16 ms·

Blender 3.1

527 points by mkaic 5y ago

mkaic 5y ago
Metal backend is currently only M1 compatible, which is a shame, but still super exciting that they added it at all. Really great to see Apple contributing to the project, plus I think they mentioned they plan to make the Cycles Metal backend compatible with older Macs in the future. Might be able to finally make use of those Radeon cards in older high-specced Macs! EDIT: Looks like I missed that it's also already compatible with AMD cards in older Macs, they just have to have the latest OS installed!
- oDot 5y ago
  Says it's compatible with AMD GPUs as well
  - mkaic 5y ago
    Oh, missed that! Still requiring the newest OS though which is understandable but unfortunate.
    - Pulcinella 5y ago
      To be fair, the original announcement about upcoming Metal support did state that the support for Apple GPUs was the first priority, with AMD GPU support at a later date, so it’s nice to see both supported right out of the gate.
mkaic 5y ago
Blender's pace of development is blistering and never fails to impress me. The community is also super inspiring, and the founder of Blender, Ton Roosendaal, is a really cool person as well. I'm super hyped for the future of this software.
- prox 5y ago
  Godot also seems to be modeling itself in the same style as Blender. Years ago I was very vocal about the opportunities of an easy to use open source game engine. Godot 4 is well on its way to be very accessible and getting high end functions. I wish GIMP and other projects were like this.
sydthrowaway 5y ago
The problem with the pace of development is that its impossible to learn new interfaces etc in time Some of the development funds should go to training materials.
- mkaic 5y ago
  In my experience, I actually find the community does a pretty darn good job of keeping up with the training side of things. There are several dozen YouTube channels that just make Blender tutorials 24/7 for a living, and every time a new update is dropped, tons of new beginner tutorials for the new features get made.
- slimsag 5y ago
  I don't understand this? Blender has world-class training material provided for free. Between the stuff they themselves offer[0] and the literally thousands of training videos on YouTube.. what do you think is missing? [0] https://www.blender.org/support/tutorials https://www.blender.org/support/tutorials
  - mkaic 5y ago
    Agree with this. Blender has some of the best training material available, especially compared to its competition, because it's free and open source, so anyone can use it and, importantly, anyone can make tutorials for it!
  - 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
    Blender being well-documented is a relatively recent phenomenon, so I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of people simply don't realize that things have changed. Back in its early days it was infamous for having an impenetrable UI and practically no documentation (unless you bought what amounted to the official strategy guide, which was decent enough on its own terms but still wasn't a proper manual).
    - UncleEntity 5y ago
      Spent many an hour digging through the source code to figure out what a particular button did…
emadabdulrahim 5y ago
Can't wait to try it tonight on my M1 Max and compare rendering speed with v3!
- mkaic 5y ago
  Let us know how that goes! I'm getting an M1 Max MBP sometime in the next two weeks and already know the very first thing I install on it after booting is gonna be Blender. It's a rite of passage for any new computer I acquire!
  - cevn 5y ago
    The computer is an absolute beast, it compiles faster than my old desktop intel cpu and I just have M1 Pro or something..
- barrenko 5y ago
  One of the most marvelous hobbies.
  - mkaic 5y ago
    There are few things more exciting about getting a new computer than getting to test how fast Blender runs on it!
- stevenpetryk 5y ago
  Make sure you have macOS Monterrey 12.3 beta (the Metal backend requires 12.3 or above).
  - Arcanum-XIII 5y ago
    Works fine for me on my M1 with 12.2.1.
- sirn 5y ago
  I've been playing around with it on M1 Max since the Alpha build with great results. Here's some numbers from my latest benchmark run: "Junk Shop" demo using Cycles M1 Max (10 cores CPU / 32 cores GPU) Blender 3.0 (CPU) / 1:14.64 minutes Blender 3.1 (CPU) / 1:10.86 minutes (1.05x) Blender 3.1 (Metal GPU) / 0:44.16 minutes (1.68x) Blender 3.1 (Metal GPU+CPU) / 0:27.90 minutes (2.67x) For a reference, RTX 3090 (OptiX) was 0:18.22
slimsag 5y ago
That GPU-based subdivision surfaces being ~10X faster is a welcome improvement! Subdivision surfaces have always been so slow, those are some incredible gains!
- mkaic 5y ago
  Always really exciting to see a number like 10X anywhere in release notes, it's like Christmas!
mkaic 5y ago
I genuinely think Blender is my single favorite piece of software I've ever used, especially the latest few versions. While it's always been a powerful piece of software, the past 3 or 4 major releases (really everything since 2.8 actually) have just been nonstop UX improvement on top of ridiculous amounts of thoughtfully implemented new features.
- knolan 5y ago
  It’s a joy to use, I feel I can do anything with it confidently.
0xcoffee 5y ago
I tried to download their new Benchmark 3.0.0, but site seems to be hammered. Softpedia has a mirror though: https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Benchmarks/Blender-Benchmark.shtml https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Benchmarks/Blender-Benc...
- DoctorOW 5y ago
  While the site is hammered, I'll point out that you can get automatic Blender updates through Steam if you're so inclined. https://store.steampowered.com/app/365670/Blender/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/365670/Blender/
