
Blender 2.90 - makepanic
https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-90/
======
zaphar
Blender is as far as I can tell one the best run and marketed Open Source
projects out there. They seem to have a great way to pay for development. They
are have a lot of industry invested in their success. They have a great focus
on the end power user.

~~~
matsemann
They got $1.2M from Epics megagrant last year, and has lots of people and
companies donating. They are slightly above the goal of funding 20 full time
employees. I'm happy that an open source software have been so successful.
It's come very far since when I first used it, version 2.42 I think.

Shoutout to those donating (and how to contribute):
[https://fund.blender.org/](https://fund.blender.org/)

~~~
freedomben
Someday when I can afford to pause taking a paycheck for a while, I am going
to figure out how to reproduce this sort of model for numerous other
applications. At least, that's my dream.

~~~
prox
Godot is slowly but surely moving in the footsteps of Blender. What you need
is to craft your app and gather a loyal crowd who see a future in it. People
skills are paramount, because here is where tons of open source projects fail
to inspire. Set patreon like goals and hand off side projects to like minded
devs. Blender also had its yearly feature reels and projects that helped its
way to the limelight.

~~~
zaphar
The open movie projects are a large reason for Blenders success. It moved the
focus from "Deliver developers pet feature" to "What do we need if we want to
produce this kind of a film short."

It put the focus on Blender as a tool for delivering actual film instead of
various disconnected features. Roadmap focus is one the harder things for a
creative OSS tool to get right.

------
hellking4u
This is great, but I have to say, I'm a bit concerned about multiple Intel
tools (Embree, OpenImageDenoise) that are now integrated into Blender. The
tools seem to depend on Intel MKL, which has famously been crippled on non
Intel CPUs.

The big concern, for me, is the wide usage of Blender in common CPU
benchmarks, which potentially could give Intel an unfair advantage in those.

~~~
archgoon
AMD can contribute their own tooling if they feel it's worth it. They aren't
broke.

~~~
valine
AMD helped pay for the development of the OpenCL backend for cycles. Before
that cycles gpu support was limited to CUDA. They actually hired a developer
to work on it full time.

~~~
mrguyorama
As a user of blender on AMD GPUs, they should probably put a little more
effort in. Many of the shaders used to render scenes in cycles from 2.82
onward crash, and therefore make it impossible to use an AMD GPU to run
cycles.

I'm surprised they don't push their ProRender renderer into the main release.
I can't tell if I like it or not

~~~
rguetzkow
The most common reasons for crashes are outdated graphics drivers with bugs
and/or hardware below the minimum requirements [1]. If you think you've found
a bug in Blender please report your issue on the bug tracker [2] ( _Help >
Report a Bug_ in Blender).

[1]
[https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/](https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/)
[2] [https://developer.blender.org/](https://developer.blender.org/)

~~~
mrguyorama
Indeed I have actually tracked and posted a few bug reports on the blender
forums. I'm running an AMD 5700XT and an R5 3600 so I sure hope my
configuration is supported! My only concession is that I had to download the
"optional" driver for august in order to get Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020
support.

~~~
rguetzkow
Thank you for reporting bugs and helping improve Blender! Every AMD graphics
card that is GCN first generation or later can be used for running Blender
[1]. GCN second generation or later is required for GPU rendering [2].
Unfortunately the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT does seems to be affected by some
technical issues, that are still under investigation. Might be a bug in
Blender or an issue with particular OS, hardware and driver combinations. See
ticket T75319 for updates on this problem.

