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Although I've never contributed with Blender, I felt proud when I saw "made with Blender" in the credits. Blender is a jewel of the FLOSS movement and a histor

Although I've never contributed with Blender, I felt proud when I saw "made with Blender" in the credits. Blender is a jewel of the FLOSS movement and a history and behavior that must be mimicked by many other projects. Looking forward to more successes like this.

toblaroni 2y ago
agreed, Blender is tremendous
- echelon 2y ago
  Blender is amazing, and miles ahead of Gimp and other FOSS editors. That said, I can't help but feel that all of the current generation of leading 3D software (Blender, Unreal, etc. ) is going to be replaced by something just around the corner. The progress in 3D AI is nothing short of phenomenal. It feels like soon nobody will ever have to worry about sculpting or retopologizing or rigging. An entirely new class of tool will take over. It's not just 3D. It feels like the current generation of artistic tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) are about to be wholesale replaced with Gen AI tooling. AI plugins (eg. the Krita plugin) are too steeped in the old world of editing. New tools will probably be AI native and prefer AI workflows for reaching the same coarse- and fine-grained outcomes. I don't expect these tools to be used by the masses that are prompting AI slop like "50's Panavision Wes Anderson", but rather by working artists. Genuine Gen AI tools for artists. I've been making short films on the weekends with Blender, ComfyUI, and a mix of custom software. The AI pieces are doing the heavy lifting, and my productivity is 10x what it was before Gen AI.
  - appleaday1 2y ago
    https://github.com/ahujasid/blender-mcp https://github.com/ahujasid/blender-mcp something will definitely happen we will see what happens, 3D has always been tedious so any improvements in this space will be welcome.
    - UncleEntity 2y ago
      I totally forgot I was going to look into that... Seems to me the 'proper' way to do something like this is to hook into makesRNA and have the endpoints automagically be generated as part of the build process. Similar (or identical) to how the python and C++ APIs are created. I've been thinking for a while now that someone (much less lazy than myself) needs to get in there and have makesRNA generate something like IDL file(s) so any number of tools can hook into Blender's API without having to hand code the endpoints like this addon is apparently doing.
  - UncleEntity 2y ago
    Same could be said about Fender and Gibson.
  - progmetaldev 2y ago
    I think it depends on how much control you feel you want to have over your output. AI tools are decent at rendering video, but for those that want full control over the process, I feel like it's going to be a long way to go. If AI is able to generate the full source files to allow things to be modified, then I would 100% agree with you that it's going to be a new age for artists. If you're dealing with raw generated video, or even a frame by frame rendered image, your control is much more limited than if you could shape and customize your models. For most, this is probably fine, but for those that want fine-grained control, there is a far path to go in order to get to that point.
  - telchior 2y ago
    What / who is the leading edge of 3D AI? I took a look into it last year and the best tools were still a very long away from producing usable results (couldn't keep tri count under control, spiderweb rigging, shape jank, etc).
    - whstl 2y ago
      I don't care much for Generative AI (still too early) but I had some ok experiences with Tripo for retopology and auto rigging. Still super early days though, I did have some of the same issues you had.
      - telchior 2y ago
        Thanks, I checked out Tripo. It produced some absolutely laughable trees for me, but a pretty decent looking barstool. Refused to rig it for me for some reason, though. I'd say it'll take them some years to finish figuring out 3D, it's a good stretch beyond 2D image generation.
brcmthrowaway 2y ago
Is the best OSS software Blender, Ghidra or Linux?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- appleaday1 2y ago
  to answer your question its probably git.
  - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    I think Git is probably the most "useful" but given how bad it is (despite how good it is), I have a hard time calling it the "best"
  - g-b-r 2y ago
    his question wasn't "what's the worst software ever created" ;)
  - bawolff 2y ago
    If we are going to go infrastructure, i would say sqlite or curl.
- kadoban 2y ago
  Probably Linux if I had to pick one, partly because of how many tools were written for or on it and the ecosystem it's built up.
  - whoknowsidont 2y ago
    You mean GNU plus Linux?
    - kadoban 2y ago
      Yes, and more. It's a whole related world.
mattl 2y ago
I made a live action movie, edited with Blender as a video editor. It was great at the time, I’m sure has improved a lot in the last 8 years too. Blender and Inkscape are some of the software listed in the credits.
- progmetaldev 2y ago
  Inkscape makes so much more sense to me than Adobe Illustrator ever made. Maybe it's how I use it, or what I'm looking for as output, but I've been happy with Inkscape since around 2006/2007.
keyle 2y ago
I remember using Blender when everyone was saying how terrible of a UX it was. They've turned it around and it's become a default-first for many artists. Open source of not, it of course helps, that the competition charges absolutely mind-bogglingly high amounts of money, for a similar offer.
- tonetegeatinst 2y ago
  Is their a central place where other open source people or just programmers in general can get a breakdown on how they improved the UI/UX?
  - somat 2y ago
    I don't want to be too mean, The blender team has done a lot to make good solid UI improvements over the years. However as a long time casual user (since 1.7 minor projects once or twice per year) My take away was that the blender UI was always good, however it was a professional UI designed for professional use and had gathered a reputation as hard to use over the years. So the "Big UI change to make it easier to use" was mostly, wait for the rest of the industry to catch up, give it a dark mode, and most importantly, loudly issue a press release "we made the UI easier to use" to make people believe. But snark aside, my guess is that the main UI "improvement" was to make it slower, add a classical menu system to help ease you through hotkey hell. See, If I had to describe blenders UI in one blurb it would be "101 button mouse". Very quick, and fine control and less a steep learning curve than a learning cliff.
    - wlesieutre 2y ago
      The best thing they did to make blender more approachable was defaulting to left-click selection.
    - jampekka 2y ago
      This sounds a bit like the attitude that held back Blender UI for a long time. There were people seriously objecting introduction of the undo feature FFS. The UI stockholm syndrom is real. The 2.8 overhaul was not "slapping on a dark theme". It changed the UI from an alien spaceship mishmash of hundreds of randomly thrown around tiny icons and undocumented hotkeys into a discoverable and somewhat familiar interface. Or at least completed the UI overhaul, many of the improvements were incrementally introduced in prior versions. How was the UI made slower?
WD-42 2y ago
And GPL at that, thank goodness.
MBCook 2y ago
I remember when it was open sourced. Who would have ever thought at the time it would create and render a beautiful Oscar winning movie.
culi 2y ago
Blender and VLC are two amazing examples of the FLOSS tool not just being "the open-source alternative to ...". They are THE main tool
- greenknight 2y ago
  FFMPEG is another. Any online video platform probably uses it.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
ragebol 2y ago
Same. I've only ever been a user in Blender and it pushed me to use Python as my first programming language since I could script Blender with it. IIRC, I first started using it with version 2.32 when I was an early teen. I still have a .blend file somewhere with a textured model of a LOTR Fell beast/Nazgul, that I created painstakingly and cost me some exam points as I preferred 3D modelling to studying. Good times