  - nvrspyx 5y ago
    They're talking about the new Benchmark tool specifically. I'm not sure if it's included within Blender itself, but it's not available (at least separately if included with Blender) on Steam.
    - DoctorOW 5y ago
      I assumed it was the same website/CDN for both. Maybe I was wrong. Still, the Steam thing is a little known tip.
skrillhouse 5y ago
Major kudos to the Blender team for the phenomenal work they’ve been doing. I only started learning Blender a little over a year ago, and the amount of progress that’s been made in that short amount of time is incredible. In a time when I’m often frustrated with the abundance of low quality and user-hostile software, Blender has been inspirational in demonstrating that it’s still possible to develop high quality, powerful applications (and offer it for free nonetheless!)
karolist 5y ago
Blender is shaping up to be the best open source project I've seen in my 20 years of tech, and I'm comparing this with many other large ones I've used, like Linux kernel or various distros, FreeBSD, Kubernetes and so on. They do everything so well, even the releases, I think it beats the paid competition now or will soon do in feature parity and ease of use. As of Blender 2.8 the UI is fantastic. This update comes with many geometry node improvements which continue the trend of making Blender the premium non-destructive modelling solution. I'm in particular interested in seeing how 6900 XT and regular M1 (in Mac mini form) will perform under Metal with 3.1 and macOs 12.3. I was a long time Radeon VII user on Mac but before 3.0 the stability and performance was just not there so I've moved my Blender experiments to Windows and Nvidia which works spectacularly but I'm not fussed about booting win just for Blender. Sadly I don't think AMD is bringing HIP for their older, pre-6000 GPUs https://code.blender.org/2021/11/next-level-support-for-amd-gpus/ https://code.blender.org/2021/11/next-level-support-for-amd-...
- gloriana 5y ago
  I wish other software projects would take a similar approach such as Open AI, making the service and software totally free to use.
- daenz 5y ago
  100% agree. I've been using Blender for over 20 years as a hobbyist and it has consistently been one of my favorite pieces of software. It's written by creators, for creators, and you can feel the love and care that they put into it. One area I wish they would start to give more attention is their scripting. I consider myself a Python expert, and the Python API leaves a lot to be desired at an architectural level. For example, many operations (bpy.ops) require an accurate "context" to succeed. This context is essentially putting the UI in a particular state, as if the user had clicked specific items and activated certain windows. This makes the api feel like an afterthought to the traditional UI interaction, and introduces a number of issues that I won't bore you with. Suffice to say, you end up writing a lot of boilerplate to ensure predictable state changes in between operations. If they levelled up the Python API to be more friendly to the code-oriented generative art crowd, they would be even more unstoppable!
neves 5y ago
Is it worth the trouble for an eventual User to learn Blender? I don't do animations, but I like to edit some personal videos with a pinch of VFX. I always read that it is great and powerful, but has a difficult UI. I always wanted to learn it, but time is limited.
- karolist 5y ago
  Definitely worth it. As it's a visual tool you won't learn by reading about it, nor can you learn Blender knowing everything about it's features (it would be like getting good at chess by reading chess rules)... what I mean is you have to learn by doing many small experiments and using visual guides. I recommend doing the Doughnut tutorial by Blender Guru first, then move to CrossMind Studio, another really great one is Ducky 3D. Default Cube is great, but some of the stuff is a bit advanced. Polygon Runway is good but got bored of the same style. The best for more advanced users I've seen so far is Polyfjord, just next level stuff, can't recommend that channel enough.
  - mkaic 5y ago
    Polyfjord is fantastic. If you're interested in the filmmaking/VFX side of things at an intermediate to advanced level, I can't recommend Ian Hubert enough. His YouTube channel is legendary but his Patreon is even better, tons and tons of informal, unscripted videos of just him making stuff and narrating while he does it. I know that's not everyone's cup of tea but I personally feel like I've learned most of what I know about blender from those videos!
    - karolist 5y ago
      Thanks for the Hubert recommendation, he is definitely pushing the boundaries of what can be done and showing it, but at the level I'm at (occasional user, 2 years in), his videos to me seemed a bit like the famous "How to draw an Owl" picture... I didn't know he had Patreon, I'm already a member of CrossMind Studio and Polyfjord, will definitely check it out. Thanks again.
      - 5y ago
pmoriarty 5y ago
I tried learning Blender again recently... it just seems so overcomplicated.
- ur-whale 5y ago
  > it just seems so overcomplicated. Sure, it's not Sketchup, and there is a little bit of a steep learning curve at the beginning (it used to be much, much worse). However, unlike Sketchup, the freaking depth of the software is nothing short of amazing. That investment you make at the beginning is really, really worth it. Also: there is literally a ton of tutorials on YouTube to get started with Blender, and it is rather easy to learn the basics nowadays by doing a bit of monkey see monkey do with Blender open on one monitor and the tutorial vid on the other.
