks user group to tell you how great Blender is. They will probably tell you how business is done properly and why the Blender way is clueless in various ways. It so happens I ran an online community for another FOSS 3D package for over a decade. We got some people who were anti-Blender, and some who were pro-Blender. Often the anti-position was based in prefers-underdog reasons, which I understand. Even in FOSS there are some clear underdogs and people get upset when they like the underdog and continually see another project winning attention instead. We also got some people who were pro-Blender, who thought that our community must be anti-Blender, because we were obviously "competitors in the space." In fact there was never a competitive mindset, it's more that people who lean into that business psychology of "here's how you win" think more often in terms of competition. BTW Blender is definitely an awesome project, I've used it since 2002 and on various commercial projects in addition to hobby stuff.

Thoreandan 5y ago

Related: Shout out to Blender's Open Movie Project https://www.blender.org/about/studio/ https://www.blender.org/about/studio/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_Foundation

nsxwolf 5y ago

How many years of study and practice would it take to do anything shown in that demo reel? I have downloaded Blender several times over the last decades, thinking I would watch some tutorials and learn something, but always gave up having failed to model so much as a solid cube.

Taywee 5y ago
Do some tutorials, or even a paid course. Just like no DAW will replace the need to understand and practice music theory, Blender will never replace the need to understand and be able to work properly with 3D space.
deleted 5y ago
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themodelplumber 5y ago
You have to find your path, that's where the subjective energy comes from. The thing about a demo reel is that you're automatically focusing in on someone else's deep and subjective set of interests (or a group of users' various sets). So it's often way too objective (in terms of psychological distance) a lens through which to be able to see a good starting point for one's humble own self. Personally I eventually found my way in by focusing on lighting and procedural textures. I got really good at making decked-out spheres. :-) It's still a favorite doodling activity. In the process of learning I ended up contributing to Wikipedia articles on things like global illumination, and some of my texturing images are still up there. (And to this day I don't find the modeling part that interesting. One of my projects was in the 2005 Blender showreel I think, it was just a simple project that seemed fun and I couldn't wait to have the modeling part complete)

authed 5y ago

Blender is great... I just tried a bunch of free/open apps to do boolean operations on complex STL files, and it was the best performing one... most completely failed.

a1371 5y ago

I LOVE Blender, like, a kind of love that's embarrassingly too much for a software. No to mention that my work or hobbies don't often interface with 3D modeling. So I have been thinking about what makes this project so special. I think it's the fact that the community owns it. So you don't have to ask for permission to do anything. Mix that with inherently creative people who approach the tool and you get: AI-generated Kanye West rap teaching you how the modifiers work - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7Nn5Uilso0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7Nn5Uilso0

tdrdt 5y ago
I have been using Blender for over 15 years and I also love it but also for different reasons. When I started using Blender I came from 3DsMax. Max took almost half aminute to start, Blender maybe 2 seconds. And now, years later, Blender is still fast. The architecture is just very good. And maybe it's one of the best in the wold. A lot of people hated the UI, but I always loved it. I love that you can arrange the panels the way you like. I wish programs like Photoshop could do this as well. And yes, since v2.8 everything became even better and the learning curve was lowered. I also love all shortcuts and user interactions. This was really made for users. And maybe that's because Blender is mostly made by users. And now v3.0! I am excited about two things: Cycles X (very fast rendering) and the overhauled Geometry Nodes. I believe Geometry Nodes are the next big thing because this is Blender's answer to Houdini. Edit: if you are interested in Geometry Nodes you should check out Erindale @ YT https://youtube.com/c/Erindale https://youtube.com/c/Erindale He creates complete scenes without modeling a thing. The models are all procedurally built.
- black_puppydog 5y ago
  OMG Erindale's voice is so soothing. I have nothing to do with blender or animation at all and I've just watched half of his hexagon video and it's just soo relaxing!
jansan 5y ago
It has been a few zears since I used Blender, because I don't do 3D modeling anymore. But I am following its development and man, this has become such an awesome project. I would not say that I "love" Blender, but I highly admire what has become of this software that when I worked with it was actually quite hard to use.

