Hopefully, Krita[1], GIMP[2], and Inkscape[3] will get a similar amount of support.<p>[1] <a href="https://krita.org/en/support-us/donations/" rel="nofollow">https://krita.org/en/support-us/donations/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.gimp.org/donating/" rel="nofollow">https://www.gimp.org/donating/</a><p>[3] <a href="https://inkscape.org/support-us/donate/" rel="nofollow">https://inkscape.org/support-us/donate/</a>
"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."<p>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.<p>Are there any other large multimedia companies that are known to primarily use FOSS media production programs?
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.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20442131" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20442131</a>
The link seems to redirect to <a href="https://news.ubisoft.com/notfound" rel="nofollow">https://news.ubisoft.com/notfound</a> without any visible content.<p>Here is the press release from Blender: <a href="https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-blender-development-fund/" rel="nofollow">https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-blender-developm...</a>
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.
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.<p>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.
If I'm reading correctly, this means they'll pay about €30k / year (see <a href="https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/" rel="nofollow">https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/</a> ), 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.<p>Otherwise this just feels like previous broken promises:
<a href="https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/125952/Ubisofts_Ancel_Planning_To_Open_Up_Rayman_Origins_Tech.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/125952/Ubisofts_Ancel_Pl...</a>
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.
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.
Didn't Epic just made a similar announcement?<p>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.<p><a href="https://www.blender.org/about/projects/" rel="nofollow">https://www.blender.org/about/projects/</a>
related:<p>“Laws of Tech: Commoditize Your Complement”<p><a href="https://www.gwern.net/Complement" rel="nofollow">https://www.gwern.net/Complement</a>
Link seems to have broken, see also <a href="https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-blender-development-fund/" rel="nofollow">https://www.blender.org/press/ubisoft-joins-blender-developm...</a>