toblaroni 2y ago

agreed, Blender is tremendous

echelon 2y ago
Blender is amazing, and miles ahead of Gimp and other FOSS editors. That said, I can't help but feel that all of the current generation of leading 3D software (Blender, Unreal, etc. ) is going to be replaced by something just around the corner. The progress in 3D AI is nothing short of phenomenal. It feels like soon nobody will ever have to worry about sculpting or retopologizing or rigging. An entirely new class of tool will take over. It's not just 3D. It feels like the current generation of artistic tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) are about to be wholesale replaced with Gen AI tooling. AI plugins (eg. the Krita plugin) are too steeped in the old world of editing. New tools will probably be AI native and prefer AI workflows for reaching the same coarse- and fine-grained outcomes. I don't expect these tools to be used by the masses that are prompting AI slop like "50's Panavision Wes Anderson", but rather by working artists. Genuine Gen AI tools for artists. I've been making short films on the weekends with Blender, ComfyUI, and a mix of custom software. The AI pieces are doing the heavy lifting, and my productivity is 10x what it was before Gen AI.
- appleaday1 2y ago
  https://github.com/ahujasid/blender-mcp https://github.com/ahujasid/blender-mcp something will definitely happen we will see what happens, 3D has always been tedious so any improvements in this space will be welcome.
  - UncleEntity 2y ago
    I totally forgot I was going to look into that... Seems to me the 'proper' way to do something like this is to hook into makesRNA and have the endpoints automagically be generated as part of the build process. Similar (or identical) to how the python and C++ APIs are created. I've been thinking for a while now that someone (much less lazy than myself) needs to get in there and have makesRNA generate something like IDL file(s) so any number of tools can hook into Blender's API without having to hand code the endpoints like this addon is apparently doing.
- UncleEntity 2y ago
  Same could be said about Fender and Gibson.
- progmetaldev 2y ago
  I think it depends on how much control you feel you want to have over your output. AI tools are decent at rendering video, but for those that want full control over the process, I feel like it's going to be a long way to go. If AI is able to generate the full source files to allow things to be modified, then I would 100% agree with you that it's going to be a new age for artists. If you're dealing with raw generated video, or even a frame by frame rendered image, your control is much more limited than if you could shape and customize your models. For most, this is probably fine, but for those that want fine-grained control, there is a far path to go in order to get to that point.
- telchior 2y ago
  What / who is the leading edge of 3D AI? I took a look into it last year and the best tools were still a very long away from producing usable results (couldn't keep tri count under control, spiderweb rigging, shape jank, etc).
  - whstl 2y ago
    I don't care much for Generative AI (still too early) but I had some ok experiences with Tripo for retopology and auto rigging. Still super early days though, I did have some of the same issues you had.
    - telchior 2y ago
      Thanks, I checked out Tripo. It produced some absolutely laughable trees for me, but a pretty decent looking barstool. Refused to rig it for me for some reason, though. I'd say it'll take them some years to finish figuring out 3D, it's a good stretch beyond 2D image generation.

