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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 Lin

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!
- karolist 5y ago
  Glad you brought up scripting! I'm 2 years in my Blender journey. I remember downloading it before YouTube existed, took hours to compile the FreeBSD port, launched and got overwhelmed by the complexity, it ended there. My goal with Blender is to animate explainers and screencasts, how feasible is to have a procedural pipeline where I could just launch Python scripts changing basic properties like text, position? Basically I want to generate animations where I have a bunch of re-useable objects but change their properties via code, is this something Python bindings could help me?
  - tusharsadhwani 5y ago
    not very related, but you might want to check out manim: https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim
  - daenz 5y ago
    Funny you should ask! Yes, it can be done. I've built something like this recently...my goal was to make programmatic videos of chat conversations. Here's an example[0]. This was rendered totally headless (no launching blender UI) and the input file was a json document that was generated programmatically. I'm in the process of containerizing it so it can be run serverless in the cloud, driven by a job queue. 0. https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/arwmoffat.com/hn.mp4 https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/arwmoffat.com/hn.mp4
    - karolist 5y ago
      You've just blown my mind! Wow, this is something I'll spend my next 3 months before summer definitely. Thanks for the inspiration and showing the possibilities, the headless part is just icing on top.
      - daenz 5y ago
        Cool! You will love it. If you get really jammed up on a problem, find my contact info in my profile and I may be able to unblock you.
Pulcinella 5y ago
Something to note about the AMD 6000 GPUs, the Metal API currently doesn’t support the ray tracing acceleration hardware that they have. https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/690033 https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/690033
ttfkam 5y ago
I still think PostgreSQL wins on the clean codebase competition. It's a thing of beauty. Don't get me wrong. Full props to Blender and its contributors. The UI/UX, speed, and stability have improved by leaps and bounds in the last few years. I miss the game engine though.

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!

karolist 5y ago
Glad you brought up scripting! I'm 2 years in my Blender journey. I remember downloading it before YouTube existed, took hours to compile the FreeBSD port, launched and got overwhelmed by the complexity, it ended there. My goal with Blender is to animate explainers and screencasts, how feasible is to have a procedural pipeline where I could just launch Python scripts changing basic properties like text, position? Basically I want to generate animations where I have a bunch of re-useable objects but change their properties via code, is this something Python bindings could help me?
- tusharsadhwani 5y ago
  not very related, but you might want to check out manim: https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim
- daenz 5y ago
  Funny you should ask! Yes, it can be done. I've built something like this recently...my goal was to make programmatic videos of chat conversations. Here's an example[0]. This was rendered totally headless (no launching blender UI) and the input file was a json document that was generated programmatically. I'm in the process of containerizing it so it can be run serverless in the cloud, driven by a job queue. 0. https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/arwmoffat.com/hn.mp4 https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/arwmoffat.com/hn.mp4
  - karolist 5y ago
    You've just blown my mind! Wow, this is something I'll spend my next 3 months before summer definitely. Thanks for the inspiration and showing the possibilities, the headless part is just icing on top.
    - daenz 5y ago
      Cool! You will love it. If you get really jammed up on a problem, find my contact info in my profile and I may be able to unblock you.

Pulcinella 5y ago

Something to note about the AMD 6000 GPUs, the Metal API currently doesn’t support the ray tracing acceleration hardware that they have. https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/690033 https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/690033

ttfkam 5y ago

I still think PostgreSQL wins on the clean codebase competition. It's a thing of beauty. Don't get me wrong. Full props to Blender and its contributors. The UI/UX, speed, and stability have improved by leaps and bounds in the last few years. I miss the game engine though.