>Not only with Autodesk but also with other companies, we keep requesting improvements. However, it takes time for those improvements to make it to proprietary software. We expect faster improvements by using open source software.
That's pretty cool. I wonder what kind of anime-focused features will come to the next version of Blender as a result.
>I wonder what kind of anime-focused features will come to the next version of Blender as a result.
Work is currently being done on the LANPR branch as part of the GSoC. This branch is meant to replace the Freestyle system which is currently used for line rendering. [0]
Otherwise we already have the "Shader to RGB" node which is extremely useful to create NPR shaders.
There's also an add-on which can be used to deform a mesh based on greasepencil strokes, I assume 2D animators would love this. [1]
If you're interested in blender NPR news I highly recommend following the BNPR Show on youtube. [2]
I was the fastest ever to complete the ACAD design challenge (3 - hour test, finished it in 33 minutes)
I was the only person to have ever completed the autocad design interview test at the first architectural firm I worked at.... (8 minutes)
I came is second in the US CAD Olympics (only second because I skimmed the notes and it also required me to draw a bolt and I didnt notice that req in the directions)
---
I love autodesk --- but I hate their arrogance. They have lightened up a bit with 360 and such....
But I am rooting for Blender.
The amount of amazing talent around the world that will blow shit up is immense.
We will see some guy from freaking thailand or something just come out with something unbelievable.
I was asked to design a rendering factory in asia for lucas film some years ago... (I was the designer for the Lucas Presidio Complex's Data Center) -- their comment was "US 3D designers are over-paid pre-madonnas and complain too much"
---
So, I hope blender kicks some fucking ass and that we see some amazing shit come out from a completely unknown person as of yet.
> We expect faster improvements by using open source software.
As a long-time consumer and contributor to open-source, I would caution one to temper their expectations when it comes to velocity. Glaring problems (like CVEs) get immediate attention, but features are another story - remember that open-source projects are a democracy and the loudest guy in the room often gets their way...
That's such an exciting sentiment to hear, that open source could beat the economic incentives of propriety software. It's so far from what you would have heard in 1999.
That's awesome. Combine this with Epic's recent investment and it looks like the modelling community may be mobilising behind Blender as an alternative to Autodesk tools.
2.8 already has the vastly more useful version of grease pencil, and the demo the foundation commissioned was amazing. I love how seamlessly they mix the 3D in with the direct illustration. It shows what skilled animators can do with a tool like Blender.
Some friends of mine recently launched the pilot episode of their independent series, Culturesport, all done completely in Blender. https://youtu.be/UEcNEO3fVF8
They've been proselytizing Blender for years now, seems like the tide is rising.
As someone who worked in a similar section (animation), this is great news. Autodesk tools (especially Maya) are way too expensive in what they deliver. I'm glad many big studios realized this in that they either build their own tools (Pixar/Dreamworks) or they adapt Open Source (Blender) and help improving it.
There is still other tooling (Cinema4D, ZBrush) but those are actually working.. Maya has failed me so many times, I cannot recommend it in any way other than it is still (sadly) used very commonly among studios. And artists do not like to learn new toolings, that I also know from experience..
edit: grammar
I’m quite excited about Blender’s growing popularity.
But, FWIW, I used to animate effects at PDI/DreamWorks, and we were using Maya. Today I think it’s Houdini. In my time, modelers were using Maya as well. We had an in-house character animation tool mainly because the character rigs were custom, evaluated with an in-house scripting language, and Maya couldn’t evaluate them.
While costs are always scrutinized, the decision to use Maya had very little to do with the price of a seat of Maya. It was just a tool that many people knew already (which is a huge factor in cost, BTW) and it also did most of the things we needed to do.
All the in-house tools were constantly scrutinized for cost, and usually the question was not whether we could reduce costs by building in-house, it was the other way around: can we reduce costs by purchasing off the shelf software. Remember that each and every developer is a 6-figure salary, which can buy a lot of seats of Maya. Note this applies to contributing to Blender too... it’s very expensive to contribute to Blender, so it really has to be appreciated when it happens!
> I'm glad many big studios realized this in that they either build their own tools (Pixar/Dreamworks) or they adapt Open Source (Blender) and help improving it.
Places like Pixar/DreamWorks developed proprietary tools because they didn't exist when they started. Disney/Pixar heavily uses Maya. Disney was one of the first places to use Maya before it was released in the late 90s. Like many other places they heavily modify it. DreamWorks uses a lot of Maya and Houdini, but have proprietary rigging, animation, and renderer.
I haven't seen any of those places contribute much to Open Source unless they're driving development.