- karolist 5y ago
  Are you familiar with any other 3D modelling software? If not it's not entirely fair to say Blender is overcomplicated, 3D modelling itself is a complicated field and Blender is like a swissknife, you can learn only the features you intend to use. Hard surface modelling, basic scene setup, lightning and you're already at a level where you can enjoy the process. Want more? Procedural, non-destructive modelling, sculpting, VFX, compositing, it even has a video editor built in (though most people just use Davinci Resolve instead). I think Blender is as complicated as you choose it to be, like Math, Physics or any other non trivial field.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  Did you do the donut tutorial?
  - runevault 5y ago
    There are a few good options, this def being one of them. Grant Abbitt being another. Blender is software that feels complicated at first because, fundamentally it is doing a complicated thing. But once you start to understand it you cut through all the things that you don't need to worry about because 90% of the time you will be in VERY specific contexts (hard modeling, sculpting, painting, etc) and not worrying about large swaths of the features. But to do everything it needs to do all of those things have to exist. Being able to learn how to context switch and take advantage of the different workspaces helps a TON. Gotta get used to it though, and it is a big lift. I started messing with Blender off and on a year or so ago and while I'm no master, once I get in my groove I feel like I can move pretty quickly.
Taywee 5y ago
Blender is so cool. I really need to put in the time to actually learn geometry nodes; they seem crazy powerful.
mrtksn 5y ago
Hey, does anybody knows what happened with Apple becoming a Patron? Apple is still not listed on the contributors list.[0] [0] https://fund.blender.org/ https://fund.blender.org/
- dry_soup 5y ago
  metal support gets top billing on the release page[1], and I think it was apple who contributed most of the code for that. so maybe apple just doesn't like being in a sea of logos with all the riff raff. [1] https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-1/ https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-1/
snvzz 5y ago
Is it just me, or did the release announcement page get harder to read, relative to older releases?
haberman 5y ago
The more awesome Blender gets, the more jealous I am that it's not designed for CAD. I keep wondering if FreeCAD will eventually make these kinds of strides, or if it's better to try getting Blender to do CAD-likes stuff. I know there is a bit of CAM-like stuff floating around for Blender. But I'm always afraid that this will come up short in the long run, due to Blender's fundamentally mesh-based nature.
- karolist 5y ago
  While it's not really a tool for precision modelling you can get the objects to real world size by setting the coordinate space and units to your scale. I've modelled the house I'm building in Blender, put it on a real scale and size plot of land oriented against true north. There's even a built in plugin to model sun position based on time and coordinates, it's been mind blowing to be able to see how the shades will change through the windows and how another building will (or not) block the sun during different months. I've tried FreeCAD for precision modelling like house plans but it was just painful to use, especially compared to AutoCAD which is super good and the snapping is unlike anything I've seen, but sadly prohibitively expensive for non professional use. Their cheapest plan is something like $200/mo.
  - supermatt 5y ago
    I’m trying to do something myself but modelling an existing building. I just get really confused on the “right way” too use these tools. For example, on a log building do I model the logs or some flat wall with a texture, etc?
    - syntheweave 5y ago
      The best way to proceed is to think in terms of placeholders. Make the wall simple now; then imagine how you want to detail it, and proceed with the understanding that you'll want to replace it at some point, and then it's just a matter of setting up the organization of your objects so that that can be done gracefully. If you don't have a particular requirement like presentation in a game engine, you don't have to aim for it to be optimized and can do something like making a detailed sculpt for every log. If you do have that requirement there's still often a reason to push off the optimization to a final step, because it might involve destructive workflows where you essentially turn your initial detailed asset into a reference for the optimized one(e.g. baking a normal map). As long as you expect everything to be done in two or three iterations and split out the work appropriately, you won't be stuck for too long.
mrguyorama 5y ago
As a Windows user with an AMD 5700XT, a $400 GPU, I'm still locked out of the wonderful world of accelerated Blender. AMD has been straight up negligent in their software support for a long time. It sucks that you basically have to buy a super power hungry, super expensive GPU from a company that refuses to do anything open source if you want to be able to do anything but play games on your GPU.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- zamadatix 5y ago
  Prior to Blender 3.0 OpenCL should have worked. 3.0 and later the HIP backend should be working on your setup, though it's not officially validated for the 5700 XT, here are some numbers from a 5500 XT prior to 3.0 GA https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:ThomasDinges/AMDBenchmarks https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:ThomasDinges/AMDBenchmark...
