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Apple Pledges Support for 3D Graphics Tool Blender

00001000bit said:
They could only do that if they wanted to make those suites Open Source as well. Blender is GPL (not LGPL) so there isn't a clause in the license allowing linking from non-open code. The only way they could potentially do it without opening their own code is to have separate binaries that "talk" over a communication socket so that there isn't any direct linking of the binaries. That would mean having to serialize and de-serialize all the data you wanted to communicate and would introduce a lot of overhead.
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This highlights the importance of choosing a software license wisely.
 
leman said:
Why would Apple purchase a non profit foundation? How would that even work?
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They probably would never do so but if they did, it would be mostly for control or to use the source code for other means of profit. Apple has done it in the past so it's not completely out of the ordinary for them to do it again.
 
dysamoria said:
I voted you up, but wanted to mention: Lightwave has always been more flaky on Mac OS (first-hand crashing & bugs experience), and NewTek seems to have abandoned the product entirely.
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I never did get to use Lightwave on the Mac as I had moved on to 3DSMax and later on, Maya by the time I switched fully over to Macs. But I've always retained a soft spot for it as it was the first GUI-based professional 3D app that I used on an Amiga 500.
It's a shame what happened to NewTek really. I'd love to see Lightwave live on forever.
 
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asiga said:
Blender has a feature which prevents me from using it: that you cannot lock the vertical axis. Seeing the horizon rotate like if it was a flight simulator is really a showstopper for me. I need the horizon to be always horizontal (except on very rare occasions, in which I would unlock it). All 3D apps I know of let you lock the horizon.
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Are you saying you can’t prevent the blender camera from a roll motion? I’m a c4D user but even still that seems elementary. I would be shocked if what you say is true here. In flight if you have pitch, yaw and roll… these are just axis movements… really basic stuff that even the most basic 3D apps have.
 
Lestdog said:
Are you saying you can’t prevent the blender camera from a roll motion? I’m a c4D user but even still that seems elementary. I would be shocked if what you say is true here. In flight if you have pitch, yaw and roll… these are just axis movements… really basic stuff that even the most basic 3D apps have.
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Just need to switch from Orbit Mode to Turntable Mode, as has been mentioned a few times already in the thread...?
 
Boil said:
Just need to switch from Orbit Mode to Turntable Mode, as has been mentioned a few times already in the thread...?
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...as has been mentioned a few times already in the thread... and... as I already replied with a big thanks to the first user who said this feature is implemented in the preferences. Obviously, if people reply without reading other previous replies, I cannot be monitoring all of them.
 
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Lone Deranger said:
I never did get to use Lightwave on the Mac as I had moved on to 3DSMax and later on, Maya by the time I switched fully over to Macs. But I've always retained a soft spot for it as it was the first GUI-based professional 3D app that I used on an Amiga 500.
It's a shame what happened to NewTek really. I'd love to see Lightwave live on forever.
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Who the hell knows what is up with Lightwave; it probably is dead. 2019 will probably be the last version I will own. Vizrt has been radio silence about anything. It is a shame, it was bad enough when a bunch of the devs split off to make Modo. I am still up in the air about what I may switch to. Most of my stuff is logo work, so I may just start using Element 3D more.
 
DeepIn2U said:
Would be interesting to see your workflow within blender.

yes real meaning of workflow, not a content creator/YouTubers dumb-use of the word (what gadgets used).
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Haha yeah, I’m not a huge fan of “content creator” meaning streamer. Streamers are great but I always thought of the stuff they play as the content.

Anyways, my workflow isn’t too complex; just building models+uvs for use with Unity engine. No renders in Blender for me.
 
I hope we get a decent demo of Blender tomorrow, and a really cool bonus would be if they also showed off a stack of M1X Mac minis running as a renderfarm over a 10Gb Ethernet switch...!

But maybe they save a renderfarm demo for the preview of the ASi Mac Pro lineup (Mac Pro Cube / iMac Pro / Mac Pro) come WWDC 2022 (shipping in December 2022)...!?! ;^p
 
Boil said:
I hope we get a decent demo of Blender tomorrow, and a really cool bonus would be if they also showed off a stack of M1X Mac minis running as a renderfarm over a 10Gb Ethernet switch...!

But maybe they save a renderfarm demo for the preview of the ASi Mac Pro lineup (Mac Pro Cube / iMac Pro / Mac Pro) come WWDC 2022 (shipping in December 2022)...!?! ;^p
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I looked at the pull request and it's very early days. I don't think we're going to be getting a fully 100% Mac optimised version of Blender for at least a few months.
 
Lone Deranger said:
I never did get to use Lightwave on the Mac as I had moved on to 3DSMax and later on, Maya by the time I switched fully over to Macs. But I've always retained a soft spot for it as it was the first GUI-based professional 3D app that I used on an Amiga 500.
It's a shame what happened to NewTek really. I'd love to see Lightwave live on forever.
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I feel the same. I spent a lot more time trying to learn Lightwave than any other 3D package (short of Carrara, but that was an ongoing disaster due to ownership nonsense and a failure to make the UI run on native APIs, so as to make it cross platform, which actually *wasn’t* one of the problems I experienced with Lightwave).

Lightwave felt robust and tolerant of big projects, compared to, for example, Carrara (again), but that was on Windows. It tended to crash on Mac OS. I had a little project I tried to use the physics engine to set up (“antidepressant” pill capsules with tiny skulls pouring out, instead of the little balls). Turns out the physics engine is terminally buggy on the Mac in version 9.6.1, and they weren’t going to fix it. After every time I’ve spent money to upgrade this 3D package or others, I decided to stop throwing money at these companies.

