
Ubisoft joins Blender Development Fund to support open-source animation - kragniz
https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/article/353364/ubisoft-joins-blender-development-fund-to-support-open-source-animation
======
xvilka
Hopefully, Krita[1], GIMP[2], and Inkscape[3] will get a similar amount of
support.

[1] [https://krita.org/en/support-us/donations/](https://krita.org/en/support-
us/donations/)

[2] [https://www.gimp.org/donating/](https://www.gimp.org/donating/)

[3] [https://inkscape.org/support-us/donate/](https://inkscape.org/support-
us/donate/)

~~~
anchpop
Has GIMP meaningfully improved in the last 5 years? Every time I've had to use
it I've been confused by the lack of features and strange UI.

~~~
jszymborski
I had much the same experience as you, but the new UI update is similar to the
Blender UI update in that it's incredibly more usable.

~~~
tripzilch
How long ago did GIMP get a UI update?

------
BeefySwain
"Not only will Ubisoft help funding online support for Blender developers,
Ubisoft Animation Studio – a department of Ubisoft Film and Television – will
also use Blender for their productions and assign developers to contribute to
Blender’s open source projects."

This seams like a really big deal. It's one thing to try to create a desert of
profitability around yourself, which a lot of huge companies giving money to
tangential FOSS projects could be construed as. It is quite another to have
them commit to use the software internally.

Are there any other large multimedia companies that are known to primarily use
FOSS media production programs?

~~~
chriswwweb
Yes it's a big deal, developers that submit code is probably worth more than
the membership which is (only) €30K/year (if my research is correct:
[https://fund.blender.org/corporate-
memberships/](https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/)), so those 30k
will allow them to hire a dev halftime, as blender fund says that 30k are
equivalent to "half year developer time".

Well it depends how much those developers will actually contribute, but it's
still very good news.

But on the other hand they just got 1.2 million from Epic Games for 3 years
... to me this seems to be a much bigger contribution:
[https://www.blender.org/press/epic-games-supports-blender-
fo...](https://www.blender.org/press/epic-games-supports-blender-foundation-
with-1-2-million-epic-megagrant/!)?

~~~
hellofunk
> For Corporate Patron (120k/year or more) membership please contact us
> directly.

I suspect Epic obviously fell into that category.

------
noname120
This happens just 7 days after Epic Games contributed with $1.2m[1]. The
future looks bright for Blender. If more companies follow, it might finally
have enough funding to give it the development resources that it deserves.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20442131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20442131)

------
MichaelHoste
The link seems to redirect to
[https://news.ubisoft.com/notfound](https://news.ubisoft.com/notfound) without
any visible content.

Here is the press release from Blender:
[https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-blender-
developm...](https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-blender-development-
fund/)

~~~
ihuman
It seems the Ubisoft news website is a bit buggy, or theres an issue with its
cached pages. If you go to the main news page[0], its not there. However, if
you click "Latest", it brings to to the same URL, but with the Blender article
on top. Clicking that still brings you to the notfound page you linked.

Edit: It's now there on the news home page without having to click "Latest",
but it still 404's.

[https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/home](https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/home)

------
gmueckl
Kudos to blender's marketing team. They get a bit of free money from this. But
the true motive for Epic and Unisoft is likely an attempt to strong-arm
Autodesk into providing better support and maintainance. Dissatisfaction with
Autodesk lack of care for their DCC tools has been growing for a very long
time now, but studios also have a huge investment into these tools as parts of
their proprietary pipelines. Expect Autodesk to kowtow soon and make sure that
none of these companies will make the switch. If it means that Autodesk
actually delivers bugfixes for the version the customer has instead of one or
two releases down the road, it is a good outcome for the studios.

~~~
sangnoir
Blender is replacing an in-house tool, not software licensed from Autodesk.
You might have missed the following section from the article

"We decided to transform a workflow centered on _in-house software_ to a more
agile development environment supported by open source and inner source
solutions. This way, our research and development and pipeline teams could
focus their energy on bringing innovative ideas to the table, while working
closely with the creatives.

In that new workflow, _Blender is replacing our in-house digital content
creation tool._ "

~~~
knd775
This still feels like a warning to Autodesk. They are replacing what they
already can with Blender, and investing the money required to get it to where
it needs to be in order to fit their other workflows.

~~~
electricslpnsld
I don’t think Autodesk cares! Pixar bailed on Maya and Autodesk still put Maya
on life support (and laid off the Maya R&D team). If arguably the biggest
actor in the animation game doesn’t get Autodesk’s attention, why would
Ubisoft?

------
jsgo
Maybe this new UI change to Blender means it is high time I learn how to use
it. Tried it before but couldn't get past left click not doing what I expect
left clicking to do, but apparently things are more user friendly now.

The influx of money/talent from Epic and Ubisoft is great though. Blender was,
from what I've seen from the outside, looked on affectionately as being a good
tool, but maybe this leads to them being a consideration for primary tool
(beyond just free) in the way the commercial tools have been.

~~~
overgard
I felt the same way and 2.8 has been a HUGE improvement for me. I have a
commercial Maya subscription and I have to admit I almost like Blender better
at this point. That's less a knock on Maya which is still great, just
acknowledging that Blender has come a really long way.