selecsosi 5y ago

I have used Blender running headless to generate automated slideshow service for a custom gifting song startup I was a part of. After some initial hiccups getting it packaged (running a 2.78 version while cycles was being rewritten). I can't not speak highly enough about the tools and ecosystem that the community has assembled. There is no other tool that was suitable for the type of dynamic video editing via script control that is also open source. Congratulations on the new release team!

nl 5y ago

My son ran a render last night using the e-Cycles render engine: 12 minutes. Same scene today on Blender 3 with the new version of Cycles (aka Cycles-X): 5 minutes. 12 mins to 5 mins with a software upgrade is pretty good!

BSOhealth 5y ago

This has nothing to do with Blender specifically: is there, or why isn’t there, a DAW (Pro Tools, Logic Pro, etc.) that is relatively comparable with closed-source tools? I’ve often heard the sound/plugin packs for DAW keep people on the paid products. Why shouldn’t there be a competitive open source option? Edit to contextualize, and maybe an added question: Blender is amazing and competes in so many ways with high-cost, industry-standard software. How is the DAW world not a great analog and opportunity?

TheSeth 5y ago
for a fully-featured DAW there's Ardour https://ardour.org/ https://ardour.org/ which supports lots of the proprietary plugins (VST etc.)
urbdbdkxkd 5y ago
I think there's a couple of reasons. 1) Blender is ~25 years old and has been open source for ~20. That's a lot of development hours. 2) Blender marketplace and the acceptance of the existence of paid addons by (most) of the Blender community means that addon developers can actually be paid for their work and to maintain their addons. Addons add a lot of features that Blender doesn't have out of the box and if you're using blender professionally you are probably reliant on addons for your workflow and it is a pain when they break (which they do frequently because the API is so unstable). Not being attacked, and even being encouraged to charge for open source software (and adddons are all open source) on the understanding that not all devs are lucky enough to work for faangs, be tenured professors or still live with our parents, and that we need to eat is something that is pretty unique in my experience.
marcan_42 5y ago
Ardour is pretty good. I use it for audio production on Linux and it has quite a few powerful features that many commercial DAWs don't. With Ardour 6 it introduced end to end latency compensation, which is a must have for complex projects, and the current development trunk includes a complete revamp of tempo handling that fixes longstanding issues with rounding error on MIDI region edges and such. I'm very much looking forward to the next release from that branch; it'll have solved all gripes I had with Ardour until now. They keep adding handy features, like the recent volume normalization feature that automatically ajusts your master gain to produce a master at the correct level for different streaming services. Granted, it's not perfect - some people like some of the workflows, some don't - but I find it very good, especially if you spend some time customizing keyboard shortcuts and maybe adding a script or two (it's scriptable in Lua, and you can even write audio plug-ins in that) It supports LV2 and VST2/3 plug-ins natively, and with Yabridge you can bridge Windows VST2/3 plug-ins very seamlessly. (Full disclosure: I have a few bugfix patches in Ardour; I'm fairly committed to it for my needs and happy to help debug crashes and such, though these days they're very rare; the developers are very responsive on IRC though!)

josefrichter 5y ago

Is this the most successful ones source software in history? I mean one that might be considered on par with the very top of the commercial software, maybe even better? Has there ever been anything like that?

budoso 5y ago
Linux
krapp 5y ago
Firefox and Linux come to mind...
- floatboth 5y ago
  And LibreOffice

anon_cow1111 5y ago

For more experienced users, I have a question; Does anyone have an index of blender guides and tutorials, that are *NOT* hosted on youtube? Literally everything I'm finding insists on using a video for something that could be explained with a few images and paragraphs of text. It's incredibly frustrating.

dustractor 5y ago

https://i.imgur.com/Ikx12dL.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Ikx12dL.jpg