Blender

I’m really surprised by the apparently incredible support Blender is getting recently.

I wonder why that is: are companies just trying to cut on licensing costs (now that the software is mature enough for professional workflows)?

(Should the topic be in the general game dev discussion like the engine topics?)

Ubisoft still pushes their products out on an otherwise obsolete platform that is required to run them. They are only using it to pinch a few pennies and avoid enterprise pricing. Even with new accessibility updates to blender, it is still a clusterfuck and is still filling its role as ugly, cheap, 3D software that gets the job done the same as any other $1,000 per month program. I think the majority of the support is coming from indie devs who realize it is not half bad for the cost ($0). Personally, I use Maya cuz I get it for free, its amazing, and Autodesk can't imprison me if I decide to use the models for a competition.

Edit: Also, Epic games earns 3 bil a year...

Both companies and artists are increasingly more frustrated at Autodesk as well, both Maya and 3DsMax are ancient apps by now, and I realize there's a lot of legacy code on there that I bet they just wanna stay the hell away from, but they really need to focus on making their tools fast and polished and stop adding so much crap that no one asked for.

To be fair to Autodesk, Maya 2018 was a step in the right direction, that release has a lot of quality of life improvements, but yeah... I feel they need their own "Modo", a fresh start, clean slate where they actually ask artists and modelers the tools they need and build around such needs. But nah, easier to buy other packages (XSI) and close the company that runs them, so fucked up man.

Hummm ... I believe Blender got its 2.80 update (still in beta but plenty of people are using it) → People realize it's at least as good as maya/max for what they do but it also has plenty of tools within the same software that can replace other softwares (sculpting, baking, rendering, physics simulation ...) → They give it a try and it's just much better than paid softwares ?

Plus it has an incredible real-time render view (eevee).

Maybe guys you should give it a try ?

To me, it's 1000% deserved.

(I'm no expert, I'm not an 3D artist)

Quote from Radu

5 hours ago, Radu said: Any of you guys know a good tutorial series on the basics? I tried my hand at Blender back in 2017 and blocked out some placeholder window frames for Source, but never got back to it. I remember it was pretty awkward finding something specifically tailored for creating game assets that also explains a bit more in depth. Most of the videos I found where focused on renders within the software and anything Source related was incomplete - had to use several videos to figure some things out.

Actually, might be worth sharing more resources. I'll update the first post accordingly so it's easy to find for everyone.

Here you go, freshly updated video playlist with Blender 2.8 Fundamentals:

The Blender Developers Blog is a great place to find out more about current and upcoming plans for Blender development:

https://code.blender.org/

If you have a good idea or a feature request, one of the best places to get in touch directly with the developers is through Devtalk forum:https://devtalk.blender.org/

https://devtalk.blender.org/

If you find Blender useful and like to help make it better, there's a new donation page:https://fund.blender.org/

https://fund.blender.org/ (They are currently getting 71K€/month from community and corporations! All funds are invested directly into hiring new contractors/developers.)

PS: If you find a bug that's annoying you and like to speed up fixing of it, you can report it directly from inside Blender via the Help dropdown menu.

@Radu I bought a course a few years back, videos available on Steam(!). I think was tailored to the Valve workflow but I only watched a few of the UI explanation videos, then never continued ?

Seemed very good (detailed) but probably there’s better stuff around now.

Quote from blackdog

9 minutes ago, blackdog said: @Radu I bought a course a few years back, videos available on Steam(!). I think was tailored to the Valve workflow but I only watched a few of the UI explanation videos, then never continued ?

Seemed very good (detailed) but probably there’s better stuff around now.

I'd suggest jumping into the upcoming Blender 2.8 release with the improved interface and bunch of new features. This is a major release and there's already a huge amount of sweet features lined up for the next release that further enhances this reworked foundation.

I believe the tutorial video playlist I posted is a good place to start. Most of the community has also now ramped up the creation of more detailed tutorials for this impending release.

How about environment art specific tuts for blender? Anything like that out there in the world you guys might know about?