[1]
[https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/](https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/)
[2]
[https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/cycles/gpu_...](https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/cycles/gpu_rendering.html#amd)
[3]
[https://developer.blender.org/T75319](https://developer.blender.org/T75319)

------
matsemann
The new search will be great for people like me that only use Blender
sporadically. I often know what I want to do but don't use it often enough to
remember where to find it or the shortcut. And even for regular people it can
be great, I use "find action" in IntelliJ all the time just because writing
the name of a seldom used feature is faster than navigating to it.

~~~
mikewhy
Searchable menus should be standard at this point, they're so handy in macOS,
and Unity had them while it was around.

------
seccess
"The new shadow terminator offset setting helps you to avoid shading artifacts
with smooth normals on low-poly meshes."

THANK GOODNESS, man those shadows always looked so ugly. I primarily use EEVEE
so this makes me happy.

------
91edec
Really happy with the direction Blender is going, more polish and better
outreach. Just scrolling through and being able to see the before/after for
new features is amazing, makes it really easy to share with friends who
haven't checked Blender out before.

~~~
mkaic
Right? I also find the accelerating growth of their dev fund really exciting.
Somehow this software just keeps getting more promising!

------
open-source-ux
I've posted this before but it feels appropriate again...this Blender example
of green screen VFX was created by a single person and demonstrates the
amazing skill of the film-maker and how powerful Blender can be. It's really
impressive work:

[https://twitter.com/DrewCoffman/status/1274743473732632576](https://twitter.com/DrewCoffman/status/1274743473732632576)

~~~
verytrivial
[https://youtu.be/RxD6H3ri8RI](https://youtu.be/RxD6H3ri8RI) \-- hyper-speed,
highly entertaining overview of the process he used.

------
bootloop
I used Blender extensively the last few weeks for a prototype project. It's
really a great piece of software but when it came to baking/texturing/painting
my models (game assets using the PBR workflow) I grew more and more impatient
with the build-in tools it offers .

So I gave up at some point and following some suggestions I finally tried
Substance Painter to do these things (Industry standard). Using both tools in
tandem was a real game changer for me. Definitely would recommend it if you
want to speed up your process. I am sure all this can be done in Blender but
it will be a pain to do so.

Some things I was missing within Blender:

\- Baking and baking groups (it's extremely annoying to select all the objects
each time but I have seen a few extension who help with this process)

\- Painting on multiple layers at the same time (e.g. paint a PBR material on
a PBR material)

\- A non-destructive workflow with support for the above

Nevertheless I love Blender and I would like to be able to use their UI-
Framework for my own applications because it works just great.

~~~
packetslave
There's nothing wrong with using multiple apps to get what you want. That's
what the pro VFX houses do

A typical pipeline might be Maya for modeling, ZBrush for sculpting, Substance
Painter for texturing, Houdini for procedural/dynamic effects, Nuke for
compositing, and Renderman for generating the output.

Nothing at all wrong about picking the best tool for the task at hand.

~~~
bootloop
Sure, I mean these are one of the best tools for each stage (and they are all
not free). But all of it can be done in Blender too in some way or the other
saving you from the upfront investment.

I just wanted to highlight the texturing because I really didn't see a way how
to achieve my results without going with a commercial product. So based on my
experience Blender is lacking quite a bit of features in that space.

I mean, I see the downvotes on my original post but I have the feeling that
people tend to praise Blender without even using it productively.

Edit: Can't edit the original post but here are some open tickets about these
things if somebody is interested:

[https://developer.blender.org/D3203](https://developer.blender.org/D3203)

[https://developer.blender.org/T68896#988891](https://developer.blender.org/T68896#988891)

------
arduinomancer
After trying blender for the first time the other day I was amazed at how good
the interface is for an open source program, it feels really modern.

I'm used to open source programs usually having pretty janky/outdated
interfaces.

~~~
mkaic
You’re lucky enough to have started in the post 2.8 era :)

Things used to be a lot less user friendly interface-wise. It was a major
weakness of the program until 2.8 launched and magically fixed everything. The
Blender Foundation is REALLY good about interacting with and gauging the needs
of the community!

~~~
nineteen999
Honestly, as a long term user, 2.8 is not that different to 2.6. From 2.4 to
2.6 was a much bigger jump in terms of UI improvements.

------
polskibus
I'd love to see blender expand into precise modeling area more (CAD).

~~~
ur-whale
Strongly agree, and I'd also wish they took a shot at the Architecture market
(god knows Autodesk and Archicad sorely deserves the competition) but it's not
easy to build a product that fits all possible uses cases, especially when the
initial focus of the app was SFX and animation.

