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Blender Tests and Impressions


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3 hours ago, Igor said:

@hvanderwegen Is there a info out there which says how many people work on Blender at the moment? 

 

I am boggled how fast they can deliver new stuff, really...how...

 

Very talented people due to the increadibly positive atmosphere that Blender and its  community oozes. Everything is open source so outside people can help squash bugs and issues. Probably a ton of bug reports from outside unlike many other softwares where it's sometimes even hard to find where to report a bug. etc.

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24 minutes ago, DasFrodo said:

 

Very talented people due to the increadibly positive atmosphere that Blender and its  community oozes. Everything is open source so outside people can help squash bugs and issues. Probably a ton of bug reports from outside unlike many other softwares where it's sometimes even hard to find where to report a bug. etc.

This shit has nothing to do with talent, but hard work and a lot of sleepless nights. But again, still doesn't answer my question as its just speculation. If everyone would have access to just implement their own stuff as they see fit it wouldn't be manageable on the long run and chaos would be present. These things needs to be planned and executed according to those plans as much as possible. Saying everyone just doing things its really not reality and wouldn't be realistic for this kind of software development as complexity is to big. I am not asking about plugins, which are different story.

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@Igor The Blender Foundation's developer blog provides some valuable insights. The team actually made some organizational changes in how to approach development this year:

 

https://code.blender.org/2021/02/module-teams-for-core-blender-development/

 

https://code.blender.org/

 

The fast development of certain features is also fed by pure need: they've always worked as an animation studio delivering open film projects. These projects motivate the implementation of new feature sets as required. https://www.blender.org/about/projects/

 

For example, the Blender Studio entity is now working on a feature film quality animation with an experienced former Pixar story supervisor as a director.

https://cloud.blender.org/films/sprite-fright/

 

I've noticed that these projects are one of the prime drivers behind improved tool sets and pipelines in Blender. And during these periods of working on open film projects new developers and people with different mindsets were attracted and hired as well.

 

But the uptake of Blender in commercial studios has also been a boost for its development. The Blender development team consists of 24 people now, I believe. But aside from those, some studios and their developers are sharing their work and code as well. This is one of the advantages of the open source model in this case.

 

And that is aside from external developers contributing smaller things to the overall code base and the default add-ons which are shipped with Blender.

 

Then there are a few incredibly motivated artists who also happen to be excellent coders (a relatively rare combination). Pablo Dabarro, the person behind Blender's Sculpt mode improvements is a very accomplished artist and built the tools he envisioned in Blender.

The 2d animation tools were imagined and built by a small external team of 2d animators. The programmer and lead Antonio Vazquez lives in Spain.

 

So Blender sees external developers with creative minds working all over the world to improve the tools and implement rather imaginative new features. People who work with these tools themselves in a production environment and are not part of the official Blender Foundation teams.

 

https://www.blender.org/development/top-20-blender-developers-in-2020/

 

And don't forget that PUBLIC recognition for these developers can be a massive personal motivational driver. Remember Atari 8bit era: Atari management at the time refused to give their game programmers due credit - they were seen as regular anonymous labour. With the result that many left, and set up their own companies (David Crane & Pitfall! Activision, Imagine, ....)

 

Developers are humans with the innate need to be acknowledged for their work too. In the world of Blender this is recognized. I can name several Blender developers, who all have a following, but I can name no Cinema4D ones, except of course the Losch brothers. Does anyone here know of any 'famous' autodesk developers? Probably not.

 

The core developer behind Cycles left the Blender Foundation at some point to work for Otoy, only to return and continue work at BF. He is 'famous' in the Blender community, while at Otoy he was just a regular paid employee. I am making assumptions here, but I do feel his return to Blender is partly motivated by the sense of making a difference and being recognized as an individual for his work. Two of us humans' prime motivators.

 

In my opinion it is also much more difficult for a closed-off development environment (such as Maxon, AutoDesk, Foundry) to remain truly creative and forward-thinking. The commercial entities behind these companies generally choke true original vision in favour of keeping the investors happy. Not always, of course, but when we look at small start-up companies in this industry - those are the ones often delivering new ways of working and novel tools. Just like C4D did up until 2008, or so.