I haven't used Blender much at all. Apps like Maya, Houdini, and Nuke have a lot of under the hood architecture necessary to use in large studios that I hope Blender has, too. Photoshop, for example, is very difficult to build that kind of pipeline around.
> Autodesk tools (especially Maya) are way too expensive in what they deliver. I'm glad many big studios realized this in that they either build their own tools (Pixar/Dreamworks) or they adapt Open Source (Blender) and help improving it.
Cost isn’t the issue, it’s mainly the fact that Autodesk effectively put Maya on life support. Pixar is paying hundreds of software engineers in the Bay to develop their proprietary animation tools, which is most definitely not cheaper than a few hundred Maya seats per show.
I needed 3D software to create a bunch of models for a RealityKit demo and the only usable version of Maya was $200 per month (Maya LT doesn't support plugins).
I gave Blender another shot (Blender 2.8 to be specific). The new UI is just fantastic! And it's actually usable with a touchbar-only setup.
I wish GIMP progressed so much—*nix environment + Adobe CC are the two main reasons I'm sticking to MacOS.
I've given up on GIMP in a sense, Krita is the closest to what I actually want it to be but it's still missing some key stuff for me when it comes to vector selections and font work (but font work on GIMP was also less than great). It's much closer to what I've wanted GIMP to evolve into, so I've been crossing my fingers there.
I've made a switch almost year ago from Linux (and OSX earlier) to Windows - thanks to WSL it's like being still on *nix system but with running painlessly .exe applications ;)
What an amazing story of human cooperation. One on hand, everyone wants to make boatloads of money, on the other hand, sometimes we realize that if we all pitch in to a shared resource, we can make something better and cheaper than otherwise possible.
There are so many things I wish humanity could apply this to, glad to see it working in practice!
Probably the most compelling feature of Blender being open source with a significant community is that it's the one 3d tool that Autodesk can't simply buy out.
> 3ds Max is an excellent tool and one of the industry standards, but in some cases it causes a “lack of artists” due to its high costs.
A liberal non-commercial offering from Autodesk would at least help. Houdini realized this. Unity and Unreal are both essentially free to learners and hobbyists.
You need a pool of talent. And it needs continually refreshing.
A “public secret” is that autodesk pretty much gives free non-commercial student licenses to anyone, no relation to an actual education institution needed. Advertising it better would definitely help them
I think:
Adobe, back a decade ago, was quite liberal on that front - the stuff was easily crack-able, keygens whever one would look. As a result, whenever I ask colleagues with Photoshop skills how they acquired them, the answer always is "with 14 and a Photoshop crack".
Clever move to not stand in the way of cracks for amateurs too much until they introduced an affordable (!) subscription.
Unity and Unreal are Game Engines, not 3D Software. Yes, It's possible to use U and U for 3D modelling, but nobody with a chopchop brain do it. If you work with U and U you create the model in Blender/What ever and import it to the engines for the programming backend.
Regarding the approval of the Blender development fund,
> 本社並びに、本社関連会社の株式会社プロジェクトスタジオＱは、オープンソースの
> アニメ‐ジョン制作ツール開発をサポートするため、 Blender開発基金賛同いたします。
This company, as well as this company's affiliated (incorporated, public) company Project Studio Q, in order to support the development of the open source animation creation tool, are approving the Blender development fund.
> 今後の３DCGアニメーションの発展を期待しております。
Hencerforth, we look forward to the advancement of "3DCG Animation".
Autodesk is responding to all this blender news by releasing full versions of Maya and 3dsMax for $250/yr for indies. It's the full versions not the LT versions.
"Currently, this pilot offering is only available in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. We are currently piloting indie versions of 3ds Max and Maya so that recent graduates, freelancers, hobbyists and those starting out in the industry have a more affordable option to use our tools. We hope that this pilot performs as expected and can be expanded to other countries in the future."
> Kobayashi: “There are currently some areas where Blender cannot take care of our needs, but we can solve it with the combination with Unity. Unity is usually enough to cover 3ds Max and Maya as well. Unity can be a bridge among environments.”
Does anyone know how they're using Unity? I'd be curious to hear more about gamedev tools being used in animation.
>Not only with Autodesk but also with other companies, we keep requesting improvements. However, it takes time for those improvements to make it to proprietary software. We expect faster improvements by using open source software.
This is ironic considering that along with Softimage, Maya is the history of CGI, written in software. Most of the features and paradigms we see as classic today have been developed in TAV/TDI Explore/PowerAnimator/Maya and accompanying software either by request of leading animation studios, or by the studios themselves. However, they slowed the cycle down significantly even before they've been bought by Autodesk.
