Epic Games donates 10k euros to Blender Development Fund

Mainly for FBX exporting pipeline improvements.

Ton`s tweet: https://twitter.com/tonroosendaal/status/485431565447868416

Unreal Engine 4 forum thread: https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?16011-Epic-Donates-to-the-Blender-Foundation

It`s really great to see that gamedev is getting attention it needs from our own crowdfunding to Valve and Epic Games donations. Good times ahead.

Firstly, it is indeed incredibly awesome to see Epic Games climbing aboard the Blender train. I had faint hopes they might when they mentioned the use of Blender as being something they’re looking at in one of their videos, but a $10K donation is above & beyond what I was expecting. Looking forward to seeing the results of this investment because I’m one of those Blender users who are also licensing UE4 for their work :slight_smile:

Well, if we’re looking at it objectively, the donation from Valve was from artists who explicitly donated a portion of proceeds from selling their work on Steam. However, perhaps now with Epic Games climbing aboard, perhaps we’ll see a donation from Steam/Valve themselves :slight_smile:

FBX exporting pipeline improvements

what about shaders ?

could blender shader system will be used in UN4 at export ?

^ probably the other way around, editing of UN4 shaders within blender?

Great news, now hopefully this actually goes towards the features that Epic donated for. Otherwise we will probably never see another donation by any game developer ever again…

EDIT: Err… Ideasman42 is right in this sense, better not jump into speculative missives whenever a thread like this comes up.

Apologies for that.

@NinthJake - @Ace Dragon, really I think its unfair to jump to such speculations,
Of course if anyone supported by the BF isn’t doing their job - it calls into question their position. But to start talking about this now? - this is really poisonous & unnecessary. I expect Ton would not accept the donation if he didn’t intend to follow up on it.

Great news -> Unfounded speculation about corruption. not good!

Further discussion like this and I would temp ban users, if this isn’t accepted I better not be a moderator.

I agree with that, it’s just that Ton gets extra attention in these type of cases because the reputation of Blender as a competitive software starts with the man at the top (which is where he is).

That reputation thus affects every user here who makes a living using Blender, so we really want to make sure that everything is done in a correct and cordial manner.

Anyway, it’s overall a good thing to see these big game companies recognize Blender as a player in the industry, these donations will only help to accelerate that notion.

10000 euro falls from the sky -> users start bickering. Incredible.

awesome news and a great strategic move, they will get a lot more money in return from us Blender Users, (from me for sure because I started with UDK) this shows that Epic wants the many Blender Users as customers. :slight_smile:

@@Piotr_Adamowicz
true words never spoken so clearly. :slight_smile:

I didn’t see what Ace wrote, but I think NinthJake’s comment is related to the last Steam Workshop donation, also $10k, getting put into Gooseberry, which burned a lot of people.

What happened to burn people - URL? otherwise this is feeding the FUD.

Um, I thought you were part of those conversations ideasman42? I may have been mistaken, but I could have sworn you were one of the mods in on the discussion.

Basic outline of what I think NinthJake is referring to is when Ton donated the monies coming from artist sales on Steam to Project Gooseberry “on Steam’s behalf”. That this was done has been acknowledged and isn’t FUD. I can understand you perhaps not wanting to revisit the issue, but let’s not go about accusing people of being deceptive about what is (for many of us) a pretty recent memory in regards to Blender & game-focused development.

The way it “burned” people is due to the difference in opinion between those that did & did not consider Gooseberry a reasonable focus for monies that had previously been stated as going towards more game development focused features.

FWIW, I am not interested in continuing the conversation about “corruption”, maligning Ton, or anything like that. I would prefer to wait and see what comes out of the donated monies before even consider it. My personal belief is that everyone involved has learnt just how passionate the game-development focused users are and recent events after the incident have shown we’re being heard & accepted. To me, it’d be stupid to jeopardise that.

I’m simply a little worried that people are being forbidden from even referring to recent issues that caused grief amongst game-focused Blender users. I don’t know what AD said, but NinthJake’s comment was pretty innocuous & somewhat expected. Two $10K donations, two game companies, and an incident with one causing forum meltdown? It would have been a shock if it wasn’t referred to.

Oh for crying out loud, not again…

Nothing to say against censorship when you act against the forum rules. Like posting forbidden stuff or telling bad words.

But don’t we have enough censorship because of opinions already? There is more and more just allowed to post what some moderators likes. Yeah, i know the excuse, it’s oh so off topic …

Maybe you folks should read about freedom of speech, and why it is important.

I strongly quote. That’s why my activity on this forum has dramatically dropped. Cannot stand such a blind and useless approach.

Btw, subscribed yesterday the UE4, and today I read this news… Well, now I am even more happy of my subscription! Great news! :smiley:

Is there a obligation from BF that Steam workshop donations go to game development, or donations from Epic? If not, maybe should drop the issue already.


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You call me an asshole? Now that’s normally where Forum moderation should jump in!