
Japanese anime studio Khara moving to Blender - robin_reala
https://www.blender.org/user-stories/japanese-anime-studio-khara-moving-to-blender/
======
swebs
>Not only with Autodesk but also with other companies, we keep requesting
improvements. However, it takes time for those improvements to make it to
proprietary software. We expect faster improvements by using open source
software.

That's pretty cool. I wonder what kind of anime-focused features will come to
the next version of Blender as a result.

~~~
samstave
Dude, I was an EXPERT in Autocad from 1992 on....

I was the fastest ever to complete the ACAD design challenge (3 - hour test,
finished it in 33 minutes)

I was the only person to have ever completed the autocad design interview test
at the first architectural firm I worked at.... (8 minutes)

I came is second in the US CAD Olympics (only second because I skimmed the
notes and it also required me to draw a bolt and I didnt notice that req in
the directions)

\---

I love autodesk --- but I hate their arrogance. They have lightened up a bit
with 360 and such....

But I am rooting for Blender.

The amount of amazing talent around the world that will blow shit up is
immense.

We will see some guy from freaking thailand or something just come out with
something unbelievable.

I was asked to design a rendering factory in asia for lucas film some years
ago... (I was the designer for the Lucas Presidio Complex's Data Center) --
their comment was "US 3D designers are over-paid pre-madonnas and complain too
much"

\---

So, I hope blender kicks some fucking ass and that we see some amazing shit
come out from a completely unknown person as of yet.

~~~
geoka9
> I love autodesk...

I sure don't. Buying up the competition and killing it off (see Softimage). I
would migrate from a proprietary package to Blender just to make sure Autodesk
can't get its paws on it and wreck havoc to my pipeline once again.

~~~
dangom
Not to mention Autodesk used to be proud of having their tools being used to
destroy the environment [1].

[https://twitter.com/JoanieLemercier/status/11102794489711329...](https://twitter.com/JoanieLemercier/status/1110279448971132930)

~~~
dan-robertson
Contrast this with free software (eg blender which is gplv3) where the license
grants users the freedom to use the software for any purpose, even purposes
that the software authors do not approve of. So it seems silly to say autodesk
is evil because of who they allow to use their software in a comment on an
article about software which explicitly chooses to make no restrictions on
their users.

~~~
fwn
In a different sense one could say that Autodesk is worse than Blender because
its licensing model does allow the authors to make decisions on who might be
allowed to use it.

A truly undervalued property of free software is that nobody can exert
pressure on you for using it. Users can stay ideologically uncompromised.

------
mogpt
Some friends of mine recently launched the pilot episode of their independent
series, Culturesport, all done completely in Blender.
[https://youtu.be/UEcNEO3fVF8](https://youtu.be/UEcNEO3fVF8)

They've been proselytizing Blender for years now, seems like the tide is
rising.

~~~
lioeters
Thanks for sharing this pilot episode made with Blender.

Woo, what a trip! Great use of colors and sounds.

I recognized some Scheme code scrolling by in the futuristic synthesizer.

------
roboyoshi
As someone who worked in a similar section (animation), this is great news.
Autodesk tools (especially Maya) are way too expensive in what they deliver.
I'm glad many big studios realized this in that they either build their own
tools (Pixar/Dreamworks) or they adapt Open Source (Blender) and help
improving it.

There is still other tooling (Cinema4D, ZBrush) but those are actually
working.. Maya has failed me so many times, I cannot recommend it in any way
other than it is still (sadly) used very commonly among studios. And artists
do not like to learn new toolings, that I also know from experience.. edit:
grammar

~~~
santaclaus
> Autodesk tools (especially Maya) are way too expensive in what they deliver.
> I'm glad many big studios realized this in that they either build their own
> tools (Pixar/Dreamworks) or they adapt Open Source (Blender) and help
> improving it.

Cost isn’t the issue, it’s mainly the fact that Autodesk effectively put Maya
on life support. Pixar is paying hundreds of software engineers in the Bay to
develop their proprietary animation tools, which is most definitely not
cheaper than a few hundred Maya seats per show.

~~~
dagmx
This is a gross misunderstanding of everything in the industry.

Maya is far, far from being on life support. There are hundreds of studios
around the world that use it, and autodesk do substantial development in Maya
till date including updated adding USD, Bifrost and parallel graph evaluation.

The fact that Pixar have their own animation package (Presto) has nothing to
do with Maya whatsoever.