Here is a nice overview of uv unwrapping methods that helped me learning the ropes. I'm not sure if it applies to 2.80, though.

https://anothertutorial.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/may…ing-in-blender/

I'm really excited to try out version 2.80 but i'll wait for the official release.

Quote from Radu

10 hours ago, Radu said: Any of you guys know a good tutorial series on the basics? I tried my hand at Blender back in 2017 and blocked out some placeholder window frames for Source, but never got back to it. I remember it was pretty awkward finding something specifically tailored for creating game assets that also explains a bit more in depth. Most of the videos I found where focused on renders within the software and anything Source related was incomplete - had to use several videos to figure some things out.

Actually, might be worth sharing more resources. I'll update the first post accordingly so it's easy to find for everyone.

This is a good one that covers all the fundamentals at a good pace: https://cloud.blender.org/p/game-asset-c…44a2a00d0d7e069

Last time I used Blender I got frustrated because the UI and workflow was an unintuitive mess

...but that was in like 2006, it probably received 1 or 2 updates since then ?

One day I might finally cross this thing off my life goals bucket list: modelling a blender with Blender

The interface has changed in the latest release but I'd say most functionalities are still there, but they might have been moved around a bit.

Once you get a hang of things in blender and need more specific tools and features, there's a huge selection of high quality free and paid add-ons available. Most of them can be found on Gumroad or Blendermarket.

Regarding UV-unwrapping, many might be familiar with the TexTools add-on from 3dsMax which is also available for Blender 2.79 & 2.80 for free.

As someone who started 3d modelling in blender and only 2 years later went on to learn maya, I'm baffled at the amount of people calling Blender unintuitive. I find it the exact opposite. The navigation in the viewport is incredibly smooth and easy to get used to, especially the shift F feature which I use all the time to fly around and save a lot of time of panning and rotating. The vertex editing tools are 5 times faster than maya and it loads 50 times quicker. The rest of the interface is considerably well organized imo. In fact I think you can learn most of the stuff through trial and error relatively quickly. Of course the experience is gonna be very different for people who have been using maya or 3ds max or 4d or any other software before trying blender and have to adapt to the different UI and controls.

This is just my personal experience. And I love blender. Only thing I've ever had to use another program for was 3d modelling, where of course nothing can beat zbrush.

I have been using Blender 1/2 of my entire lifetime, so I am excited to see what is going on with investments and such.. I am a big fan of open source software, and for those who do sculpting you should check out the branch being worked on by Pablo Dobarro https://mobile.twitter.com/pablodp606/sta…336342521556992 . I've testing it out the last few days and it is great.

*Edit: As of 19 hours ago Pablo is now working for Blender.

Also EEVEE is fucking awesome.

@NikiOo I pretty much did the opposite and completely understand what people are complaining about all the time. If you start on the convoluted program you don't really know what you are missing in terms of accessibility. Also, the addons for blender can be useful but most of them are niche gimmicks or absolutely necessary to perform a task. My fav had to be the one where you can use perspective reference photos to create geometry for renders by tracing over the picture. I am still confused who the target audience is. Its a 3D modeling program, not nuke. Then there is the cabinet generator which is probably the reason there are so many crappy inaccurate interior renders that you see in the real estate business. There is literally an addon just to have usable retopo tools. Right now I am looking at an addon that claims to aid blender's rudimentary reference plane tools. The list of tools that try to compensate for blender's lack of functionality goes on to UV wrapping, sculpting, rigging, etc, etc. I am not trying to shit on blender. The plugins ain't that tight tho, and if they weren't free it would be like paying for something that should come stock installed. I'm gonna give blender another chance for basic 3D modeling and see how it goes.

Blender 2.80 has been released!

Check out the release notes & download:https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-80/

Manual:https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/

@Interfearance Yeah, I agree that there's room for improvement in many areas. If you want to optimize your workflow as much as possible, you pretty much have to download/buy a few plug-ins, but many of them extend the desired functionality ten folds for about 10-50 bucks.

I've played around with 2.8 for about an hour now and switched back to the 2.7x input scheme. I wonder if many others do the same out of convenience.