 

Blender, even though it has grown this much, still attracts and harbours that mindset. One merely has to have a look at some of the imaginative tools and  plugins that are written for it. 

 

( Sorry, quick detour here)

I recall when Cinema4D was first introduced on the Amiga: it felt fresh, different, super easy compared to other options. It was affordable. I remember when the final Amiga version of C4D was given away on a cover disk. I made the switch to PC and continued to work with C4D. It introduced some really cool tools like Body Paint. And MoGraph! Wow, that was truly amazing. It got C4D recognized and adopted - rather even created its own unique niche in the market of motion graphics. I invested a LOT of money in Cinema4D. So many plugins, all those modules. Fun times.

 

And now? C4D is driven to subscription (rental) only, forward-thinking tools were left to rot away and were overtaken years and years ago by new kids (Body Paint, etc.), the development is somewhat confused (ProRender was proclaimed as the new main render engine, then stalled, now no longer developed, but a real replacement Redshift is a separate purchase, so now C4D no longer has a proper modern native renderer?) When did C4D development become so reactive, rather than innovative as it used to be?

 

And Blender's developers can take risks. We've seen two major overhauls so far. Take Newtek LightWave: management pulled the plug on Core, which would have been a modernized overhaul of LW. It was seen as a money pit and too risky. Result: LightWave is dead. Most users left long ago, and only a lingering smaller community is left. Development stalled, and all the developers left.

 

Blender really took off after with v2.8. They just keep innovating and taking risks, because they can. Taking risks is anathema to a larger company with investor stakeholders to satisfy.

 

No other DCC development team would have thought it was a good idea to implement 2d drawing and animation tools in their 3d app. But it has resulted in a few Japanese 2d animation studios to switch to Blender and fix 3d cell rendered images by hand directly in the 3d environment.

 

But the same things can be said about Adobe and its products. Large companies more often than not stifle innovation, and when those same companies adopt software rental schemes it is a sign of lack of innovation driving them there to keep the money flowing rather than anything else. 

 

Sorry, I am digressing here. Water under the bridge.

 

What I meant to say: Blender and its community has that "fresh" grass-roots feel going for them, still after all these years. It attracts developers like flies, it seems. It's open, collaborative. Innovative and imaginative. It is an environment where developers may take risks, be innovative, and be rewarded for it.

 

Anyway, in short:

- core team of ~24 people

- external teams and individual developers who are extremely driven and passionate and artists themselves

- recognition for individual developers - a prime motivator for humans

- commercial studio teams with developers contributing to standard Blender

- Blender Foundation funded open film projects which boost development and temporarily boosts staff

- industry taking note, and investing swaths of money in Blender. Unreal, Electronic Arts, etcetera. Also contributing to new features here and there.

- scores of small add-on developers.


All of which means a pretty huge crowd of motivated developers, both paid and unpaid. Which is difficult to compete with in the semi-long run, in my opinion.

 

https://www.blender.org/about/

 

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@hvanderwegen Thanks for such a nice insight, really appreciated. Everything you said makes sense and I am glad Blender is doing what it is doing (but sometimes I am jealous as I really don't "like" it, it just doesn't click with me). At least it will keep "big boys" in check which is good for everyone. While I chose Houdini as my new toy to learn and play with, I am curios to see what future holds and who gets on top at the end. I just hope no one stays without their jobs. Maxon has a great bunch of people and not everyone is in control so...nothing much we can do, but hope for the best. I am waiting very eagerly to see what Houdini will deliver for release 19, which should happen soon and also Renderman 24, with XPU rendering. Exciting time in technology world, cant wait to see what future holds. 

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@IgorI have been investing time into Houdini as well. Their business model makes much more sense to me, and a combo of Blender / Houdini is quite nice.

 

And Unreal 5 is going to be quite exciting as well. Real-time rendering and off-line rendering are slowly converging.

 

I recall rendering wireframe based animations on my first Amiga 1000 in Sculpt-animate 4d, because rendering them out as raytraced would take weeks of rendering time. And now I am rendering in almost real-time in Eevee.

 

Exciting times ahead indeed.