The first ancestor to Presto effectively predates Maya. They've developed a
lot of custom tooling and workflows around it for animation. They still use
Maya for many aspects outside animation like modelling etc...

Similarly DreamWorks and rhythm and hues also had their own proprietary
animation software (premo and voodoo) for similar reasons but still use Maya
for other purposes.

Your comment is completely off base.

~~~
santaclaus
Autodesk laid off the entire R&D staff of Maya (outside of Bifrost, which was
an acquisition a few years ago and is now a one person show, mainly) and
transferred ownership to their maintenance engineering division, if that isn’t
life support I don’t know what is.

~~~
dagmx
Funny how they're actively hiring Maya developers now then right?

This is clearly some made up FUD

------
rpastuszak
I needed 3D software to create a bunch of models for a RealityKit demo and the
only usable version of Maya was $200 per month (Maya LT doesn't support
plugins).

I gave Blender another shot (Blender 2.8 to be specific). The new UI is just
fantastic! And it's actually usable with a touchbar-only setup.

I wish GIMP progressed so much—*nix environment + Adobe CC are the two main
reasons I'm sticking to MacOS.

~~~
xemdetia
I've given up on GIMP in a sense, Krita is the closest to what I actually want
it to be but it's still missing some key stuff for me when it comes to vector
selections and font work (but font work on GIMP was also less than great).
It's much closer to what I've wanted GIMP to evolve into, so I've been
crossing my fingers there.

~~~
neurostimulant
Photopea is much better than gimp in my opinion. It works really-really well
for a web app.

[https://www.photopea.com/](https://www.photopea.com/)

~~~
SomeOldThrow
Oh wow that also works on my phone! This is amazing.

------
ngngngng
What an amazing story of human cooperation. One on hand, everyone wants to
make boatloads of money, on the other hand, sometimes we realize that if we
all pitch in to a shared resource, we can make something better and cheaper
than otherwise possible.

There are so many things I wish humanity could apply this to, glad to see it
working in practice!

~~~
devoply
All things are made this way... Not because of money. It's just that in order
to make them often you need money before the fact, and people with money get
ownership and credit. The workers never make boat loads of money or get
acknowledged for actually making it happen.

------
tylerl
Probably the most compelling feature of Blender being open source with a
significant community is that it's the one 3d tool that Autodesk can't simply
buy out.

~~~
sprafa
I like this comment too much. I pretty much steer clear from Autodesk ever
since they detonated softimage.

------
andybak
> 3ds Max is an excellent tool and one of the industry standards, but in some
> cases it causes a “lack of artists” due to its high costs.

A liberal non-commercial offering from Autodesk would at least help. Houdini
realized this. Unity and Unreal are both essentially free to learners and
hobbyists.

You need a pool of talent. And it needs continually refreshing.

~~~
asutekku
A “public secret” is that autodesk pretty much gives free non-commercial
student licenses to anyone, no relation to an actual education institution
needed. Advertising it better would definitely help them I think:

~~~
Jonnax
If you can't sell the art you make with an design application, you would be a
fool to invest time in learning it using a student license.

Unless you thought it'd get you a job.

~~~
dylan604
Sell your first commissioned piece of art, use that money to buy the license,
(re-render if necessary for higher output), have no money from first sale,
continue using that version to create more art.

~~~
danShumway
Quick look at Autodesk's website lists Maya as costing $1,500 per year.
Depending on what your commissions cost, that might not be trivial --
especially since you can't build up to that. You can't do 5 small commissions
over the course of two months, you need that money up-front.

Plus, you're betting on your commission rate being steady. If your commission
rate drops off with Blender, no big deal. If it drops off with Maya, you have
to make a decision now about whether it's worth it to renew your subscription,
or whether you should drop Maya and start over learning a brand new program.

If you value your time at $20 an hour, you could spend 75 additional hours
learning to get good at Blender instead of Maya, and you would still break
even. And then every year after that for the rest of your career you'd get to
save $1500. Take that extra money and put it into buying a better desktop
computer, or into upgrading your GPU, or into getting a good drawing tablet,
or into buying professional textures, all of which will probably have a much
bigger impact on your productivity than Maya will.

------
kazinator
Trans{cription,lation} of the image [https://www.blender.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/08/khara_02....](https://www.blender.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/08/khara_02.jpg)

> Blenderの開発基金への賛同について

Regarding the approval of the Blender development fund,

> 本社並びに、本社関連会社の株式会社プロジェクトスタジオＱは、オープンソースの

> アニメ‐ジョン制作ツール開発をサポートするため、 Blender開発基金賛同いたします。

This company, as well as this company's affiliated (incorporated, public)
company Project Studio Q, in order to support the development of the open
source animation creation tool, are approving the Blender development fund.

> 今後の３DCGアニメーションの発展を期待しております。

Hencerforth, we look forward to the advancement of "3DCG Animation".

> Blender財団の発表

Announcement from the Blender foundation:

>
> [https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1154003846718468098](https://twitter.com/blender_org/status/1154003846718468098)

------
jarsin
Autodesk is responding to all this blender news by releasing full versions of
Maya and 3dsMax for $250/yr for indies. It's the full versions not the LT
versions.

I think too little too late.

[https://area.autodesk.com/maya-indie/](https://area.autodesk.com/maya-indie/)