Specifically, for CAD, blender lacks IMO two fundamental things:

    
    
        - a strong NURBS engine, complete with filleting, trimmed NURBS, CSG, full brep, etc.. (something at least on par with OpenCascade).
    
        - a node-based (à la Houdini) modeling system to do full blown paramaterics. The current destructive + Undo/Redo model is simply not strong enough for serious CAD used.
    

For the latter, there are add-ons (e.g. sorcar, sverchok) that try to patch
the gap, but they all feel like band-aids when you try to really put them to
work.

~~~
phkahler
After spending a lot of time working on the code for SolveSpace, I can say
NURBS are hard. Conceptually not bad, but in practice there are a lot of
complex or tricky things to do well. My hope is to one day write a new NURBS
kernel in Rust. But first I need to find good solutions to those tricky
problems.

------
mensetmanusman
We need more open source software modeled off of the blender system.

Imagine if customers of all the major closed-software players also put aside
some small amount of funding to support full time developers of open source
systems.

This benefits everyone, because it gives these customers some potential future
leverage for lower prices, it gives the closed-software players some
competition to keep them nimble, and it benefits the next generation of users
who can’t afford the closed-software prices, but could get their fingers wet
with less capable software.

~~~
danudey
In my experience, a lot of open-source systems are managed by terrible teams
with their own priorities or ideas, regardless of what the actual community
wants.

For example, The GIMP has been notorious for this for its entire history, and
it still is[1]. I remember ages ago, the discussion basically went like this.

> "Thanks to The GIMP, people can ditch Photoshop and Windows and move to
> Linux and an open-source workflow!"

> "But The GIMP doesn't support a lot of features, like CMYK color."

> "Sure, but nobody actually _uses_ CMYK color though."

> "Literally everyone who designs for print uses CMYK color, like print shops,
> magazine editors, etc., and that's a huge market."

> "Well it's open source, so if it's so important to you then fix it
> yourself!"

> "But I'm a photographer and magazine editor, not a programmer, so I'm just
> going to keep paying someone else for software I can use, instead of
> switching to a free version of something that literally refuses to add the
> features I need."

Cue tons of Slashdot comments talking about how non-technical people are so
rigid-minded that they're not willing to learn anything new and just make
excuses instead.

Blender is an exception, not just because it's an open-source success, but
because it's managed by a team who are building it for the people who need it,
and not just to stick it to closed-source companies by making a pale imitation
of a production app, an all-too-common scenario in open-source development.

[1] [https://medium.com/linux-gossip/the-gimp-has-a-marketing-
pro...](https://medium.com/linux-gossip/the-gimp-has-a-marketing-problem-
edced42b0158)

------
mekster
How is blender compared to competitors? Are people starting to use it as a
professional tool?

~~~
mottosso
I work in feature film and game cinematics, where Blender is still a toy.

An increasingly interesting toy since 2.80, but it'll take a killer-feature to
tear a studio or artist away from their tool of choice. Houdini for FX is
still unmatched, Maya for character animation is still unmatched, ZBrush for
sculpting is still unmatched, and so forth. As of this writing, Blender does
each of those increasingly well but not as well, and certainly not well enough
to warrant a transition.

That said, ZBrush started as a really good hobbyist tool and grew from there.
I wouldn't be surprised if Blender took a similar route.

~~~
perseusmandate
Even if Blender can't match any of these point solutions at their respective
niches, I have to imagine there would be a ton of value in a team that all
mostly works in a common tool they all know well a pipeline of Maya, C4D,
Modo, Nuke, Houdini, Zbrush, etc strung together.

I'm just starting to learn Houdini, but with the OpenVDB support in Blender it
seems like the most elegant workflow for someone without existing experience
is run simulations in Houdini and then just export the volumetric data to
Blender and work with it there.