- Etherlord87 5y ago
  > It sucks that you basically have to buy a super power hungry, super expensive GPU from a company that refuses to do anything open source if you want to be able to do anything but play games on your GPU. I have a lot of fun in Blender for two years now, using Nvidia GTX 970 - it's quite old by now, and definitely cheaper than $400. As someone who has seen a lot of bug reports, Blender has problems with AMD, Mac, and newest Nvidia (RTX) cards.
mastax 5y ago
The geometry nodes demo in the release video looks extremely cool! To clarify, that is a node-graph procedurally generated house with adjustable properties (decay, etc)? I know that's been a thing for a while (speed tree, etc) but it's really impressive.
- cturtle 5y ago
  You are correct! Here is the forum post where the creator shared their work [0]. There is a nice breakdown of the different layers with a base structure, then many layers of procedural nodes. [0]: https://blenderartists.org/t/procedural-abandoned-house-with-geometry-nodes/1363024 https://blenderartists.org/t/procedural-abandoned-house-with...
cwkoss 5y ago
Blender is amazing. It can do so many things. If you want to try it out, I highly recommend "Blender Guru" on youtube. The "donut tutorial" is a great overview that orients you to where all of the most important functions are. Took me a ~3 evenings of 3 hours each (included some playful fiddling outside the scope of just completing the tutorial) and now I feel like I can generally google for answers to questions and get by in blender. Also 3.0 featured a roughly 8x speed increase in rendering! It's insanely cool.
- samspenc 5y ago
  I started on my Blender journey just a few weeks ago and I've been delighted by it so far. Blender is really a creator's dream come true. Blender Guru and CG Geek are my favorite Youtube channels for Blender tutorials and they both make it easy to get started with Blender with short and practical tutorials. While I can only create some basic shapes so far, I'm really impressed by what is possible based on the tutorials I've seen. I'm looking forward to getting into rigging and animation soon and start with some low-poly and eventually more higher-resolution models and animations.
- outworlder 5y ago
  And keep at it, I guess. I'll go through a tutorial, and start picking up stuff. Then life happens, I spend some time away. Now I want to pick it up again... and I have to start from scratch. Here goes attempt 5.
  - maroonblazer 5y ago
    This is the case with nearly everything, right? Use it or lose it.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  "Doing the donut" has become the initiation for even serious CAD engineers. Really good tutorial. Even interesting for software devs that want to dabble in 3d rendering as the knowledge from the design pipeline really helps in general understanding of the problem space.
cglong 5y ago
I came across this film[1] the other day. It was made with Blender by a college student as their graduation art, and has single-handedly made me realize just how powerful it is! [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSc27JPm3r8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSc27JPm3r8
- riidom 5y ago
  Wow so much not my style of music, and still I loved the whole thing. Thanks for sharing! :D
bedros 5y ago
the user interface with drag, drop, search looks very slick, anyone knows what part of blender code does that, or any python lib I can used for a UI like that
austinthetaco 5y ago
I've dipped my toes into Blender, Cinema4d, and Unreal. At this point in the game what's the use for blender moving forward besides modeling? Seems like the real-time lighting in the latest UE (lumen) along with their Nanite system puts UE way ahead of Blender outside of the modeling aspect.
doctoboggan 5y ago
Does anyone have experience with using Blender as a video editor? I have experience with final cut pro and imovie and am looking for to switch to something free.
- erwincoumans 5y ago
  I've used Blender before as Video Editor, it works but doesn't have all the special effects. Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb5pge01H4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb5pge01H4Q
warent 5y ago
Minor error in the video that was kind of funny, at about 1:00 it says you can now load "HUGE images!" but the text added in editing says 1200x1500, off by an order of magnitude :D
philsnow 5y ago
Just a heads up, I tried clicking the download button on https://www.blender.org/download/ https://www.blender.org/download/ from Firefox 97 on an m1 mac and it sent me the x86 dmg. I don't know how it autodetects platform but maybe double-check so you don't end up using Rosetta without noticing.
uwagar 5y ago
i like houdini, the niggle is it isnt open source. how close can blender get like houdini? what should i look at? thanks!
raxxorrax 5y ago
I cannot download new versions as quickly as they release new ones... and "minor" version increases are historically always quite massive. Blender is an awesome tool by now that doesn't need to hide from commercial alternatives at all.
jinglejelly 5y ago
I just published this in Blender. It took me two weeks to make, during which I alternately cursed the software for it's odd UX and sat amazed at the things an almost total beginner could conjure onto the screen. Blender is hard to learn, but with each thing you learn it sucks you in more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygLbwZP9ItA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygLbwZP9ItA
- ehutch79 5y ago
  I think this is the kind of software, where if you simplify the ui/ux, you actually remove what makes it so powerful.

