5 ms·

It never ceases to amaze me how much improvements Blender is getting all the time. I've never used it much, simply because I got burned in the past by the (lega

It never ceases to amaze me how much improvements Blender is getting all the time. I've never used it much, simply because I got burned in the past by the (legacy) esoteric UI, but it has increasingly become a joy to get started with and just noodle around with. There are other cool open source tools of course. Blender could've easily remained another one of those hard to use niche applications, but they've definitely managed to transcend that.

Topgamer7 4y ago
Blender was one of those things that I got into when I was in my early teens. This was around version 2.3X. It has always had a great community, and made amazing development progress. Version 2.5 was a big ui shift at the time. These days with 2.8 then 3, they have managed to make some amazing progress, in a much faster turn around time. I commend Ton's direction and the amazing work by the devs :)
keewee7 4y ago
The EU and the Dutch government does not get enough credit for sponsoring Blender until very recently when corporate sponsorships took off. In the US the commercial competitors would have sued the government for anti-competitive practices if they had sponsored Blender.
- Shadonototra 4y ago
  - firefoxd 4y ago
    What the parent meant here is that competitors would have sued because Blender is free and open source. Which isn't the case for the companies you listed. More like the makers of Maya, 3dmax, etc.
    - DonHopkins 4y ago
      Speaking of monopolies, the makers (or rather buyer) of Maya and 3dsmax is now Autodesk. They both used to be owned by different companies, and benefited from the competition. But now they're owned by the same monopolistic giant Autodesk, so they're both entrenched in their captive markets, and have stagnated in comparison to how they used to evolve when there was competition. Autodesk really hates Blender, and has always spread a lot of FUD about it. For example, Ton has told me that Autodesk's sales people falsely told their customers that Blender's GPL license means that any content you develop in Blender is automatically licensed under the GPL, so you can't use it to make copyrighted artwork, which is bullshit. There's such a long history of Autodesk spreading FUD about Blender, that when Ton Roosendaal was attacked by a ceiling tile during his talk at the 2014 Blender Conference, he joked that it was Autodesk! ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk
  - hackernewds 4y ago
    You could argue all the money printing and zero interest rates gave companies easy capital access. People rail on them for doing share buybacks, however these companies have also went on to capture international markets, and even companies. Block (fka Square) acquiring Afterpay (an Aussie company) comes to mind.
    - Shadonototra 4y ago
      It's easy when you can bribe them in peace https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/25/microsoft_accused_of_corrupt_business/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/25/microsoft_accused_of_... > Block (fka Square) acquiring Afterpay (an Aussie company) comes to mind. A powerful weapon indeed -- it's unfortunate that people prefer to Flag comments rather than downvote when they disagree with someone, it feels like i'm being silenced for bringing counter arguments to the table American companies receiving government funding/subsidies: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-subsidies-tesla-billions-spacex-solarcity-2021-12?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-su... Anti-competitive practices: https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/71rjyx/why_exynos_is_not_used_by_samsung_in_the_us/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/71rjyx/why_exynos_...
- pkaye 4y ago