brcmthrowaway 2y ago

Is the best OSS software Blender, Ghidra or Linux?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
appleaday1 2y ago
to answer your question its probably git.
- adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
  I think Git is probably the most "useful" but given how bad it is (despite how good it is), I have a hard time calling it the "best"
- g-b-r 2y ago
  his question wasn't "what's the worst software ever created" ;)
- bawolff 2y ago
  If we are going to go infrastructure, i would say sqlite or curl.
kadoban 2y ago
Probably Linux if I had to pick one, partly because of how many tools were written for or on it and the ecosystem it's built up.
- whoknowsidont 2y ago
  You mean GNU plus Linux?
  - kadoban 2y ago
    Yes, and more. It's a whole related world.

mattl 2y ago

I made a live action movie, edited with Blender as a video editor. It was great at the time, I’m sure has improved a lot in the last 8 years too. Blender and Inkscape are some of the software listed in the credits.

progmetaldev 2y ago
Inkscape makes so much more sense to me than Adobe Illustrator ever made. Maybe it's how I use it, or what I'm looking for as output, but I've been happy with Inkscape since around 2006/2007.

keyle 2y ago

I remember using Blender when everyone was saying how terrible of a UX it was. They've turned it around and it's become a default-first for many artists. Open source of not, it of course helps, that the competition charges absolutely mind-bogglingly high amounts of money, for a similar offer.

tonetegeatinst 2y ago
Is their a central place where other open source people or just programmers in general can get a breakdown on how they improved the UI/UX?
- somat 2y ago
  I don't want to be too mean, The blender team has done a lot to make good solid UI improvements over the years. However as a long time casual user (since 1.7 minor projects once or twice per year) My take away was that the blender UI was always good, however it was a professional UI designed for professional use and had gathered a reputation as hard to use over the years. So the "Big UI change to make it easier to use" was mostly, wait for the rest of the industry to catch up, give it a dark mode, and most importantly, loudly issue a press release "we made the UI easier to use" to make people believe. But snark aside, my guess is that the main UI "improvement" was to make it slower, add a classical menu system to help ease you through hotkey hell. See, If I had to describe blenders UI in one blurb it would be "101 button mouse". Very quick, and fine control and less a steep learning curve than a learning cliff.
  - wlesieutre 2y ago
    The best thing they did to make blender more approachable was defaulting to left-click selection.
  - jampekka 2y ago
    This sounds a bit like the attitude that held back Blender UI for a long time. There were people seriously objecting introduction of the undo feature FFS. The UI stockholm syndrom is real. The 2.8 overhaul was not "slapping on a dark theme". It changed the UI from an alien spaceship mishmash of hundreds of randomly thrown around tiny icons and undocumented hotkeys into a discoverable and somewhat familiar interface. Or at least completed the UI overhaul, many of the improvements were incrementally introduced in prior versions. How was the UI made slower?

WD-42 2y ago

And GPL at that, thank goodness.

MBCook 2y ago

I remember when it was open sourced. Who would have ever thought at the time it would create and render a beautiful Oscar winning movie.

culi 2y ago

Blender and VLC are two amazing examples of the FLOSS tool not just being "the open-source alternative to ...". They are THE main tool

greenknight 2y ago
FFMPEG is another. Any online video platform probably uses it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

ragebol 2y ago

Same. I've only ever been a user in Blender and it pushed me to use Python as my first programming language since I could script Blender with it. IIRC, I first started using it with version 2.32 when I was an early teen. I still have a .blend file somewhere with a textured model of a LOTR Fell beast/Nazgul, that I created painstakingly and cost me some exam points as I preferred 3D modelling to studying. Good times