~~~
hajile
> Your annual gross revenue from design work must be less than
> USD$100,000/year

$100K gross....

That basically means you are self-employed and undercharging, you are going
broke, or you are a startup using some creative accounting.

~~~
aggie
You may be living in a bubble if that is your sense of things.

[https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/3d-modeler-salary-
SRCH_KO...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/3d-modeler-salary-
SRCH_KO0,10.htm)

Even in the Bay Area the average is $83k:
[https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-
francisco-3d-modeler-...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-
francisco-3d-modeler-salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM759_KO14,24.htm)

~~~
hajile
If an employee is getting paid an average of $64K, they are very likely
costing their employer another $36K in taxes, unemployment, worker's comp,
401k matching, insurance, vacation time, etc.

If you run your own business, you have to account for these things and more
(accountant, equipment, advertising, etc). Staying under 100K gross seems
almost impossible unless you plan on running yourself out of business.

~~~
aggie
You're right. I misread that as income from an employer. Sorry.

------
faitswulff
> Kobayashi: “There are currently some areas where Blender cannot take care of
> our needs, but we can solve it with the combination with Unity. Unity is
> usually enough to cover 3ds Max and Maya as well. Unity can be a bridge
> among environments.”

Does anyone know how they're using Unity? I'd be curious to hear more about
gamedev tools being used in animation.

~~~
SpliffnCola
Star Wars: Rogue One used Unreal Engine for a few parts where they could get
the same fidelity to Renderman output.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnigQTOig8k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnigQTOig8k)

------
orbital-decay
_> Not only with Autodesk but also with other companies, we keep requesting
improvements. However, it takes time for those improvements to make it to
proprietary software. We expect faster improvements by using open source
software._

This is ironic considering that along with Softimage, Maya is _the_ history of
CGI, written in software. Most of the features and paradigms we see as classic
today have been developed in TAV/TDI Explore/PowerAnimator/Maya and
accompanying software either by request of leading animation studios, or by
the studios themselves. However, they slowed the cycle down significantly even
before they've been bought by Autodesk.

~~~
HelloNurse
Before it was sold to Autodesk, I mean, invaded by barbarians, the Roman
Empire was _the_ history of European civilization, written i roads and cities,
then it "slowed the cycle down significantly" and began shrinking.

------
open-source-ux
This a good video overview of the new features and improvements to Blender 2.8
- whether you're a new user or an existing one:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyxWDHy4ppY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyxWDHy4ppY)

------
fortran77
Blender, despite its "odd" UI, is the best open source GUI software out there.
I don't use any other GUI open source software -- I pay for Microsoft Office
and Adobe Applications -- but I find Blender to be useful, productive, and
complete. It's solid, and has a very good community. Unlike other open source
"alternatives" to commercial software (like, say Gimp or Open Office), it's
actually _better_ in many ways, and not just FUD or useful to casual users.