527 points by mkaic 5y ago

Metal backend is currently only M1 compatible, which is a shame, but still super exciting that they added it at all. Really great to see Apple contributing to the project, plus I think they mentioned they plan to make the Cycles Metal backend compatible with older Macs in the future. Might be able to finally make use of those Radeon cards in older high-specced Macs! EDIT: Looks like I missed that it's also already compatible with AMD cards in older Macs, they just have to have the latest OS installed!

oDot 5y ago
Says it's compatible with AMD GPUs as well
- mkaic 5y ago
  Oh, missed that! Still requiring the newest OS though which is understandable but unfortunate.
  - Pulcinella 5y ago
    To be fair, the original announcement about upcoming Metal support did state that the support for Apple GPUs was the first priority, with AMD GPU support at a later date, so it’s nice to see both supported right out of the gate.

mkaic 5y ago

Blender's pace of development is blistering and never fails to impress me. The community is also super inspiring, and the founder of Blender, Ton Roosendaal, is a really cool person as well. I'm super hyped for the future of this software.

prox 5y ago
Godot also seems to be modeling itself in the same style as Blender. Years ago I was very vocal about the opportunities of an easy to use open source game engine. Godot 4 is well on its way to be very accessible and getting high end functions. I wish GIMP and other projects were like this.

sydthrowaway 5y ago

The problem with the pace of development is that its impossible to learn new interfaces etc in time Some of the development funds should go to training materials.

mkaic 5y ago
In my experience, I actually find the community does a pretty darn good job of keeping up with the training side of things. There are several dozen YouTube channels that just make Blender tutorials 24/7 for a living, and every time a new update is dropped, tons of new beginner tutorials for the new features get made.
slimsag 5y ago
I don't understand this? Blender has world-class training material provided for free. Between the stuff they themselves offer[0] and the literally thousands of training videos on YouTube.. what do you think is missing? [0] https://www.blender.org/support/tutorials https://www.blender.org/support/tutorials
- mkaic 5y ago
  Agree with this. Blender has some of the best training material available, especially compared to its competition, because it's free and open source, so anyone can use it and, importantly, anyone can make tutorials for it!
- 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
  Blender being well-documented is a relatively recent phenomenon, so I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of people simply don't realize that things have changed. Back in its early days it was infamous for having an impenetrable UI and practically no documentation (unless you bought what amounted to the official strategy guide, which was decent enough on its own terms but still wasn't a proper manual).
  - UncleEntity 5y ago
    Spent many an hour digging through the source code to figure out what a particular button did…

emadabdulrahim 5y ago

Can't wait to try it tonight on my M1 Max and compare rendering speed with v3!

mkaic 5y ago
Let us know how that goes! I'm getting an M1 Max MBP sometime in the next two weeks and already know the very first thing I install on it after booting is gonna be Blender. It's a rite of passage for any new computer I acquire!
- cevn 5y ago
  The computer is an absolute beast, it compiles faster than my old desktop intel cpu and I just have M1 Pro or something..
barrenko 5y ago
One of the most marvelous hobbies.
- mkaic 5y ago
  There are few things more exciting about getting a new computer than getting to test how fast Blender runs on it!
stevenpetryk 5y ago
Make sure you have macOS Monterrey 12.3 beta (the Metal backend requires 12.3 or above).
- Arcanum-XIII 5y ago
  Works fine for me on my M1 with 12.2.1.
sirn 5y ago
I've been playing around with it on M1 Max since the Alpha build with great results. Here's some numbers from my latest benchmark run: "Junk Shop" demo using Cycles M1 Max (10 cores CPU / 32 cores GPU) Blender 3.0 (CPU) / 1:14.64 minutes Blender 3.1 (CPU) / 1:10.86 minutes (1.05x) Blender 3.1 (Metal GPU) / 0:44.16 minutes (1.68x) Blender 3.1 (Metal GPU+CPU) / 0:27.90 minutes (2.67x) For a reference, RTX 3090 (OptiX) was 0:18.22

slimsag 5y ago

That GPU-based subdivision surfaces being ~10X faster is a welcome improvement! Subdivision surfaces have always been so slow, those are some incredible gains!

mkaic 5y ago
Always really exciting to see a number like 10X anywhere in release notes, it's like Christmas!

mkaic 5y ago

I genuinely think Blender is my single favorite piece of software I've ever used, especially the latest few versions. While it's always been a powerful piece of software, the past 3 or 4 major releases (really everything since 2.8 actually) have just been nonstop UX improvement on top of ridiculous amounts of thoughtfully implemented new features.

knolan 5y ago
It’s a joy to use, I feel I can do anything with it confidently.