 

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Hi, I am also currently playing with Blender now and then. C4D upgrade path ended for me as a hobbyist with R21. Especially geometry nodes are intriguing for me. I hoped for something like that in Cinema for years. Now it is coming there as well, but I won't get my hands on it.

Regarding the GUI in Blender I have to say it has come a long way. With all the recent Outliner changes you might think they are targetting users of a certain program...

But there are still so many things in Blender that still hurt. Recently I needed displacement outside of Cycles. The only way I could find was UVs + baking... In Cinema you just use a 3D noise directly on the displacer. The whole texture system independent of the material system is akward (and 2D only). The whole material management system is also a bit complicated. If you are just used to showing the attributes of the selected item in the attribute manager then you are lost in Blender. Always searching for the right panel or tab. It's the same with settings.... No parametric objects (oh how I miss those simple things) or non-destructive surface generation out of splines (well, at least not without nodes, and that is still limited), but the splines have some built in functions to create surfaces (why is that not a separate object? Why has a curve polygons?). So all the procedural basics I love from Cinema are missing, but I guess with nodes we can kind of build them and there are thousands of plugins that might contain some of this stuff. And then the one topic that pushes me away from Blender regularly: curve editing. I managed to live with some of the quirks. The worst is insertion of points: there is only the extrude option which adds points at the end, an option to insert points on an existing segment at any position without changing the curve does not exist. You realy need plugins for that, as far as I can see.

But then there are so many positive things as well. I am kind of torn, would love to do more in Blender, but the limited time I have for that hobby is mainly spent for googling even for the simple stuff.

So, what is the best blender forum? Is there one with many c4d guys? Like a "Blender for old c4d farts" forum? Is there a plugin suite that just adds some tools to make things easier for c4d users? I think most of the stuff that I miss can be added easily. I am a coder myself, but actually don't want to do it in my free time as well (well maybe once the kids are older).

Well, a lot of whining. Blender is still a great tool, as is C4D (but MAXONS product policy sucks).

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I am still interested in doing a project with Blender alone, something I can't seem to get my head around but I have a feeling if I do, I might get hooked. The new Cycles X rendering looks really fast. I don't know why I have this stuck in my head, because there is nothing out there to make me think this way, but I have this idea that Blender will be the first 3d software on the iPad pro or an Android tablet. Someone has to be first and I think they are innovating at a pace that might lead them there. On the remote chance that happens -  it would be a no brainer for me to switch almost completely since I wouldn't need a laptop when I travel anymore. I know at some point my V19 of C4D will stop working and it might be Houdini or Blender that takes its place. 

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When you watch a video by Ian Herbert and see how fast he works in Blender and how he can make the amazing just happen without effort, you wonder if you could ever get to that level with such a clunky interface.  In fact, with each of his new "mini-tutorials for lazy people", I question if it really is the interface's fault for me not picking up that program faster or do I have some mental condition that impedes my learning.   Does C4D create a blind spot that prevents you from moving to another platform?  Probably not, but I do find the transition very difficult.  Also, unless their core architecture is just absolutely brilliant, don't you get the feeling that at some point that architecture will NOT be able to keep up with the rate of feature growth?  Could that explain why menu navigation is just a huge eye straining exercise? 

 

Can this pace of tool innovation continue before it all just collapses under its own weight?  Personally, I think they need to shift gears spend a little time on interface.  2.8 was great but now that they are capturing global mind share, the best way to capitalize on all that is to make the program easier to use.

 

Has any of their "innovations" extended to things that we take for granted -- like a texture manager.  I think I tripped over Blender's version of a texture manager but it was not intuitive.  Also, why is plugin loading/management so difficult?  Too many steps IMHO or is my C4D blind spot getting in the way.  And wouldn't you just love an object manager like C4D's in Blender?  Nope...no innovation there. 

 

So when does the pace of Blender innovation extend to the UI?  Who are their UI designers and do they have a UI standard that all developers must adhere to?  Is there any role at the Blender Foundation that is responsible for improving the user experience?  Or is user-experience 100% met by the shiny new features that they pack into each release?  How does Blender Org treat new users....and by new I do not mean new to CG (for example, they would not know any better when using parametric primitives for the first time) but experienced artists trying Blender for the first time?  Is that a segment the Blender Foundation wants to grow or is it already growing for them?  Do they want it to grow faster?