~~~
hesdeadjim
Version 2.8 addressed the odd UI issue didn’t it? I think they have a fully
supported “industry standard” keybinding mode now.

~~~
Applejinx
That and they've made some of the modality visible (different workspaces for
different modalities, on a sort of menu thing). These were always the
dealbreakers for me: it required a sophisticated mental model to do the
smallest things, and almost everything was hidden. You just had to know it by
heart. It sounds like they have specifically attacked that as a problem (they
used to embrace it, as a uniqueness)

------
ur-whale
Blender is an amazing open source success story and deserves to be advertized
as such.

It's an amazing tool. It was always powerful, but used to be very un-
approachable (vim-like), but they have made tremendous progress to fix this.

The integration with external renders has also been amazing. I am a fan of
luxcorerender which - these days - is almost unusable outside of blender.

If you like doing 3D work, spend the time to learn Blender, it's a long term
investment really worth making.

------
disease
It looks like this company is mostly interested in the 3D aspect of Blender,
but what's gotten me really excited from viewing the demos is Grease Pencil. I
wonder if anyone out there is using it professionally for traditional 2D
animation. I also wonder how much attention this cool tool will get in the
future.

------
ttflee
Perhaps a better title should be phrased like that the studio producing
Rebuild of Evangelion is moving to blender.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
I hope _somebody_ is still actually producing it. The final episode has been
"in production" for almost 7 years now.

~~~
looperhacks
Well, there have been teasers recently, and I think a 2020 release date is
confirmed

~~~
hex12648430
Not only that but the first 10 minutes of the film were released during a
special projection in France and Japan.

------
CodiePetersen
The new blender is pretty slick though. They have really cleaned up the
interface and made it more user friendly and something that industry artists
on other platforms will be more familiar with. I suspect we will probably see
a lot of people switching to blender.

------
graphicsRat
Blender would give Maya a real run for its money if it had an API.

~~~
mattmar96
[https://docs.blender.org/api/current/](https://docs.blender.org/api/current/)

~~~
Asooka
That's just for scripting. A proper C API is needed for plugins that do more
than the simplest edition operations. At one point I wanted to write a plugin
that let you model distance field fractals and would make meshes from them,
but there's no way I'll write something that computationally intensive in
python. And if I do it in C with a python bridge, it would have meant copying
mesh data to and from blender over python. That's not even going into stuff
like custom intersectable primitives.

Blender would really benefit from exposing its inner data structures in a way
that lets people write high performance plugins.

~~~
snuxoll
> Blender would really benefit from exposing its inner data structures in a
> way that lets people write high performance plugins.

Not that I want to dismiss the benefit of plugins, but why not just work on
getting the new features merged in instead if the Python API isn't sufficient
for the task? Unless you have something the maintainers really don't want to
deal with long-term there's little benefit to keeping your functionality out-
of-tree.

------
boyadjian
I love Blender, but knowing how to use it is a real profession. So many
functionalities ... Even reading a book on Blender is not enough.

~~~
mdtusz
"I love $PROFESSIONAL_SOFTWARE_TOOL, but knowing how to use it is a real
profession. So many functionalities ... Even reading a book on
$PROFESSIONAL_SOFTWARE_TOOL is not enough."

In our current age of endless SaaS tools that bill themselves as being made
for professional use, it's somewhat frustrating encountering this attitude
that things are too complex or "overkill" to be worth learning.

I understand that isn't the intention of your comment, but it's something I've
struggled with at my work where co-workers seem to have no interest in
learning new and powerful tools if it might take them more than a day to
master.

~~~
siffland
I work IT and have the same issues, coworkers dont want to learn new tools.
This is a huge issue, if your employer wants you to learn a new peice of
software, that is your job.

It annoys me here at work, i go home and watch videos, download demos and put
the effort in (and it is noticed at work) and some of my coworkers dont and
then get annoyed when they dont understand how the new software works. it is
just frustrating, glad it is not just where i work.

~~~
tangue
I don't want to watch videos and read books when I'm going home. I have a
thing called life and actually love it. If a PM wants me to learn a new tool
(I'm thinking especially of useless migrations to Grunt, Gulp, Broccoli,
Rollup, Webpack ...) or the f __*ing js framework of the day, I had to do it
during my working hours. I 'm with your coworkers.

~~~
jlg23
The comment you responded to was not about "learning in billable hours" Vs
"learning in your spare time" but about the willingness to learn at all.

~~~
0xffff2
Except they also explicitly talk about learning new tools on their own time.
I'm not paid to learn new tools. I'm paid to write software. If someone on my
team tries to convince everyone that some tool they learned on their own time
is great and everyone needs to start using it yesterday, either the company
needs to let everyone bill hours to learn the new tool or we're not using it.

The comment very much does come across as being mad at coworkers for not
putting in time after-hours.

~~~
jlg23
> I'm not paid to learn new tools. I'm paid to write software.