Frankly, *every* single 3D project I have tried to create, in order to learn 3D packages, has been almost entirely thwarted by bugs, as well as just generally bad usability design. I started my computing life as a tech geek, but I hate that it’s a requirement for use of 3D tools.

Carrara wins the triple award for “most unfinished, most buggy, and most owners that don’t give a damn about finishing the code”.

Modo wins the award for worst texturing & shading system (it’s otherwise pretty brilliantly designed, but that’s a monstrous fatal flaw for anything but modeling).

ZBrush wins the “clearly designed by crackheads” award. I posted about it in the same blog entry where I criticized Blender for the ... “customizable UI”...

ZBrush Core is way less crackheaded, but Pixologic won’t convert my ZBrush license into a ZBrush Core license. It makes no sense, especially since they’ve been giving me free upgrades to the prime product all these years.

I’ve done a little bit in ZBrush Core Mini, but I generally have little motivation for it, since I still don’t like the UI, and it’s limited, under the expectation that you’ll buy Core or the primary product once you’re hooked on it.

I pretty much gave up on 3D, but I check on the status of software packages once or thrice per year to see how (or *IF*) they’re progressing. *Blender* looks like it’s finally getting there, but the current version crashes on my iMac just loading the procedural buildings demo.

I presume it’s because of the GPU; the iMac 12,2 is from 2011. I won’t be seeing fixes to correct this issue and don’t want to bother creating a Blender dev or forum account to politely shout into the void at the developers over it. “Buy a new computer”, will be the inevitable response.

I’ll try again whenever I move on to a newer machine (I’m waiting on you, Apple!).
 
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C4D isn't completely bug-free, but it's way more stable than any of the apps you mentioned (excepting ZBrush). Sadly the new CEO has decided to Adobe-ify the company so everything is rental only, which utterly sucks, especially if you're more of an enthusiast, like me. Blender is still weird and has some very annoying usability quirks, but I suspect in a few years, maybe a decade, it might be the only game in town, apart from the pro-level stuff from Autodesk used in VFX.
 
dysamoria said:
Frankly, *every* single 3D project I have tried to create, in order to learn 3D packages, has been almost entirely thwarted by bugs, as well as just generally bad usability design. I started my computing life as a tech geek, but I hate that it’s a requirement for use of 3D tools.
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Unfortunately, being a productive 3D artist is very much dependent on one's ability to work around software limitations. Bugs, crashes, data incompatibilities, bizarre black box tools that limit you enough to render them mostly useless, etc. It definitely is the dark side of CG that's often not shown or discussed.
Whenever I have a particularly bad day dealing with such issues, it always makes me want to drop the task at hand and just paint in blessedly problem free 2D. :)

I have also long since gotten tired of the very low-level nature of a lot of tools and tasks required to build up a shot/scene. But that's another story.
 
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jmho said:
I wonder if Apple will be able to convince them to make a Metal accelerated Viewport. One of the developers of Blender a while back said they wouldn't allow multiple APIs for the viewport renderer, but they were looking to move to Vulkan, and Macs would end up getting a MoltenVK version.

That might change if Apple themselves are contributing though.
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Anything new on Metal viewports, seems that would provide the best performance on an Apple silicon Mac...?

jefhai said:
Yeah but who’s using Mac for 3D stuff… barely nobody. Pick game design or movies- they design those huge models on Windows with Graphics cards
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Yeah but who's using PCs for 3D stuff... barely nobody. Pick game design or movies- they design those huge models on Silicon Graphics with Infinite Reality engines
 
Boil said:
Anything new on Metal viewports, seems that would provide the best performance on an Apple silicon Mac...?



Yeah but who's using PCs for 3D stuff... barely nobody. Pick game design or movies- they design those huge models on Silicon Graphics with Infinite Reality engines
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You mean SGI that went bankrupt more than 10 years ago?
 
jefhai said:
You mean SGI that went bankrupt more than 10 years ago?
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Exactly, they were the cutting edge of computer graphics "back in the day", but the tides changed and PCs took over; SGI tried to go with the flow and put out Windows NT boxen, but their "high-end 3d" graphics ability they were known for was now available to the masses...

There is a possibility of another shift to Apple silicon workstations, especially if they start adding more custom hardware acceleration bits & bobs to the Mac Pro chips at some point, ray-tracing and all that sorta junk...

Which would be sorta funny, because that is what Silicon Graphics was doing in their heyday, big ol' slabs of PCBs (multiple PCBs, all on a backplane) filled with a whole bunch of chips, pushing pixels...

I think back to the guts of a refrigerator-sized Onyx, absolutely filled with circuit boards, and all that graphics horsepower can now be found in the most mundane of devices...
 
Boil said:
Exactly, they were the cutting edge of computer graphics "back in the day", but the tides changed and PCs took over; SGI tried to go with the flow and put out Windows NT boxen, but their "high-end 3d" graphics ability they were known for was now available to the masses...

There is a possibility of another shift to Apple silicon workstations, especially if they start adding more custom hardware acceleration bits & bobs to the Mac Pro chips at some point, ray-tracing and all that sorta junk...

Which would be sorta funny, because that is what Silicon Graphics was doing in their heyday, big ol' slabs of PCBs (multiple PCBs, all on a backplane) filled with a whole bunch of chips, pushing pixels...

I think back to the guts of a refrigerator-sized Onyx, absolutely filled with circuit boards, and all that graphics horsepower can now be found in the most mundane of devices...
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Until the day Apple sells enough haha.. most major studios have vendors like Dell, HP.. Apple would have to get huge contracts like that. Highly doubt it. Also pros in the field are using quadros. So again we’ll see
 
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