Blender users belong in most case to the FOSS crowd, accustomed of getting everything for free i.e. the worst demographics you could think of in terms of wllingness to open the wallet. The ~3k contributors was success which went well beyond my expectations.
@MConDA4ever
A GIMP developer in good, helpful, user-oriented mood makes Mr. Roosendal in a Blender-is-for-Blender-user day (aka no, No, NO, NOOOOO!!!) look like a saint. Torvald Linus levels of jerkiness.
@Everybody
I know that it is a great let down but, sorry… ADSK hasn’t put a price on Blender developers head. Blender is adopted by a demographics which wasn’t, isn’t and will never be a potential ADSK customer so Blender wasn’t, it isn’t and it will never be (as long as a certain guy is at the helm) a competitor of ADSK products.
The ADSK move subject of this thread is a preventive recruitment of new forces, totally brainwashed with ADSK products, to compensate for the inevitable rebellion of part of the current 3DStudio/Maya user base who will talk about Blender out of anger but then will head for SideFX/Pixologic/TheFoundry/MAXON websites.
AFAIK, same function, different file format. Just like Houdini PLE. Why Autodesk didn’t just go Houdini way of PLE made me wonder. Maybe due to popularity of MAX/MAYA, there are money to be made on people buying licenses just to study it, hoping to get a job.
Ha ha. I still remember the good old days of GIMP where ‘everything in its own floating window’ times. No wonder krita become a studio fan far more easier (listen to the user. latest kickstater is a nice example - let paying donators decide instead of asking people to donate but never listen to them).
As for ADSK, they have been open for education for a while, it just that now they expand more.
As for first point, I’m on the middle ground. Blender is a case of asking for more donation money, but not listening to those donating (confirm before exit is a strange example). And the way Blender was being improved is also questionable - while understable in a way. It seems that blender was developed just to full fill Ton open movie dream - whatever that movie need, that will get developed, users need be damned, and that is all. If none of his animators need a confirm before quit button, then to heck with that option, even if 80% donated members wanted it.
The problem with that mentality is that people who donated have money, and by that, they moved to other friendlier app (me to modo). with indie version is out for a lot of app, I think the migration is going to be big, and I wonder how it affect Blender income in the future (if people flock to Maya LT, then maya training sells more compared to blender training). indie version of plug-ins help the migration too (allegromithc texture tools, for example).
so I would not fault blender users, in a way. Blender confirm-before-quit is just like GIMP everything-in-one-window thing. Something that everybody just hope the developers to work on before touching any other tools.
Ton wasn’t against confirm on quit. He was concerned with making it default. That feature isn’t available on all platforms. So, the problem with it being default is Blender behaves differently “out of the box” depending on OS.
Ultimately, it was made the default, and you can always File->Recover Last Session anyway, so who cares?
However, it behaves consistently with other applications on the operating systems that support it. Blender uses the ⌘ key on OSX despite the fact it uses the CTRL key on other operating systems for the same operations. Clearly, if behaving differently “out of the box” was such a big deal, that would not be the case.
New users. Users used to the standards from most other applications. The same users that most likely don’t know that option exists or what it does.
I’d rather not derail the thread into another “Ton vs the World” tit-for-tat, but if we’re going to discuss UI issues where Ton’s preference is pitted against common UI standards, that subject is going to come up. Perhaps we should stick to the educational aspects of AD vs Blender, because if I find myself heading off on the tangent, it’s sure going to attract the more gung-ho anti-Ton posters too.
How do you know 80% of donators wanted it? Has there been a poll? This has nothing to do with actual development, it’s all about people not agreeing about bullshit trivialities like right-mouse select, save-confirmations or how tabs should look.
If you don’t save every minute, you are using Blender wrong. Blender is a program for adults, you should get into the habit of using it accordingly. You should not rely on annoying and unreliable non-solutions, like save-confirmations.
Still, for all your whining you did get your stupid confirmation, in the end. And for everyone else, there is an option to turn it off! This has been done months ago, so why bring that up again, as an example of how development does not work according to “user wishes”? Instead, you should be complaining that development funds are being used on misguided efforts like the BGE!
Muscle simulator.
advanced Particle simulations (The blender simulations are outdated, no comparison to nDynamics from Maya)
More professional rigging system.
Final gather, Global Illumination.
Better Keying system.
better import and export of files.
and the list goes on…
As for the number of donations, I think the main issue is how many Blender users actually make money / a living with this program, compared to students (who are economically broke by definition), people who are just trying it out from time to time because they heard about it, or are just starting out with 3D modeling/rendering/animation. I don’t think it’s fair to ask for or expect donations to the latter, but the former should feel morally obliged to contribute even just a little of their revenues to the BF since they aren’t paying thousands of dollars for their licence(s) as with commercial programs.
However by this reasoning it’s clear that if one is waiting for newcomers, aka mostly “Blender Users”, to become professionals (= people who make a living out of their former hobby) then donations from them are unlikely to come until a later time, and Blender is only relatively recently starting to become popular.
If the program was more conforming to common UI standards in 3D modeling software, then it would become more likely that established professionals who invested much of their time in learning to proficiently use other packages started considering using Blender as well and ultimately donated money, helping development.
Essentially, by targeting mainly “Blender Users”, the BF is driving away many people who can afford to donate even significantly amounts of money.
Personally, I was with Ton on that one. I’m pretty tired of stuff getting implemented half-ass. I was in favor of getting it working cross-platform correctly or not at all.
If something is temporally free while your a student it doesnt mean much… its just cool for a while, and poof gone…
Students are smart, they like to invest their knowledge into something that stays theirs.
Learning Blender, might be much more helpful then gambling your next contractor will use auto-desk.
And from what i’ve heard in the building scene auto-desk isnt that populair anymore either.
Young engineers use less autocad, as other engineering programs are more popular.
But still i noticed that students are amazed how well Blender can render
(I noted this as my nephew a student is learning to become an architect)
So i think for Blender to render, whats actually needed for schools are simple manuals / coarses.
The first one on how to import model (obj or so), then texture, and finnaly render it.
So people coming from other directions easily learn how to use blender for their project
A second one, could be animation, its always cool to walk through buildings, or around models.
And next how to use Blender to draw something yourself.
It would be great to also include a student course on how to program scripts for blender
Everything is exactly the same. No water marks,formats same. The main difference is the license.
And they use a very simple method to police this. When you save a file from an ED version, it is stamped so to speak, as an ED version. So when you open the file in a commercial version you are warned that this file has been created in an ED version and is a violation of the license agreement to use in a commercial version. It forever keeps this stamp if you use it and save it. So anyone opening the file there forward gets this warning.
The fact that if you’re caught violating the EULA you might have to deal with Autodesk. And who wants that overlord being suspicious of you? Sends shivers down my spine…