0xcoffee 5y ago

I tried to download their new Benchmark 3.0.0, but site seems to be hammered. Softpedia has a mirror though: https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Benchmarks/Blender-Benchmark.shtml https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Benchmarks/Blender-Benc...

DoctorOW 5y ago
While the site is hammered, I'll point out that you can get automatic Blender updates through Steam if you're so inclined. https://store.steampowered.com/app/365670/Blender/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/365670/Blender/
- nvrspyx 5y ago
  They're talking about the new Benchmark tool specifically. I'm not sure if it's included within Blender itself, but it's not available (at least separately if included with Blender) on Steam.
  - DoctorOW 5y ago
    I assumed it was the same website/CDN for both. Maybe I was wrong. Still, the Steam thing is a little known tip.

skrillhouse 5y ago

Major kudos to the Blender team for the phenomenal work they’ve been doing. I only started learning Blender a little over a year ago, and the amount of progress that’s been made in that short amount of time is incredible. In a time when I’m often frustrated with the abundance of low quality and user-hostile software, Blender has been inspirational in demonstrating that it’s still possible to develop high quality, powerful applications (and offer it for free nonetheless!)

karolist 5y ago

Blender is shaping up to be the best open source project I've seen in my 20 years of tech, and I'm comparing this with many other large ones I've used, like Linux kernel or various distros, FreeBSD, Kubernetes and so on. They do everything so well, even the releases, I think it beats the paid competition now or will soon do in feature parity and ease of use. As of Blender 2.8 the UI is fantastic. This update comes with many geometry node improvements which continue the trend of making Blender the premium non-destructive modelling solution. I'm in particular interested in seeing how 6900 XT and regular M1 (in Mac mini form) will perform under Metal with 3.1 and macOs 12.3. I was a long time Radeon VII user on Mac but before 3.0 the stability and performance was just not there so I've moved my Blender experiments to Windows and Nvidia which works spectacularly but I'm not fussed about booting win just for Blender. Sadly I don't think AMD is bringing HIP for their older, pre-6000 GPUs https://code.blender.org/2021/11/next-level-support-for-amd-gpus/ https://code.blender.org/2021/11/next-level-support-for-amd-...

gloriana 5y ago
I wish other software projects would take a similar approach such as Open AI, making the service and software totally free to use.
daenz 5y ago
100% agree. I've been using Blender for over 20 years as a hobbyist and it has consistently been one of my favorite pieces of software. It's written by creators, for creators, and you can feel the love and care that they put into it. One area I wish they would start to give more attention is their scripting. I consider myself a Python expert, and the Python API leaves a lot to be desired at an architectural level. For example, many operations (bpy.ops) require an accurate "context" to succeed. This context is essentially putting the UI in a particular state, as if the user had clicked specific items and activated certain windows. This makes the api feel like an afterthought to the traditional UI interaction, and introduces a number of issues that I won't bore you with. Suffice to say, you end up writing a lot of boilerplate to ensure predictable state changes in between operations. If they levelled up the Python API to be more friendly to the code-oriented generative art crowd, they would be even more unstoppable!

neves 5y ago

Is it worth the trouble for an eventual User to learn Blender? I don't do animations, but I like to edit some personal videos with a pinch of VFX. I always read that it is great and powerful, but has a difficult UI. I always wanted to learn it, but time is limited.

karolist 5y ago
Definitely worth it. As it's a visual tool you won't learn by reading about it, nor can you learn Blender knowing everything about it's features (it would be like getting good at chess by reading chess rules)... what I mean is you have to learn by doing many small experiments and using visual guides. I recommend doing the Doughnut tutorial by Blender Guru first, then move to CrossMind Studio, another really great one is Ducky 3D. Default Cube is great, but some of the stuff is a bit advanced. Polygon Runway is good but got bored of the same style. The best for more advanced users I've seen so far is Polyfjord, just next level stuff, can't recommend that channel enough.
- mkaic 5y ago
  Polyfjord is fantastic. If you're interested in the filmmaking/VFX side of things at an intermediate to advanced level, I can't recommend Ian Hubert enough. His YouTube channel is legendary but his Patreon is even better, tons and tons of informal, unscripted videos of just him making stuff and narrating while he does it. I know that's not everyone's cup of tea but I personally feel like I've learned most of what I know about blender from those videos!
  - karolist 5y ago
    Thanks for the Hubert recommendation, he is definitely pushing the boundaries of what can be done and showing it, but at the level I'm at (occasional user, 2 years in), his videos to me seemed a bit like the famous "How to draw an Owl" picture... I didn't know he had Patreon, I'm already a member of CrossMind Studio and Polyfjord, will definitely check it out. Thanks again.
    - 5y ago

pmoriarty 5y ago

I tried learning Blender again recently... it just seems so overcomplicated.

