check out this article. its pretty tasty food for thought.
Will Blender3D Change Us?
3dsMAX has more problems than I can keep track of. These problems could easily be fixed if the 3dsMAX source code was open. I think that one day Blender3D will replace 3dsMAX, and possibly all other commercial 3d animation software. This would have a great impact on the video-game industry because it would eliminate the separation between production tools and the game engine. This separation has always been a major problem in creating games. In the current paradigm, game data must be exported from one program (production tool) into another (game engine). Both platforms are supported separately, and because of this, hack interfaces and import/export/parser code must be maintained. This maintenance adds up to well over half of the programmer's time being wasted. Things are also just as inefficient for the level designers and artists. Game logic and game visuals cannot be properly visualized within the production tool, thus they are forced to work within the awkward loop of export/wait/inspect/edit/and export again.
So why has this inefficiency lasted for so long? Both production tools and game engines already share the same data, so in theory they could be a single application. The reason for this lack of integration is that the game studio has its hands full with just making the game. There is no time to write a decent set of production tools from scratch. It makes more sense to buy tools, like 3dsMAX off the shelf. But why must we start from scratch, and why must we work alone? What about open source software? Until recently, there has never been an open source production tool and game engine that has had any real muscle – at least in comparison to commercially available software. On Sunday October 13 2002 the Blender Foundation released Blender3D as free open source software – this changes everything.
The unified pipeline of production tool and game engine will have a dramatic impact on the way we make games. However, the greatest potential lies with the community that may contribute code and enhance Blender's features. I have always wondered, what would happen if all the game developers worked together and shared code? It seems very logical since half the code we all write is redundant between the studios. Would the sharing of code destroy the game industry? Game studios are not in the business of selling game engines, we sell games. If we only sold game engines – we might be in trouble.
If all programming efforts were pooled together, we would have more rapid development of technology. But would the progress be so rapid that it would put many game programmers out of work within a few years? This is a hard question to answer. I only know that the elimination of redundant code will help the industry by freeing up programming time for real innovation.
Let's take a look at Linux, why is IBM putting one billion dollars into Linux and not BSD? BSD is well known to be the more mature, refined, and a generally better Unix than Linux is. BSD is open source and freely available. So why then, if BSD is better, is Linux getting all the money? Strangely, the reason is because BSD is overly free, its particular open source license (The Berkley BSD license) allows for the code to be taken and used in any way. It does not mandate that the code be returned to the community. The community can have awesome power, greater than any single company. This lack of community is the reason IBM and many others, are investing in Linux instead of BSD.
Blender and Linux are covered by the GNU General Public License. This license mandates that any changes to the code must be given back to the open source community. http://www.gnu.org
Blender has a lower total cost of ownership (TOC) than commercial 3D animation software. Let's take a large publisher like Activision for example. They have eight subsidiaries; each of these studios has between thirty and fifty people. With a yearly upgrade of 3dsMax costing $800, this comes to approximately $200,000 per year. If instead $100,000 per year were put into Blender development; Blender would soon have more features and out perform 3dsMax. At that point I would estimate $50,000 per year as adequate to sustain Blender, and keep it up to date.
Now why would we (publishers and studios) want to invest money in open source software? Well, we already spend a lot of money on software that we do not own; i.e. we do not hold the copyrights or the source code to 3dsMax. Why are we investing in someone else's proprietary software? When we buy commercial software, that is essentially what we are doing.
Make a donation to the Blender Foundation so they may continue their good work on Blender3D.
What Makes Blender3D Cool:
Rapid development by a worldwide collaborative community.
Unified pipeline of production tools and game engine.
It is open source.
Lower TOC.
Runs on many platforms: Windows, BSD, IRIX, Solaris, MacOSX and Linux
Python scripting
On The Horizon for Blender Development:
GUI editing of game logic proposal by Jonathan van Wunnik. (click here)
Next generation UI by Eskil Steenberg. (click here)
Article written by Brett Hartshorn http://www.initialprairiedog.com for GFXartist.com