------
checker659
I wish there was support for Metal on macOS for EEVE.

~~~
mkaic
As a long-time Mac and Blender user, I used to be in the same camp. After
looking into it though, I found out implementing Metal support would take
thousands of developer hours, and knowing that I think I would rather just
trust the Foundation to put those hours towards other development that would
benefit more than just Max users.

------
bitbang
Well that was fast considering how long the 2.8 lts release series took...

~~~
whateveracct
One exciting thing is two long-standing reworks (GreasePencil for 2D art, and
new Sculpt mode) landed in 2.8x and now are being iterated on.

~~~
Wistar
Grease pencil is a feature that needs re-naming as it is now so much more than
it was at the time it was originally named.

------
vardump
Newest Blender on Raspberry Pi seems to be 2.7, which works surprisingly
smoothly under a 64-bit OS. RPi4 has 96 Gflops of CPU FPU power, making it a
reasonable option for 3D-rendering for kids.

I hope there are chances to get 2.9 to run on Raspberry Pi, especially once
RPi Vulkan support matures.

How's Blender Vulkan rendering path doing? Is is possible to use it instead of
OpenGL one day?

~~~
rguetzkow
Vulkan support is being worked on, the current progress can be seen here [1].

[1]
[https://developer.blender.org/T68990](https://developer.blender.org/T68990)

------
mhh__
Having recently started trying to learn to make and setup game assets (I can
do CAD but not rigging etc.), I was really shocked how much cleaner Blender is
compared to Maya.

I'm aware Maya is more powerful for some tasks, but - considering that other
Autodesk tools are not too bad - Maya genuinely nearly put me off doing it at
all.

------
ww520
That's great news. Glad to see Blender keep moving forward.

One thing I wish they would add is to export the color information along with
the vertices in the Wavefront OBJ file when exporting an model.

~~~
edflsafoiewq
There is an "extension" to .obj where vertex colors are added to the v line,
like

    
    
      v x y z r g b
    

But this stores a color per-vertex. Vertex colors in Blender, like UVs, are
per-corner-of-poly. The ideal way to store vertex color information in .obj
would really be

    
    
      vc r g b
      p v1/vt1/vn1/vc1 ...
    

As it is, exporting per-vertex colors would require splitting a vertex into
multiple vertices, one per distinct vertex color that it uses.

~~~
cultureulterior
That's what you do with normals anyway, right?

~~~
edflsafoiewq
Normals are specified per-corner-of-poly in OBJ, just like UVs.

------
nyanpasu64
I scrolled down a page or two...

> Meet Nishita, a physically based texture built-in Cycles.

I think the hyphen shouldn't have been added. The sentence doesn't parse with
it present.

~~~
hbosch
There are a few spelling and grammatical mistakes on the page. But that's
okay, you knew what they meant. "Built-in" was probably just auto-corrected
anyway: [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/built-
in](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/built-in)

------
buovjaga
Recently on HN someone mentioned the core UV tools were lacking. Now the
release notes highlight several improvements in that department :)

------
travbrack
my main wish is for improved undo performance

------
brundolf
It must be a really fun job to be the person that just makes all these
different demo scenes to show off new features

------
ElijahLynn
Too new of a release on Arch. Still shows 2.83 in the repo and that is now
404ing. I'll check tomorrow.

~~~
rguetzkow
You can also download it directly from Blender's website [1] or build it
yourself [2], if you're interested in that.

[1] [https://www.blender.org/download/](https://www.blender.org/download/) [2]
[https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Building_Blender/Linux/Arch](https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Building_Blender/Linux/Arch)

------
pradn
Kudos to the team for the excellent work and for the flashy, yet useful
release page!

------
dinkblam
the update is already available for one-click install via MacUpdater:
[https://ibb.co/ftwPtv7](https://ibb.co/ftwPtv7)

------
agumonkey
seriously impressive, we're on an exponential

~~~
mkaic
It’s so exciting watching that dev fund number climb faster and faster. I mean
just in the past year donations grew by about 20%, and seeing so many new
corporate sponsors join up too...

It’s just inspiring.