  > In the US the commercial competitors would have sued the government for anti-competitive practices if they had sponsored Blender. Can you give an example of where this happened?
  - thatwasunusual 4y ago
    Heard of Google? The latest, and biggest one, is probably when 3K+ companies sued the Trump administration over the Chinese tariffs.[0] [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-china-tariffs-idUSKCN26H03S https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-china-tariffs-idUSKCN26H...
  - aliswe 4y ago
    Maybe they are talking about SpeedTax etc?
  - remuskaos 4y ago
    This sadly happened in Germany, actually. We have a state sponsored weather forecast service, who also released a free Android (and possibly IOS) app. They were successfully sued by a for-profit commercial weather app (that even uses the publicly available data from the state sponsored service). Now the state sponsored app is required by law to not be free. Last I checked it costs about two Euros.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
raxxorraxor 4y ago
I have trouble keeping up with the updates lately. To be honest, compared to quite a few CAD programs common in mechanical engineering, Blender doesn't have to hide here. Quite the contrary indeed.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
Honestly hats off to the Blender dev team for taking their technically impressive but extremely tricky to use software and managing to over just a few years turn it into the one piece of 3D software everyone is suggesting to beginners and the fact it's free isn't even what you mention because the software is just great. Really showing the great user experience on open source projects is possible and that the benefits are worth it.
- Milner08 4y ago
  Well damn, I didn't know that it had gotten easier to use but I am so glad to here it! I will definitely be giving it another go.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Oh I had no idea it was improved now. I tried it about 5 years ago and couldn't make heads or tails of it. I'll try it again.
  - shahar2k 4y ago
    it's improved by quite a bit, I wouldnt call it "intuitive" to an existing 3d user, it just goes against so much pre-existing muscle memory and assumptions from other apps... but so does Z-brush and people love that, I'm using it more and more these days for little tasks, processing meshes, plug ins here and there, it has a beautiful and easy to use renderer but I dont work in a field where rendering matters. I dont really want an alternative way to sculpt texture or model, I have several already, and really my industry (film / previz) is moving to rendering in Unreal or Unity (much more unreal) but as a tool Blender is quickly becoming much more impressive. having tought myself zbrush before it was useful (2.something?) blender feels like it's just gaining that usability now to expose useful features... but there's so much more that can be done.
  - bsenftner 4y ago
    As a career developer 40 years into specializing on 3D graphics and animation, Blender's progress and accumulative feature set is stunning. I realized about 6 months ago Blender had cross a threshold of usability, and in those years of being "difficult to learn and use" the Blender community quietly built out a feature set that rivals, if not exceeds every commercial 3D modeler, animation, node based procedural subsystem, compositing, and scientific visualization product on the market. Due to Blender's deep Python integration, deep learning libraries can be imported and integrated to significant mad computer wizardry. Blender has come of age, and it is going to eat several commercial software publisher's lunch, if they don't wake up.
agumonkey 4y ago
Something about the project is very interesting indeed. It grows at a regular pace for non trivial ideas. And it seems all joyful and light.