ur-whale 5y ago
> it just seems so overcomplicated. Sure, it's not Sketchup, and there is a little bit of a steep learning curve at the beginning (it used to be much, much worse). However, unlike Sketchup, the freaking depth of the software is nothing short of amazing. That investment you make at the beginning is really, really worth it. Also: there is literally a ton of tutorials on YouTube to get started with Blender, and it is rather easy to learn the basics nowadays by doing a bit of monkey see monkey do with Blender open on one monitor and the tutorial vid on the other.
karolist 5y ago
Are you familiar with any other 3D modelling software? If not it's not entirely fair to say Blender is overcomplicated, 3D modelling itself is a complicated field and Blender is like a swissknife, you can learn only the features you intend to use. Hard surface modelling, basic scene setup, lightning and you're already at a level where you can enjoy the process. Want more? Procedural, non-destructive modelling, sculpting, VFX, compositing, it even has a video editor built in (though most people just use Davinci Resolve instead). I think Blender is as complicated as you choose it to be, like Math, Physics or any other non trivial field.
mandmandam 5y ago
Did you do the donut tutorial?
- runevault 5y ago
  There are a few good options, this def being one of them. Grant Abbitt being another. Blender is software that feels complicated at first because, fundamentally it is doing a complicated thing. But once you start to understand it you cut through all the things that you don't need to worry about because 90% of the time you will be in VERY specific contexts (hard modeling, sculpting, painting, etc) and not worrying about large swaths of the features. But to do everything it needs to do all of those things have to exist. Being able to learn how to context switch and take advantage of the different workspaces helps a TON. Gotta get used to it though, and it is a big lift. I started messing with Blender off and on a year or so ago and while I'm no master, once I get in my groove I feel like I can move pretty quickly.

Taywee 5y ago

Blender is so cool. I really need to put in the time to actually learn geometry nodes; they seem crazy powerful.

mrtksn 5y ago

Hey, does anybody knows what happened with Apple becoming a Patron? Apple is still not listed on the contributors list.[0] [0] https://fund.blender.org/ https://fund.blender.org/

dry_soup 5y ago
metal support gets top billing on the release page[1], and I think it was apple who contributed most of the code for that. so maybe apple just doesn't like being in a sea of logos with all the riff raff. [1] https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-1/ https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-1/

snvzz 5y ago

Is it just me, or did the release announcement page get harder to read, relative to older releases?

haberman 5y ago

The more awesome Blender gets, the more jealous I am that it's not designed for CAD. I keep wondering if FreeCAD will eventually make these kinds of strides, or if it's better to try getting Blender to do CAD-likes stuff. I know there is a bit of CAM-like stuff floating around for Blender. But I'm always afraid that this will come up short in the long run, due to Blender's fundamentally mesh-based nature.

karolist 5y ago
While it's not really a tool for precision modelling you can get the objects to real world size by setting the coordinate space and units to your scale. I've modelled the house I'm building in Blender, put it on a real scale and size plot of land oriented against true north. There's even a built in plugin to model sun position based on time and coordinates, it's been mind blowing to be able to see how the shades will change through the windows and how another building will (or not) block the sun during different months. I've tried FreeCAD for precision modelling like house plans but it was just painful to use, especially compared to AutoCAD which is super good and the snapping is unlike anything I've seen, but sadly prohibitively expensive for non professional use. Their cheapest plan is something like $200/mo.
- supermatt 5y ago
  I’m trying to do something myself but modelling an existing building. I just get really confused on the “right way” too use these tools. For example, on a log building do I model the logs or some flat wall with a texture, etc?
  - syntheweave 5y ago
    The best way to proceed is to think in terms of placeholders. Make the wall simple now; then imagine how you want to detail it, and proceed with the understanding that you'll want to replace it at some point, and then it's just a matter of setting up the organization of your objects so that that can be done gracefully. If you don't have a particular requirement like presentation in a game engine, you don't have to aim for it to be optimized and can do something like making a detailed sculpt for every log. If you do have that requirement there's still often a reason to push off the optimization to a final step, because it might involve destructive workflows where you essentially turn your initial detailed asset into a reference for the optimized one(e.g. baking a normal map). As long as you expect everything to be done in two or three iterations and split out the work appropriately, you won't be stuck for too long.

mrguyorama 5y ago

As a Windows user with an AMD 5700XT, a $400 GPU, I'm still locked out of the wonderful world of accelerated Blender. AMD has been straight up negligent in their software support for a long time. It sucks that you basically have to buy a super power hungry, super expensive GPU from a company that refuses to do anything open source if you want to be able to do anything but play games on your GPU.

