
Back from the Blender Conference - hiena03
https://valdyas.org/fading/hacking/krita-hacking/back-from-the-blender-conference-2019/
======
danShumway
Since the article spends a lot of time talking about Krita, I want to throw
some praise its way as well.

I moved over to Krita from Clip Studio when I decided to go pure-Linux on all
of my computers, not because I thought the software was particularly
competitive or good, but because I thought it was the most likely candidate to
become competitive and good.

Krita still has a _lot_ of rough edges, but I see it on a similar trajectory
as Blender. It's very rapidly improving, not just in the sense of adding new
features, but in becoming a more stable, reliable product.

I was using Blender a lot earlier in its development, and I remembered the
comparisons people would make to Maya, and it's just... honestly, it's a
little surreal to see it now well on its way to becoming something of an
industry standard. Blender used to be really annoying to use, and only niche
hobbyists were using it. All things considered, its rise in popularity/quality
happened _fast_.

So similarly, I'm very bullish on Krita, and it's very encouraging to see
members of that community looking at Blender and taking lessons from its
development. Krita is one of the more promising and encouraging OS software
projects that I follow.

~~~
pram
They've done an admirable job on Krita, but I don't feel the same optimism
about adoption. There is a social element to these things Krita is severely
lacking.

Most of the migrations I've seen have been from PS/SAI to CSP. There are a ton
of artists creating custom brushes for CSP now, and you can't import them into
Krita. If you're in a particular artist community/discord and want help, no
one is going to know what you're talking about. That's classic lock-in.

CSP and Procreate are the hot tools on the Twitter/Instagram scene right now
and I don't see the growth slowing. Krita ATM is unfortunately perceived as an
outlier tool, like Medibang or FireAlpaca.

It probably isn't an issue to you personally, but those are the factors I see
stymying adoption (and to be honest, I have literally never met another artist
using Krita)

~~~
danShumway
Well, to be very blunt, CSP is still a better painting program than Krita is.
So of course more people are using it.

That being said (and keep in mind I am only one fallible data-point) the
community situation is roughly equivalent to what I remember Blender being
like when I first started using it (maybe in 2007-2008).

\- Very few professionals were using Blender, if any.

\- Most tools were being written for Maya. Every time someone would link a
cool tech product with crowd simulations or plant growth, it would _always_ be
a Maya plugin.

\- Any college/high-school modeling/animation courses you took would be using
Maya.

\- That meant that if someone wanted to learn professional animation/modeling,
they'd learn Maya's paradigms, and then Blender would seem extra weird. This
was back when you just had to get used to the weird 3d cursor.

\- Compatibility between the two programs was awful. I remember wrestling with
the options to get 3D models to export in a format that wouldn't be completely
messed up when imported in Unity. I don't remember if I ever got it working.

There were people who used Blender because it was free and swore that it was
just as powerful once you got used to it, but they were largely techy people.
And even if they were right, none of the digital artists or studios who's work
I really respected cared at all. If you wanted to get an actual _job_ with
animation, you used Maya, period. Only hobbyists could afford to spend the
time learning a separate program.

So it doesn't bother me too much to see Krita in the same position. I care
more about the trajectory/velocity of development, and who I see using the
software. I see a lot of programmers using software like Gimp, but I see a
larger focus from Krita on actual artists, and a more pragmatic prioritization
of features artists use.

If the core community stays really friendly for artists, and they keep on
releasing at their current pace, then I suspect adoption will eventually come.
Or at least, I think it's a decent enough bet that I'm willing to use the
software in its current state and regularly throw money at its development.

~~~
pram
One factor you're not accounting for is Maya's cost put(s) it firmly out of
range for hobbyists.

Considering the tools required for digital art (a Wacom, iPad Pro, or even a
cheaper Huion etc) the art program is probably the cheapest purchase you're
going to make, and they're all perpetual licenses (sans Adobe CC)

------
nneonneo
This blog post is much more interesting than the (ambiguous) title might
suggest. The blog post is really all about comparing the funding models of
Blender with other OSS projects - and aiming to demonstrate that the Blender
funding model is successfully creating a valuable piece of OSS. Wrestling with
funding is a major challenge for OSS projects, even if they don't believe they
require funding.

~~~
boudewijnrempt
Well, I didn't want to post click-bait on my blog :-)

------
AdmiralAsshat
Linux Desktop users do indeed seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time
bickering about which popular apps best fulfill their purity tests:

whether the app is "free" enough for their liking (MIT vs GPL-based license,
etc),

whether it picked the "right" frontend in the never-ending GTK vs QT battle,

whether it is written in an "acceptable" language (Electron being Satan
Incarnate, of course),

whether it has been properly packaged as a DEB/RPM/Snap/Flatpak/AUR/AppImage,
etc.