All fine, if your contract has the "I am a robot" clause or if you happen to
write COBOL for a living. The rest of us will have to learn to stay up-to-
date, just like carpenters, doctors or gardeners. Because nobody wants to hire
someone who missed all progress since graduation...

~~~
0xffff2
Well, I write Java and C++ for a living. Maybe that's the same as COBOL if
you're a front-end JavaScript developer? What, exactly is there for me to
"stay up to date" on?

I'm not saying that you should never learn anything new. For example, I really
hope that I have a chance to ditch C++ and Java both for Rust one day, but I
can't just go and do it today and that's fine. Change does not need to happen
at the pace that some people seems to think it does.

~~~
jlg23
I cannot provide any examples for your languages of choice but mine (CL) is
older and I _do_ check out new libraries.

And yes, I would be pretty irritated to find anyone in my team who thinks
there is nothing else for him/her to learn, even in their field of expertise.

~~~
0xffff2
Who said anything about "nothing else to learn". There's always lots to learn,
or I wouldn't have a job anymore. That doesn't mean I spend any real time
reading or using other peoples code. Most of the actually interesting work I
do involves things for which there are no libraries. The less interesting
thing (e.g. a REST service using Spring) do their job just fine and are so
utterly boring I can't imagine why anyone would care enough to rewrite the
whole service in some other framework.

I do go looking for libraries when I have a need for some functionality, but I
don't seek out new libraries to replace other libraries or my own code when
the existing solution works. It's the frequent rewriting of working code to
use some new tool/framework/library just because it's new and sexy that I find
problematic.

------
davidgerard
Hiroyasu Kobayashi is the _tiredest_ looking animator I've seen captured in a
photo.

And all the coffee cups around everyone ...

------
abledon
wheres my anime with programming language gangs who summon mystical spirit
animals based off the logos?

------
sshb
Mr. Hiroyasu Kobayashi’s t-shirt is a total swag

------
crimsonalucard
Anybody from the industry know how much better is the closed source modelling
software like lightwave, 3DS, Maya, Softimage compared to Blender. I know they
are all different but is blender a peer a step above or a step below?

~~~
Stevvo
I think it's hard to say which is better, each software has quirks that will
drive you insane.

In 3ds Max; simple things like selection are broken. You double click to
select an object and its children in the Hierarchy (contrary to single click
in every other software ever made), the problem is, this is laggy; you get a
loading spinner when selecting objects!

In blender despite the UI refresh in 2.8, the interface is still horrible.
There are hundreds duplicate menu entries, and many functions without any menu
entry at all, accessible only by keyboard shortcut.

The only software I've use that doesn't drive me mad is Cinema4D, but it's
missing some features from other softwares.

~~~
Doxin
> many functions without any menu entry at all

This has been solved since version 2.5. In blender versions prior to 2.8 hit
spacebar and start typing the operation name. In 2.8 and later the default
keybinding has moved to F3.

If you're criticising blender at least use up-to-date nitpicks instead of
stuff that has been fixed literal _years_ ago.

------
trilila
Neat, another company exploiting the free work of others.

------
ramigb
I am sorry to be the guy who does that, but do you know what does Khara mean
in Arabic? this brings back memories of the app that went successful in Brazil
because the name meant something "naughty".

~~~
ripdog
Khara is the name of the Japanese anime studio, not the tool. The tool is
called Blender.

I'm not sure why Khara would care what their name means in Arabic.

~~~
needle0
According to them it's meant to be the Greek word for Joy. Interestingly, in
their native Japanese katakana notation, カラー is indistinguishable from the
English word "Color" due to the lossiness of katakana sounds.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara_(studio)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara_\(studio\))

------
parsimo2010
Funny aside: Khara means "shit" in Arabic. I don't think it affects Studio
Khara's market that much but they'll have to change their name if they want to
sell Evangelion in the Middle East.

~~~
arayh
Ironically, it would seem that their name Khara was derived from a greek word
(χαρά) meaning "joy".

~~~
needle0
Not sure if this was intended, but interestingly, the company name in the
native Japanese katakana notation, カラー, is indistinguishable from the English
word "Color" due to the lossiness of katakana sounds.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara_(studio)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khara_\(studio\))

------
krick
Nice to know, but it's kinda unfair of how it's gleefully perceived by many as
a success of OSS. I mean, I'm also inclined to feel that way, but every time I
remind myself, that except for programming-related stuff there are basically
just 2 OSS software packages of competitive quality: Blender and Krita. And
Blender was originally created by actual for-profit company and open-sourced
later. After 30 years of GNU and all that stuff there's hardly anything else.
That's kind of telling.

