The sad part is what some have already hinted, all of that cutting edge CG technology disappearing before users have a chance to use a 1 to 1 equivalent in the other Autodesk products. Now there might be a chance that an equivalent of some might come its way into Blender considering the army of developers reading to start coding for Project Gooseberry, but Blender might need more resources than that to get everything.
Also, when it comes to viewport code and the like, whatever happened to the discussion on raising the minimum specs. for Blender so as to require a duel core machine and such, because I know for one thing that there’s been discussion on how using newer versions of C++ will boost Blender’s performance once XP support is dropped?
Thank you, agreed with everything, and it’s exactly the kind of thing I was driving at. If a large number of Softimage users would get together and donate to Blender a small portion of what they are paying in subscription fees to Autodesk, they could make a big difference on Blender and possibly correct some of the shortcomings that they perceive with it. But it’s up to them to decide that they don’t want to just keep taking it from Autodesk or any other closed-source software company.
I also want to send my thoughts to Softimage users. I’m a big fan of the software, and still own a couple of licenses from the Avid days. I’m also really sorry to see this happen.
Only there seems to be an extra tricky balancing act for Blender to follow because Blender’s FOSS status means it has a lot more users from the third world or with old machines than the commercial apps. The risk of alienating the idea of ‘3D for everyone’ was actually brought up once or twice during the initial specs. debate (the commercial companies meanwhile can choose to leave those with older hardware behind because many of them would likely be unable to afford a license anyway).
So in any sense, those abstraction layers that are part of the Viewport FX project may be needed to the disappointment of some professional users because of this, this is just an additional thing that needs to be considered when you have an open source 3D program that saw one of its initial goals being to give the worldwide masses access to 3D technology.
I still agree though that the Blender Foundation would likely be able to get away with at least a small bump in the minimum hardware/OpenGL specs. without too much uproar, but there’s no way they would be able to thrust it to the level seen for the big budget apps. without fire and brimstone raining down on them from hundreds of users (Blender for example is only going to see the loss of WinXP support because Microsoft is finally going to abandon it).
We have 10 year olds making their very first 3D scenes on E-machines for example, this is the type of user that you’d almost never find with a commercial app. with 3-4 digit pricetags because they’re parents would not want to spend that much money (unless of course the BF made “Blender-lite” for very old or very weak hardware, but I don’t know of the feasibility of that).
There’s a whole economic theory behind this behavior…
If FLOSS can be considered the public good, the “problem” we are talking about is Free Riding.* It’s common for open-source software. Experimental economists investigate this behavior pretty often. See some articles if you want.
Well the truth of the matter is that Open Source is the ONLY sustainable option. History repeats itself again and again… Blender is saved from the brink from investors who would have otherwise tossed it in the trash. Arduino developers decide to open source their hardware to save years of their work when they see the writing on the wall (Arduino the documentary http://vimeo.com/18539129 ).
This is the only way! Even if you don’t give a sh**t about the ethic reasoning behind it. For all of these companies it’s just about profit, of course! That’s what they do.
Now if all these disenfranchised Softimage studios/artists could just focus their efforts on building their proprietary pipelines around the Blender core and develop their own addons they can be assured no one can pull the rug from underneath them. If they would make symbolic funding to Blender and maybe some guidance we’d all win.
So, has anybody from the Blender Institute contacted the lead developers of SoftImage to hire one of them full time, as they are being put out to pasture. Our contributions would be well spent, to complement the fine work of the already on board developers. ICE is a solid concept that has no peer, give it a home in the Blender world.
To the people who believe it would take only a bit more donations for the BF to hire X more developers, so that Blender can start competing with the “big guys”: No, it takes more than that.
Finding the kind of developers (many of which are PHDs) that work on products like Softimage is tough, even for companies like Autodesk. Have you ever seen the BF even post a job advertisement? No? Because that’s not how it works for the BF. You first have to contribute on a voluntary basis. I don’t know what they’re able to pay and what that contract looks like, but I sincerely doubt it can compete with the benefits of working at a big and stable company.
Then there’s the idea that Blender studios (of which there are very few, in the first place) are supposed to hire developers. However, it’s unusual for studios to hire “real” software engineers, which is something for which they have little expertise. Developers are expensive and generally don’t get a lot done, which is why their cost needs to be amortized among many clients - which is exactly what a commercial software product does. But let’s say they did - why should they publish the changes they made for in-house use? That would put them at a competitive disadvantage, because they paid for features that other studios now get to use for free.
I don’t see a way to make this work, at all. Blender will stay the dog that occasionally gets thrown a bone. We could just accept that and dial down our expectations, a bit.
As for the people who believe that “open-source wins in the long run”, I see very little evidence of that actually happening. You can basically look everywhere, the more specialized the market, the more money companies can (and have to) charge for crappy proprietary software.