Blender, despite its "odd" UI, is the best open source GUI software out there. I don't use any other GUI open source software -- I pay for Microsoft Office and Adobe Applications -- but I find Blender to be useful, productive, and complete. It's solid, and has a very good community. Unlike other open source "alternatives" to commercial software (like, say Gimp or Open Office), it's actually _better_ in many ways, and not just FUD or useful to casual users.
It looks like this company is mostly interested in the 3D aspect of Blender, but what's gotten me really excited from viewing the demos is Grease Pencil. I wonder if anyone out there is using it professionally for traditional 2D animation. I also wonder how much attention this cool tool will get in the future.
Should it? I don't like the trend of referring to companies/organisations/individuals as "those who made X thing". People aren't defined by one specific thing they did and also I think people would generally do well to be somewhat more aware of who actually makes the things they like anyways.
The new blender is pretty slick though. They have really cleaned up the interface and made it more user friendly and something that industry artists on other platforms will be more familiar with. I suspect we will probably see a lot of people switching to blender.
[+] [-] swebs|6 years ago|reply
That's pretty cool. I wonder what kind of anime-focused features will come to the next version of Blender as a result.
[+] [-] hex12648430|6 years ago|reply
Work is currently being done on the LANPR branch as part of the GSoC. This branch is meant to replace the Freestyle system which is currently used for line rendering. [0]
Otherwise we already have the "Shader to RGB" node which is extremely useful to create NPR shaders.
There's also an add-on which can be used to deform a mesh based on greasepencil strokes, I assume 2D animators would love this. [1]
If you're interested in blender NPR news I highly recommend following the BNPR Show on youtube. [2]
[0]: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Yiming/GSoC2019/Updates
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3nmEjum8kg
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ETYyzrTzM&list=PLSMetEtY22...
[+] [-] samstave|6 years ago|reply
I was the fastest ever to complete the ACAD design challenge (3 - hour test, finished it in 33 minutes)
I was the only person to have ever completed the autocad design interview test at the first architectural firm I worked at.... (8 minutes)
I came is second in the US CAD Olympics (only second because I skimmed the notes and it also required me to draw a bolt and I didnt notice that req in the directions)
---
I love autodesk --- but I hate their arrogance. They have lightened up a bit with 360 and such....
But I am rooting for Blender.
The amount of amazing talent around the world that will blow shit up is immense.
We will see some guy from freaking thailand or something just come out with something unbelievable.
I was asked to design a rendering factory in asia for lucas film some years ago... (I was the designer for the Lucas Presidio Complex's Data Center) -- their comment was "US 3D designers are over-paid pre-madonnas and complain too much"
---
So, I hope blender kicks some fucking ass and that we see some amazing shit come out from a completely unknown person as of yet.
[+] [-] dan_quixote|6 years ago|reply
As a long-time consumer and contributor to open-source, I would caution one to temper their expectations when it comes to velocity. Glaring problems (like CVEs) get immediate attention, but features are another story - remember that open-source projects are a democracy and the loudest guy in the room often gets their way...
[+] [-] nguoi|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nailer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] microcolonel|6 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/pKmSdY56VtY
[+] [-] mogpt|6 years ago|reply
They've been proselytizing Blender for years now, seems like the tide is rising.
[+] [-] roboyoshi|6 years ago|reply
There is still other tooling (Cinema4D, ZBrush) but those are actually working.. Maya has failed me so many times, I cannot recommend it in any way other than it is still (sadly) used very commonly among studios. And artists do not like to learn new toolings, that I also know from experience.. edit: grammar
[+] [-] dahart|6 years ago|reply
But, FWIW, I used to animate effects at PDI/DreamWorks, and we were using Maya. Today I think it’s Houdini. In my time, modelers were using Maya as well. We had an in-house character animation tool mainly because the character rigs were custom, evaluated with an in-house scripting language, and Maya couldn’t evaluate them.
While costs are always scrutinized, the decision to use Maya had very little to do with the price of a seat of Maya. It was just a tool that many people knew already (which is a huge factor in cost, BTW) and it also did most of the things we needed to do.
All the in-house tools were constantly scrutinized for cost, and usually the question was not whether we could reduce costs by building in-house, it was the other way around: can we reduce costs by purchasing off the shelf software. Remember that each and every developer is a 6-figure salary, which can buy a lot of seats of Maya. Note this applies to contributing to Blender too... it’s very expensive to contribute to Blender, so it really has to be appreciated when it happens!
[+] [-] pfranz|6 years ago|reply
Places like Pixar/DreamWorks developed proprietary tools because they didn't exist when they started. Disney/Pixar heavily uses Maya. Disney was one of the first places to use Maya before it was released in the late 90s. Like many other places they heavily modify it. DreamWorks uses a lot of Maya and Houdini, but have proprietary rigging, animation, and renderer.