Fail any one of these things, and the app is instantly "unusable" and we
should all use ncurses-based obscure-thing-I-found-over-the-weekend-in-some-
dude's-PPA.

Meanwhile, an increasing array of "free as in freedom" apps that are widely
available and cross-platform (e.g. Blender, VLC, Audacity, Calibre, etc.)
serve the larger community by just letting people get shit done, and build up
name-recognition as a result.

~~~
lbeltrame
> whether the app is "free" enough for their liking (MIT vs GPL-based license,
> etc),

I know it is tangential to this point, but a lot of developers, including long
time Free Software developers, don't get licensing _at all_. While packaging
software (FOSS) for a distribution, I've had to poke multiple people to fix
licensing problems that invariably occurred (most common: incompatible
licensing of parts of a project, perhaps imported from somewhere else).

> whether it is written in an "acceptable" language (Electron being Satan
> Incarnate, of course)

There are legitimate technical reasons for not liking Electron, not
necessarily due to "disproportionate amount of time bickering" spent by "Linux
Desktop users".

~~~
Townley
> a lot of developers, including long time Free Software developers, don't get
> licensing at all

Completely agree; it's a complex part of producing software that people
(myself being guilty of this) incorrectly assume they can ignore.

> There are legitimate technical reasons for not liking Electron, not
> necessarily due to "disproportionate amount of time bickering" spent by
> "Linux Desktop users".

There are legitimate technical reasons for not choosing electron, but I can't
think of any for not liking it. It's a perfectly fine and useful way to make a
cross-platform desktop application. If it doesn't suit your project's purposes
because of performance, size, or current acumen, that's fine.

But I think OP is referring to "Electron is awful", "I hate Electron", or
"Never use Electron" levels of ire that crop up occasionally, which should be
exclusively reserved for something that no one should be working in.

~~~
lbeltrame
> It's a perfectly fine and useful way to make a cross-platform desktop
> application.

My main problems with Electron are:

\- The size of the runtime

\- The fact that every application has to bundle it and it means that multiple
Electron applications on the same system do consume a lot of resources if not
handled well

\- The fact that unless you (as a developer) play due diligence, you might
distribute your app with a version of the runtime which may contain
vulnerabilities (one of the reasons Linux distributions don't like library
bundling that much).

I can't deny it's probably easier for many (not for me, but although I write
Python code all day, I'm by no means a "developer"), but it can be potentially
wasteful, to say the least, and require far more resources than what you'd
actually need with a another toolkit.

That said I for sure won't point a gun at someone who wants to use it. ;)

~~~
Confiks
This comment is so beautifully in-character for the thread, and completely
fulfills OPs characterization of people that "do indeed seem to spend a
disproportionate amount of time bickering about which popular apps best
fulfill their purity tests".

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
We are here because we are deeply interested the software that we're using. If
one group of programs does something that tends to suck, then we're going to
call it out.

~~~
mantap
Just remember, you get what you pay for.

------
zaphar
Blender is an example of a project that is laser focused on their users. Every
aspect of their development is guided by that focus. The Open Movie projects
are a way of ensuring that what they work on is something that professionals
need. You can what you want about blender but their continuing growth in
industry demonstrates that their focus is paying off. They are quite literally
closing the gap with tools like Maya at ridiculous speeds.

~~~
lbeltrame
IMO it is however easier than other "desktop" applications, because it has an
narrower focus, like Krita. Some applications are easier to focus than others
(where usage patterns may vary wildly).

------
peter_d_sherman
Excerpt:

"Blender’s development fund currently brings in about 1,200,000 euros a year,
which funds 20 full-time developers. That’s not the only source of funding.
Blender has about 172 developers in the past year, and 550 over its entire
existence, and 64 in the past month, same as LibreOffice. Looking at the last
number, it means that there are anyway more volunteer committers in the
Blender community than paid developers. Funded development hasn’t eaten the
community.

Let’s hazard a guess: _Blender has four times the installed base of AutoDesk
Maya_. This is pretty rough, of course, so ingest with salt.

My thoughts:

These are important non-software aspects of Blender which are critical for
acceptance by new users, which is critical to maintain a healthy user base,
which should in turn yield a well-community-supported codebase...

In other words, this makes Blender a safe choice in corporate environments
where a choice may exist between it and commercial offerings, such as
Autodesk's Maya...

~~~
chrisseaton
> about 1,200,000 euros a year, which funds 20 full-time developers

Wow not paying them a lot are they.