 

Honestly, if Blender decided to say that UI and improving the NEW user experience is now their number 1 priority, I think that would really make other companies like Maxon, Luxology and Autodesk  feel a little bit nervous...or at least more nervous than they are now.

 

Dave

Sorry...but I simply do not have enough faith to be an atheist.

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1 hour ago, 3D-Pangel said:

When you watch a video by Ian Herbert and see how fast he works in Blender and how he can make the amazing just happen without effort, you wonder if you could ever get to that level with such a clunky interface.  In fact, with each of his new "mini-tutorials for lazy people", I question if it really is the interface's fault for me not picking up that program faster or do I have some mental condition that impedes my learning.   Does C4D create a blind spot that prevents you from moving to another platform?  Probably not, but I do find the transition very difficult.  Also, unless their core architecture is just absolutely brilliant, don't you get the feeling that at some point that architecture will NOT be able to keep up with the rate of feature growth?  Could that explain why menu navigation is just a huge eye straining exercise? 

 

Can this pace of tool innovation continue before it all just collapses under its own weight?  Personally, I think they need to shift gears spend a little time on interface.  2.8 was great but now that they are capturing global mind share, the best way to capitalize on all that is to make the program easier to use.

 

Has any of their "innovations" extended to things that we take for granted -- like a texture manager.  I think I tripped over Blender's version of a texture manager but it was not intuitive.  Also, why is plugin loading/management so difficult?  Too many steps IMHO or is my C4D blind spot getting in the way.  And wouldn't you just love an object manager like C4D's in Blender?  Nope...no innovation there. 

 

So when does the pace of Blender innovation extend to the UI?  Who are their UI designers and do they have a UI standard that all developers must adhere to?  Is there any role at the Blender Foundation that is responsible for improving the user experience?  Or is user-experience 100% met by the shiny new features that they pack into each release?  How does Blender Org treat new users....and by new I do not mean new to CG (for example, they would not know any better when using parametric primitives for the first time) but experienced artists trying Blender for the first time?  Is that a segment the Blender Foundation wants to grow or is it already growing for them?  Do they want it to grow faster?

 

Honestly, if Blender decided to say that UI and improving the NEW user experience is now their number 1 priority, I think that would really make other companies like Maxon, Luxology and Autodesk  feel a little bit nervous...or at least more nervous than they are now.

 

Dave

Dave, 

 

Few thoughts:

-Ian Herbert's videos aren't intended to be tutorials. He's said that himself. They are inspirational cliff notes, with humor.

-I don't understand your concern with the architecture and future growth

-The UI is mostly quite elegant, IMO. But it's a different tool than c4d. Seems to me you've been wrestling for two years now. You don't like where c4d is going, don't like their treatment of customers. But you can't let go. You are asking other apps to be c4d. The reality is that you have invested THOUSANDS of hours using c4d, watching tuts. You expect to have the same comfort level with another 3d app with just a few casual sessions?

-Might I ask you honestly: how many hours have you spent in Blender in the past 12 months?

-Trust me, Maxon, Autodesk and Luxology have already felt a big bite in business lost from Blender.

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2 hours ago, christianS said:

No parametric objects (oh how I miss those simple things)

Install the WonderMesh addon, and parametric objects are yours in Blender!

https://blendermarket.com/products/wonder-mesh

https://github.com/WiresoulStudio/W_Mesh_28x/releases

 

The github version is the same as the paid-for version. It's an honour system - you decide to support them.

 

I agree, I love parametric objects. This addon fills some of that gap. Geometry nodes also supports parametric objects, by the way.

 

2 hours ago, christianS said:

Recently I needed displacement outside of Cycles. The only way I could find was UVs + baking... In Cinema you just use a 3D noise directly on the displacer.

 

There is a displacement node in the material nodes.

 

Or use the displacement modifier to affect geometry directly.

 

1 hour ago, 3D-Pangel said:

Also, why is plugin loading/management so difficult? 

 

How is it difficult? Load a plugin, activate. New versions of Blender when installed give a choice of loading the previous version's presets, including plugins (ones that are compatible).