deleted 5y ago
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zamadatix 5y ago
Prior to Blender 3.0 OpenCL should have worked. 3.0 and later the HIP backend should be working on your setup, though it's not officially validated for the 5700 XT, here are some numbers from a 5500 XT prior to 3.0 GA https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:ThomasDinges/AMDBenchmarks https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:ThomasDinges/AMDBenchmark...
Etherlord87 5y ago
> It sucks that you basically have to buy a super power hungry, super expensive GPU from a company that refuses to do anything open source if you want to be able to do anything but play games on your GPU. I have a lot of fun in Blender for two years now, using Nvidia GTX 970 - it's quite old by now, and definitely cheaper than $400. As someone who has seen a lot of bug reports, Blender has problems with AMD, Mac, and newest Nvidia (RTX) cards.

mastax 5y ago

The geometry nodes demo in the release video looks extremely cool! To clarify, that is a node-graph procedurally generated house with adjustable properties (decay, etc)? I know that's been a thing for a while (speed tree, etc) but it's really impressive.

cturtle 5y ago
You are correct! Here is the forum post where the creator shared their work [0]. There is a nice breakdown of the different layers with a base structure, then many layers of procedural nodes. [0]: https://blenderartists.org/t/procedural-abandoned-house-with-geometry-nodes/1363024 https://blenderartists.org/t/procedural-abandoned-house-with...

cwkoss 5y ago

Blender is amazing. It can do so many things. If you want to try it out, I highly recommend "Blender Guru" on youtube. The "donut tutorial" is a great overview that orients you to where all of the most important functions are. Took me a ~3 evenings of 3 hours each (included some playful fiddling outside the scope of just completing the tutorial) and now I feel like I can generally google for answers to questions and get by in blender. Also 3.0 featured a roughly 8x speed increase in rendering! It's insanely cool.

samspenc 5y ago
I started on my Blender journey just a few weeks ago and I've been delighted by it so far. Blender is really a creator's dream come true. Blender Guru and CG Geek are my favorite Youtube channels for Blender tutorials and they both make it easy to get started with Blender with short and practical tutorials. While I can only create some basic shapes so far, I'm really impressed by what is possible based on the tutorials I've seen. I'm looking forward to getting into rigging and animation soon and start with some low-poly and eventually more higher-resolution models and animations.
outworlder 5y ago
And keep at it, I guess. I'll go through a tutorial, and start picking up stuff. Then life happens, I spend some time away. Now I want to pick it up again... and I have to start from scratch. Here goes attempt 5.
- maroonblazer 5y ago
  This is the case with nearly everything, right? Use it or lose it.
raxxorrax 5y ago
"Doing the donut" has become the initiation for even serious CAD engineers. Really good tutorial. Even interesting for software devs that want to dabble in 3d rendering as the knowledge from the design pipeline really helps in general understanding of the problem space.

cglong 5y ago

I came across this film[1] the other day. It was made with Blender by a college student as their graduation art, and has single-handedly made me realize just how powerful it is! [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSc27JPm3r8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSc27JPm3r8

riidom 5y ago
Wow so much not my style of music, and still I loved the whole thing. Thanks for sharing! :D

bedros 5y ago

the user interface with drag, drop, search looks very slick, anyone knows what part of blender code does that, or any python lib I can used for a UI like that

austinthetaco 5y ago

I've dipped my toes into Blender, Cinema4d, and Unreal. At this point in the game what's the use for blender moving forward besides modeling? Seems like the real-time lighting in the latest UE (lumen) along with their Nanite system puts UE way ahead of Blender outside of the modeling aspect.

doctoboggan 5y ago

Does anyone have experience with using Blender as a video editor? I have experience with final cut pro and imovie and am looking for to switch to something free.

erwincoumans 5y ago
I've used Blender before as Video Editor, it works but doesn't have all the special effects. Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb5pge01H4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb5pge01H4Q

warent 5y ago

Minor error in the video that was kind of funny, at about 1:00 it says you can now load "HUGE images!" but the text added in editing says 1200x1500, off by an order of magnitude :D

philsnow 5y ago

Just a heads up, I tried clicking the download button on https://www.blender.org/download/ https://www.blender.org/download/ from Firefox 97 on an m1 mac and it sent me the x86 dmg. I don't know how it autodetects platform but maybe double-check so you don't end up using Rosetta without noticing.

uwagar 5y ago

i like houdini, the niggle is it isnt open source. how close can blender get like houdini? what should i look at? thanks!

raxxorrax 5y ago

I cannot download new versions as quickly as they release new ones... and "minor" version increases are historically always quite massive. Blender is an awesome tool by now that doesn't need to hide from commercial alternatives at all.

jinglejelly 5y ago

I just published this in Blender. It took me two weeks to make, during which I alternately cursed the software for it's odd UX and sat amazed at the things an almost total beginner could conjure onto the screen. Blender is hard to learn, but with each thing you learn it sucks you in more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygLbwZP9ItA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygLbwZP9ItA

ehutch79 5y ago
I think this is the kind of software, where if you simplify the ui/ux, you actually remove what makes it so powerful.