~~~
andrepd
I would definitely work for blender for 5k a month. That's a top 1% income
bracket in many great countries in Europe.

~~~
chrisseaton
That’s $5k a month to pay all taxes and employee expenses... not $5k take home
- you’ll get hardly any of it at the end!

~~~
ClumsyPilot
Even so, his point still stands. The upper range of developer salaries in
Czech Republic, before taxes, is $3000 to $5000. The country is considered
Central Europe.

If you go for Eastern Europe, Hungary/Poland/Ukraine, that's enough to afford
the best people.

------
logicalmonster
What I’ve been impressed with following Blender for a long time is they
communicate their development well with their users. They provide demos, give
discussions, give example files and videos, and make you realize that the
donations are going to something tangible. Other projects don’t do nearly as
good of a job with this.

~~~
alexis_fr
So, they have invested in marketing.

I think early FOSS programmers didn’t value marketing enough, which produced
excellent software with difficult adoption. Now, for any software to succeed,
a nice UI and good marketing material is the baseline. FOSS that is born since
10 years was much nicer (from Angular to Kibana).

It is even visible in security breach: At one point after Heartbleed, there
was a discussion on whether security bugs would now require a nice single-use
website with graphic artifacts, in order to get heard by developers.

------
ReD_CoDE
This is the first time I hear Krita but I support all good open-source
projects like Blender

What I like in Blender, except its invaluable community, is its UX, they
follow a good logic in interfaces. If someone is familiar with 3Ds Max or
Maya, in less than an hour can understand the whole software and how to work
with it even without any help or tutorial

However, I'm not in the VFX industry and I'm an architect and Building
Information Modeling/Management - BIM technologist, so recently we've started
to improve Blender for Digital Built Environment industry, an open-source
plugin (interfaces) called BlenderBIM [1]

So hope we help Blender and Blender community to speed up its success

[1] [https://blenderbim.org/](https://blenderbim.org/)

~~~
ognarb
This is something I really love with Blender and other Free Software project.
You can create new plugins to extends the scope of the project.

Btw did you know that the icons in blenderbim.org homepage are icons from the
Breeze icons theme developed by the KDE community (the community behind
Krita)?

------
mavhc
I installed Blender at the school I work at because it had an MSI installer.
Did not install Krita because it did not. If you want it to be the default
used in schools, make it as easy to deploy as possible.

The gimp fork Glimpse is planning an MSI installer, so that'll be installed
soon

~~~
mappu
This is a little bit surprising to me, at $DAYJOB i had some requests for an
MSI installer. I knew there's some AD/GPO features or whatever but your level
of seriousness here is unexpected.

Is it really easier to install compared to an exe installer (say nsis / inno-
based)? How so?

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Imagine the difference between software distributed as a tarball and the
binary package. Both totally work, but one is so much easier to deploy in
bulk. (This is obviously a very loose analogy, but I think it's roughly
correct)

~~~
mixmastamyk
Exe installers support unattended, headless installs with a command line
switch.

~~~
mavhc
But how you do run that command only once on every computer? Including ones
that are currently not in the building, or on.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Same way as anything, use group policy or a login script that checks first.

~~~
mavhc
But how do you know if it's installed correctly?

~~~
mixmastamyk
What does correctly mean? On windows usually a registry key is checked.

~~~
mavhc
Exactly, changes from software to software. And how to uninstall?

Much easier to add an MSI to GPO, and then just as easy to remove it again and
it's uninstalled.

Not sure how writing scripts to do all that myself for every piece of software
is better.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Msi is deprecated.

~~~
mavhc
So you keep saying, although don't see any evidence for it. MS want you to
move to using the MS Store, because that's not terrible. Or manually download
multiple files, put them all in specific places and use a powershell script to
install it, hah, so easy.

MSIX is just a wrapper around an msi, exe, etc installer anyway.

In conclusion, just make an MSI file, they're much better, look at all these
great features
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer)

------
lima
On Linux Desktop funding: companies like Red Hat and Canonical fund much of
the development on things like GNOME.

The real budget is likely much higher than the article suggest, especially now
that Ubuntu fully switched to Gnome.

~~~
freedomben
Yep. Red Hat employs quite a few people who work on Gnome and Gnome apps, as
done Canonical. Despite being employees for a company, they are extremely
involved in the open source Gnome community. It's an amazing example of GPL
success IMHO.

Disclaimer: I work for Red Hat but not on Gnome

------
cutchin
A minor correction - the article makes a couple of mentions of "Handbrake
donation[s]", but I think the author was referring to the donations made to
KDE and Gnome by the Handshake project.

[https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/08/gnome-foundation-
receives...](https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/08/gnome-foundation-
receives-400000-from-handshake-org/)