My only small beef is I wish they'd use system dialog boxes for save/load, and
texture painting still feels a little clunky.

~~~
valine
Blender's build in file browser is really nice once you get used to it. The
thing I like most is that a lot of shortcuts you use when 3D modeling also
work on files. Things like box selection, invert selection with 'ctrl I', and
select all/deselect all with 'A' all work as expected.

------
Aissen
If I'm reading correctly, this means they'll pay about €30k / year (see
[https://fund.blender.org/corporate-
memberships/](https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/) ), and "assign
developers to contribute to Blender's open source projects". The latter is
probably higher value, but I'd have preferred if they'd already started before
making the announcement.

Otherwise this just feels like previous broken promises:
[https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/125952/Ubisofts_Ancel_Pl...](https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/125952/Ubisofts_Ancel_Planning_To_Open_Up_Rayman_Origins_Tech.php)

------
noobermin
I'll go ahead and say the quiet part loud, if Blender can create a low cost
alternative to Maya and the rest especially for entry and beginning level
modelers and animators, this is a great thing.

~~~
raphaelj
Isn't it already the case? Blender is somehow popular with indie developers.

~~~
gmueckl
I'll counter as devil's advocate here and state that blender is only popular
because it's the cheapest option, not because it's actually good. Commercial
offerings are still ahead by a lot, especially in usability (the most
important aspect for creative tools), but so is their price tag. And the indie
developer is a pretty poor idealistic fellow without a production budget from
which to afford luxuries like proper tools.

------
dgellow
Wow, that's so great. This announcement, the one from Epic Games, and the
release of v2.8. So many great news for Blender! That makes me really
motivated to try out to create a project using it.

~~~
Bekwnn
I feel like 2.8 preview is what made companies step forward to support it. It
was a big step in making blender a more attractive alternative.

------
panpanna
Didn't Epic just made a similar announcement?

Anyway, I wish more FOSS projects could copy blenders way of working. They
start a very big and ambitious project then update the code to support it. For
example Elephants Dream gave them character animation. Big Buck Bunny gave
them hair rendering & animation.

[https://www.blender.org/about/projects/](https://www.blender.org/about/projects/)

~~~
laputan_machine
I believe this is also the same approach Mozilla have taken with Rust & Servo
(although Servo is not quite as production-ready as I was expecting this long
down the line, although re-reading the description, perhaps it was always
meant to be a cute project, not a browser for the masses)

~~~
mikepurvis
I think the history of Servo has been retconned a bit. See for example this
fluff piece from late 2012, shortly after the project was publicly announced:

[https://www.geek.com/chips/new-firefox-rendering-engine-
serv...](https://www.geek.com/chips/new-firefox-rendering-engine-servo-was-
purpose-built-for-multiple-cores-1531707/)

"A new rendering engine for Firefox is being developed by Mozilla, and it’s
being built from the ground up for multi-core computing environments. Mozilla
has delivered some pretty major performance improvements to Firefox over the
last few versions. The IonMonkey JavaScript engine is firing on all cylinders,
and now it looks as though the Gecko engine may soon be replaced by something
much more modern."

If this wasn't Mozilla's intention from the beginning, they certainly didn't
do much to temper this enthusiasm or clear up the misunderstanding.

------
tosh
related:

“Laws of Tech: Commoditize Your Complement”

[https://www.gwern.net/Complement](https://www.gwern.net/Complement)

------
RenRav
Blender was always somewhat looked down upon, from my own experience seeking
resources online. Hopefully this changes people's opinions.

~~~
haxiomic
I'm playing with 2.8 today and it's totally changed my opinion. In about 1
hour it's gone from, "Blenders that weird tool that I can never figure out" to
"I'd prefer to use Blender over the Autodesk tools I'm more familiar with"

I'm really impressed by the quality of the UI design in the update

~~~
RenRav
Wow, you're right. It looks so much better.

------
kragniz
Link seems to have broken, see also [https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-
joins-blender-developm...](https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-
blender-development-fund/)

~~~
bluedino
While this is 'good' for the users of the software, isn't it 'bad' for the
software industry?

Community funded projects will never match the salaries that companies like
AutoDesk pay their developers.

~~~
Ralfp
Ton Roosendaal (Blender creator) estimated in 2018 interview that 3D software
market is very small, and pulled up Autodesk's (3DsMax/Maya, etc) business
results from that time, which amounted to 25000 - 30000 yearly licenses. He
also claimed that Maya has "maybe 20" developers behind with things being
similar for other products.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg)
(jump to 1h mark)

~~~
bluedino
At $1500/yearly subscription, 30,000 licenses is $45 million a year. Don't
foreget about everyone who works at Autodesk that isn't a developer but stil
involved with the product. And then there are plugin writers (are there
commercial plugins for Blender?) and resellers etc

~~~
vonmoltke
Autodesk does $2.7B/year in revenue. The revenue from 3DsMax and Maya is a
rounding error compared to the revenue from their CAD products.

------
newsreview1
What are your thoughts between Krita and Gimp? I know a lot of you love Gimp
but I find it a bit dated

~~~
TylerE
I don’t recall anyone ever _loving_ gimp, at least beyond it’s GPLness. It’s
been the butt (deservedly) of UI jokes for as long as I can remember.

------
vernie
Hey if it hurts Autodesk I'm for it.