I haven't seen any of those places contribute much to Open Source unless they're driving development.
I haven't used Blender much at all. Apps like Maya, Houdini, and Nuke have a lot of under the hood architecture necessary to use in large studios that I hope Blender has, too. Photoshop, for example, is very difficult to build that kind of pipeline around.
[+] [-] FreeFull|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] santaclaus|6 years ago|reply
Cost isn’t the issue, it’s mainly the fact that Autodesk effectively put Maya on life support. Pixar is paying hundreds of software engineers in the Bay to develop their proprietary animation tools, which is most definitely not cheaper than a few hundred Maya seats per show.
[+] [-] dagmx|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|6 years ago|reply
I love this thing to bits, so .. basically blind to its defects, tell me
[+] [-] rpastuszak|6 years ago|reply
I gave Blender another shot (Blender 2.8 to be specific). The new UI is just fantastic! And it's actually usable with a touchbar-only setup.
I wish GIMP progressed so much—*nix environment + Adobe CC are the two main reasons I'm sticking to MacOS.
[+] [-] xemdetia|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VMG|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukaszkups|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bparsons|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ngngngng|6 years ago|reply
There are so many things I wish humanity could apply this to, glad to see it working in practice!
[+] [-] tylerl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andybak|6 years ago|reply
A liberal non-commercial offering from Autodesk would at least help. Houdini realized this. Unity and Unreal are both essentially free to learners and hobbyists.
You need a pool of talent. And it needs continually refreshing.
[+] [-] nineteen999|6 years ago|reply
Blender usage exploded around 2.6 with the first UI revamp, and it seems to have swelled even more as 2.8 approached.
[+] [-] asutekku|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mschuster91|6 years ago|reply
Clever move to not stand in the way of cracks for amateurs too much until they introduced an affordable (!) subscription.
[+] [-] ethelward|6 years ago|reply
Granted, my 3D experience is limited to making some custom planes for Flight Simulator 10 years ago; but is that not what Gmax is/was?
[+] [-] void_nill|6 years ago|reply
Unity and Unreal are Game Engines, not 3D Software. Yes, It's possible to use U and U for 3D modelling, but nobody with a chopchop brain do it. If you work with U and U you create the model in Blender/What ever and import it to the engines for the programming backend.
[+] [-] kazinator|6 years ago|reply
> Blenderの開発基金への賛同について
Regarding the approval of the Blender development fund,
> 本社並びに、本社関連会社の株式会社プロジェクトスタジオＱは、オープンソースの
> アニメ‐ジョン制作ツール開発をサポートするため、 Blender開発基金賛同いたします。
This company, as well as this company's affiliated (incorporated, public) company Project Studio Q, in order to support the development of the open source animation creation tool, are approving the Blender development fund.
> 今後の３DCGアニメーションの発展を期待しております。
Hencerforth, we look forward to the advancement of "3DCG Animation".
> Blender財団の発表
Announcement from the Blender foundation:
> https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1154003846718468098
[+] [-] jarsin|6 years ago|reply
I think too little too late.
https://area.autodesk.com/maya-indie/
[+] [-] Majestic121|6 years ago|reply
No thanks
[+] [-] philtar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hajile|6 years ago|reply
$100K gross....
That basically means you are self-employed and undercharging, you are going broke, or you are a startup using some creative accounting.
[+] [-] faitswulff|6 years ago|reply
Does anyone know how they're using Unity? I'd be curious to hear more about gamedev tools being used in animation.
[+] [-] SpliffnCola|6 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnigQTOig8k
[+] [-] orbital-decay|6 years ago|reply
This is ironic considering that along with Softimage, Maya is the history of CGI, written in software. Most of the features and paradigms we see as classic today have been developed in TAV/TDI Explore/PowerAnimator/Maya and accompanying software either by request of leading animation studios, or by the studios themselves. However, they slowed the cycle down significantly even before they've been bought by Autodesk.
[+] [-] open-source-ux|6 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyxWDHy4ppY
[+] [-] fortran77|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ur-whale|6 years ago|reply
It's an amazing tool. It was always powerful, but used to be very un-approachable (vim-like), but they have made tremendous progress to fix this.
The integration with external renders has also been amazing. I am a fan of luxcorerender which - these days - is almost unusable outside of blender.
If you like doing 3D work, spend the time to learn Blender, it's a long term investment really worth making.
[+] [-] disease|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ttflee|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xcde4c3db|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Smithalicious|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CodiePetersen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] graphicsRat|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattmar96|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ur-whale|6 years ago|reply