'contacted substance dev for a blender plug-in, this is their response

Guys is this bs? Because if this is true, thats why we get butt hurt by the market


No idea how their code has to work so its hard to make any predictions if there is any way possible.
The devs from V-ray and Octane have found a compatible strategy and the Renderman developers are also interested in making a Blender bridge, it would be cool if the Allegorithmic Team where able to find a way to make it happen.

Yes, that’s true. They could theoretically integrate with Cycles because of its more permissive license, but a deep integration with Blender itself is something that most commercial entities aren’t going to touch with a ten foot pole out of fear that the GPL’s viral nature might legally “infect” their product. The specifics of the GPL are hazy at best, and even legal GPL experts operate mostly off of theory rather than actual case law and precedence.

That said, there’s really not much anyone can do about it. Blender is GPL and that’s about as set in stone as anything ever is in software.

Renderers are a bit of a different monster, although even the examples you gave are very hacky “solutions” to the problem at hand. Something like Substance needs a much deeper integration than simply passing data to an external app or library.

Blender is gpl. Cycles is apache… so cycles could probably support substances without violation… but the UI might be thr trivk

indeed, a deeper integration and the utilisation via UI code which wouldn´t violate the GPL are challenges.
Anyways I hope that Godot gets an integration since its permissive MIT licence should probably give less trouble but that´s probably offtopic.

A simple pbr shader with auto texture mapping seams enough to me

… and again and again… (millennials got their brain/IQ hurt further - there’s google & search inside this forums)

You should speak for yourself when you write butt hurt :yes: let them open free their source :rolleyes: bunch of patented asses.

You can work just fine with Substance Painter Live Link from Xolotl Studio

“They should just open source it” is not a realistic option, nor is it a scenario that will ever happen in the real world. And a live link isn’t even remotely close to a real Substance integration like you can find in other packages, especially when its maintainer admits on the product page that he gets no support and may not be able to continue updating the software. Calling professionals “butt hurt” over a very real production concern that keeps Blender out of many pipelines is about as useless a contribution as you could make.

Can’t they just make an exporter for Substance designer that makes a blend file containing the material with linked textures?

The Bullet Physics engine is also MIT-licensed and has a full integration in Blender, so a deeper integration of I/O with Godot should be very doable.


let them open free their source

Not going to happen, an alternative would be to blow the dust off of this texture-making Open Source project, fork it, and get it to active development again.

The good part of substance materials is that you made a procedural material, import the texture is a 1% of the features.

I’m sure this has probably been discussed elsewhere, but I’ve seen some licenses get modified or completely changed. Wouldn’t it be possible to change Blender from GPL to say MIT? Or at least add some clauses that take away these restrictions. I think it would unlock a lot of benefits.

And do all blender addons have to be GPL as well? Even so, does it apply to dlls? They could probably enclose the proprietary tech in a dll and have the addon just communicate with it, I wonder.

It’s not impossible, but BF appear that doesn’t want to try this.

In the past, I posited the idea of placing new Blender modules under a more permissive license (or even re-licensing areas of Blender code as they get rewritten).

The problem is that people here constantly express disappointment when a commercial vendor passes Blender by (such as Allegorithmic), yet they are adamant about making sure that Blender as a whole remains under the GPL. It’s clear by now that one can’t have it both ways (unless someone wants to present a fully open source texture authoring solution done either from scratch or derived from an older FOSS project that went stagnant).

This has been discussed quite a bit… here and elsewhere. The short answer is that while “nothing is impossible”, the amount of work necessary to make something like that happen makes it very improbable. The Blender Foundation does not have copyright on all of Blender’s code. So every single person who contributed code to Blender would have to agree to a license change. Furthermore, for any instance where a developer doesn’t agree, that code would have to be completely re-written from scratch.

Even shorter version: the required effort is high and the will to do it is low.

Sure, but texture output is probably the least useful or exciting part of Substance integration.

Technically possible, yes. Practically possible, no.

And yes, all add-ons and linked libraries must be GPL compatible.

Many times in this forum.

but I’ve seen some licenses get modified or completely changed. Wouldn’t it be possible to change Blender from GPL to say MIT?

In theory yes, in practice no.

Or at least add some clauses that take away these restrictions.

No.

And do all blender addons have to be GPL as well?

Yes.

Even so, does it apply to dlls?

Yes.

This only works for modules that do not include any Blender code whatsoever. It was possible for Cycles because Cycles is a completely standalone engine, that can be built and used without requiring any Blender source code. Thus it can be considered not a derivative work from Blender and can be licensed under a more permissive GPL compatible license. Any module that has any dependency whatsoever on Blender source code would be considered derivative work and therefore must be licensed under the GPL.