Topgamer7 4y ago

Blender was one of those things that I got into when I was in my early teens. This was around version 2.3X. It has always had a great community, and made amazing development progress. Version 2.5 was a big ui shift at the time. These days with 2.8 then 3, they have managed to make some amazing progress, in a much faster turn around time. I commend Ton's direction and the amazing work by the devs :)

keewee7 4y ago

The EU and the Dutch government does not get enough credit for sponsoring Blender until very recently when corporate sponsorships took off. In the US the commercial competitors would have sued the government for anti-competitive practices if they had sponsored Blender.

Shadonototra 4y ago
- firefoxd 4y ago
  What the parent meant here is that competitors would have sued because Blender is free and open source. Which isn't the case for the companies you listed. More like the makers of Maya, 3dmax, etc.
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    Speaking of monopolies, the makers (or rather buyer) of Maya and 3dsmax is now Autodesk. They both used to be owned by different companies, and benefited from the competition. But now they're owned by the same monopolistic giant Autodesk, so they're both entrenched in their captive markets, and have stagnated in comparison to how they used to evolve when there was competition. Autodesk really hates Blender, and has always spread a lot of FUD about it. For example, Ton has told me that Autodesk's sales people falsely told their customers that Blender's GPL license means that any content you develop in Blender is automatically licensed under the GPL, so you can't use it to make copyrighted artwork, which is bullshit. There's such a long history of Autodesk spreading FUD about Blender, that when Ton Roosendaal was attacked by a ceiling tile during his talk at the 2014 Blender Conference, he joked that it was Autodesk! ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk
- hackernewds 4y ago
  You could argue all the money printing and zero interest rates gave companies easy capital access. People rail on them for doing share buybacks, however these companies have also went on to capture international markets, and even companies. Block (fka Square) acquiring Afterpay (an Aussie company) comes to mind.
  - Shadonototra 4y ago
    It's easy when you can bribe them in peace https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/25/microsoft_accused_of_corrupt_business/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/25/microsoft_accused_of_... > Block (fka Square) acquiring Afterpay (an Aussie company) comes to mind. A powerful weapon indeed -- it's unfortunate that people prefer to Flag comments rather than downvote when they disagree with someone, it feels like i'm being silenced for bringing counter arguments to the table American companies receiving government funding/subsidies: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-subsidies-tesla-billions-spacex-solarcity-2021-12?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-government-su... Anti-competitive practices: https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/71rjyx/why_exynos_is_not_used_by_samsung_in_the_us/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/71rjyx/why_exynos_...
pkaye 4y ago
> In the US the commercial competitors would have sued the government for anti-competitive practices if they had sponsored Blender. Can you give an example of where this happened?
- thatwasunusual 4y ago
  Heard of Google? The latest, and biggest one, is probably when 3K+ companies sued the Trump administration over the Chinese tariffs.[0] [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-china-tariffs-idUSKCN26H03S https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-china-tariffs-idUSKCN26H...
- aliswe 4y ago
  Maybe they are talking about SpeedTax etc?
- remuskaos 4y ago
  This sadly happened in Germany, actually. We have a state sponsored weather forecast service, who also released a free Android (and possibly IOS) app. They were successfully sued by a for-profit commercial weather app (that even uses the publicly available data from the state sponsored service). Now the state sponsored app is required by law to not be free. Last I checked it costs about two Euros.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

raxxorraxor 4y ago

I have trouble keeping up with the updates lately. To be honest, compared to quite a few CAD programs common in mechanical engineering, Blender doesn't have to hide here. Quite the contrary indeed.

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

Honestly hats off to the Blender dev team for taking their technically impressive but extremely tricky to use software and managing to over just a few years turn it into the one piece of 3D software everyone is suggesting to beginners and the fact it's free isn't even what you mention because the software is just great. Really showing the great user experience on open source projects is possible and that the benefits are worth it.

Milner08 4y ago
Well damn, I didn't know that it had gotten easier to use but I am so glad to here it! I will definitely be giving it another go.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
Oh I had no idea it was improved now. I tried it about 5 years ago and couldn't make heads or tails of it. I'll try it again.
- shahar2k 4y ago
  it's improved by quite a bit, I wouldnt call it "intuitive" to an existing 3d user, it just goes against so much pre-existing muscle memory and assumptions from other apps... but so does Z-brush and people love that, I'm using it more and more these days for little tasks, processing meshes, plug ins here and there, it has a beautiful and easy to use renderer but I dont work in a field where rendering matters. I dont really want an alternative way to sculpt texture or model, I have several already, and really my industry (film / previz) is moving to rendering in Unreal or Unity (much more unreal) but as a tool Blender is quickly becoming much more impressive. having tought myself zbrush before it was useful (2.something?) blender feels like it's just gaining that usability now to expose useful features... but there's so much more that can be done.
- bsenftner 4y ago
  As a career developer 40 years into specializing on 3D graphics and animation, Blender's progress and accumulative feature set is stunning. I realized about 6 months ago Blender had cross a threshold of usability, and in those years of being "difficult to learn and use" the Blender community quietly built out a feature set that rivals, if not exceeds every commercial 3D modeler, animation, node based procedural subsystem, compositing, and scientific visualization product on the market. Due to Blender's deep Python integration, deep learning libraries can be imported and integrated to significant mad computer wizardry. Blender has come of age, and it is going to eat several commercial software publisher's lunch, if they don't wake up.

agumonkey 4y ago

Something about the project is very interesting indeed. It grows at a regular pace for non trivial ideas. And it seems all joyful and light.