The Blender Cloud also includes a handy plugin to synchronize settings across different platforms and locations.

 

No need to keep track of several paths for plugins. And Blender may be installed as a portable version, which keeps add-ons contained to that folder only - also very handy.

 

1 hour ago, 3D-Pangel said:

And wouldn't you just love an object manager like C4D's in Blender?  Nope...no innovation there. 

Wait a minute: there's been a awful lot of Outliner improvements in the past four versions. While I agree that C4D's outliner is the one to beat, Blender's outliner has been on the receiving end of much love lately. And is still being improved on every new version. For example, "tags" are now clickable and open the corresponding panel.

 

1 hour ago, 3D-Pangel said:

Has any of their "innovations" extended to things that we take for granted -- like a texture manager. 

The upcoming v3 version is about to deliver on management: a proper asset browser will be integrated, for example.

 

The planned release date for v3 is September. The Blender Foundation is planning a UX/UI workshop to discuss pressing issues and solutions in regards to the user interface.

 

3 hours ago, christianS said:

f you are just used to showing the attributes of the selected item in the attribute manager then you are lost in Blender.

Yes, I agree. I would love to see a more consolidated approach - some kind of properties panel.

 

3 hours ago, christianS said:

And then the one topic that pushes me away from Blender regularly: curve editing. I managed to live with some of the quirks. The worst is insertion of points: there is only the extrude option which adds points at the end, an option to insert points on an existing segment at any position without changing the curve does not exist. You realy need plugins for that, as far as I can see.

I work extensively with curves in 2d illustration software. I find Blender's somewhat non-standard approach to curve editing actually refreshing in a number of areas, and quite like editing curves in Blender. There are things that can be done in simple ways that are very awkward to achieve in most 2d illustration software.

 

That said, there is an addon that introduces "standard" behaviour - if only I could recall the name 😉

 

Anyway, Blender's workflow is just different than C4D. Houdini is different. Max is different. Modo is different. LightWave is different again. I used most 3d software in my career (except Maya - I don't know why, but I just never could get along with it - and I tried!)

 

I am currently teaching myself Houdini. My own approach to learning new software is to understand the paradigms used in that software, rather than trying to superimpose another software's paradigm on top of it. The basic concepts of 3d work remain the same in all apps. But all apps have their own take on it.

 

When I learned Blender 2.45 (or something) for the first time I kept an open mind, and got familiar with its workflow and usage paradigm. It clicked.

The current version is SOOO much more approachable and feature-rich, though - you guys are lucky. 😄

 

 

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Wondermesh seems like a step in the right direction, but from what I can see there are no options for round caps and so on. But I couldn't try, because installing doesn't work for me. Until now I would have said that installing addons in Blender is very easy and elegant. But I have no luck with Wondermesh. Which of the python files would you select? Slecting the folder doesn't work...

 

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There is a displacement node in the material nodes. Or use the displacement modifier to affect geometry directly.

Yes, I know that, but when I said outside Cycles, I meant in the geometry, for export... Then you have to unwrap and bake. Or am I missing soemthing?

 

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That said, there is an addon that introduces "standard" behaviour - if only I could recall the name 

I installed bezier utilities yesterday: https://github.com/Shriinivas/blenderbezierutils

This adds some of the of the missed functionality, but it now feels you are dealing with two very different toolsets. It is also very weird that this one only works in object mode.

 

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I work extensively with curves in 2d illustration software. I find Blender's somewhat non-standard approach to curve editing actually refreshing in a number of areas, and quite like editing curves in Blender. There are things that can be done in simple ways that are very awkward to achieve in most 2d illustration software.

Yeah, some features are nice, for example it is easy to rotate a point with its tangents, preserving the angle between them.

 

So yes, there are most probably solutions for everything, but you realy have to search and cobble things together to have what I consider the basics. No question, in other regards Blender is ahead of Cinema, but Cinema realy gets the basics right, in my opinion. But while I am complaining, the devs might by just fixing exactly that stuff, because let's be honest, the development speed is amazing. And I saw some posts in dev blogs that show they are aware for example of the limitations with regard to curve editing

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