In 2002 “Free Blender” raised 100.000EUR and bought the Blender Source Code from NaN and made it FOSS.
In 2017 “Free Softimage” raised 10.000.000EUR and bought the XSI Softimage Source Code from Autodesk and made it FOSS.
In 2018 Cycles was integrated as stand-alone renderer for Softimage.
In 2020 Blender and Softimage Source codes master branches merged.
Autodesk wouldn’t sell the source code for any sum we could reasonably raise.
There’s value in taking a strong competitor off the market and aquiring their technology and team. The program itself might not directly benefit them right now (ports of relevant systems such as ICE are already underway for Maya), but it’s worth a lot to them to keep it out of the hands of the competition!
Don’t you think instead of focusing what other (bad Adsk) examples do, and how they are locked thinking inside the box; we should tackle problems at hand with a different approach.
The minimum donation for development fund is affordable by almost everyone using blender. Even donating every 2 months is something. No matter what the degree or skill set, 1 developer is 1 asset and 10 developers is 10 assets. They do not have to make a break through they can lighten the load of other more experienced blender coders. Besides people can always pair program or do brainstorming to solve problems and learn along the way.
You are right yes some tasks/features require a set of specific skill set/experience. However we do not have to tackle all the problems at once.
And development funds can be used in a way without hiring a developer with a doctorate degree. Maybe a more experienced engineer can architect /design the task or maybe even do outside consultation.Its all open source anyway.
And besides it all in having a dream right ? A goal we all share together. We see people who are big at software/computer market today left school but managed to build great things and dreams. Microsoft,Apple,Valve,Facebook.
Because maintaining your own branch is work for someone. therefor costs money (and theres a risk an in-house branch becomes incompatible with git-mainline). It all depends on how extensive the changes are, but generally speaking the larger the changes, the more problems you run into trying to keep the branches in sync.
Autodesk bought Softimage to kill it (and maybe gut some tech out of it). Any FOSS dream is not even amusing and, b.t.w. ADSK is a 12+billion company, so for them 10 million $ are the toilet paper budget. Approach them with 3-5 hundred miliions and you might have a talk with their CEO/CFO.
ADSK shares are currently +3.54% so investors are more than happy for Softimage death warrant.
yii7, I’m not at all arguing against against people joining the Development Fund. To the contrary, I strongly urge everyone - even those who are hobbyists - to join. Blender will be better for it, no doubt. I’m merely putting things into perspective.
One thing we can agree on: It really depends. Your scenario assumes that the in-house development is up to the standards, design intentions and general direction of the official Blender version. This can be both limiting and laborious. Code needs to be cleaned up and documentation needs to be written. Then it has to be accepted and henceforth it requires maintenance also from your side. Whether any significant amount of work can be offset that way isn’t predictable, but work has to be done by someone, in any case.
Development usually happens in branches anyway and even with Blender it’s not unusual for a single developer to have multiple ones. So, is it really that big a deal? I don’t think so.
@Zalamander (this is a bit off topic) - but yes, it really depends.
However most developers branches are short lived - they get either abandoned or merged into master (within say 6 months).
If you talk to anyone who worked on FreeStyle or BMesh for eg, branches that lasted years - it definitely was a big deal, we had to re-branch more then once (re-applying all changes back to master) and often had merge conflicts when syncing with master.
I have bought XSI version 7.0 fifteen days before Autodesk bought it, then they released a 7.5 version labeles “Autodesk’s”. They never let me upgrade. Crooks !
ADSK don’t want sell at all softimage. They just proposed to softimage users in subscription a migration to Max and Maya, but if you doing so after 2016 you softiamge license will be cancelled and cannot be used. In other words, they want bury the corpse forever. They brought softimage for only three reasons: Avid wanted sell it; they wanted the softimage patent and technology; they want the entire team behind softimage. After acquisition, except release 2011 and 2012, the others release was really cheap in terms of quality and quantity. So, they don’t want sell it, and if they want selling it… who want buy it now?
Blender is not a viable solution for many softimage users. I well know softimage, a great piece of software with a unbeatable workflow wise. After zbrush, blender was the first 3d software I learned, but compared it to softimage can be very hard, the entire concept is different in many way, I like Blender interaction system, but must admit softimage is more streamlined and efficient in modelling workflow and rigging. In animation, simply softimage has a lot of power (can handle very large and heavy scenes) and simplicity (a killer combo).
All in all the transition can be do for modellers and everyone producing still images, more hard for the animators (but I suspect modo will attract more modellers then blender, due their ability of heavy adapt to user workflow and previous tools).
Transition to blender is practical impossible for VFX artist used to ICE, probably they will migrate on Houdini or Maya (don’t exist others alternative), blender need a very more strong wieport and data managment (not to mention, ICE was totally multythread)
