With UVMapping being worked on now, I am hoping that among the long time issues being fixed is the ‘reset’ UV operator finally being updated to work with Ngons (since the vertices are simply laid out as a circle regardless of the shape, I can conclude that it is one of those few remaining tools that never saw a proper update when Bmesh came in a decade ago).
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No, they just keep using the old version until it’s not sustainable anymore. Was stuck with maya 2016 for 5 years. And yes, tools had to be rewritten when the swap happened to 2020, which I’ll be using for another 5 years I guess.
Can’t speak for all softwares and every studios tools, but in mayas case rewrites and fixes were very common every time a new version is being rolled out.
The biggest reason against integrating Blender deeper into the pipeline I heard from higher ups wasn’t concerns about the API, but concerns about legalities around the GPL license. But yes, it’s use is quite common nowadays I think. People would be surprised.
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Interesting !! I didn’t heard concerns about GPL yet ! But I can see how this can become tricky !
Thanks for sharing insights !
If your studio have to rewrite for Maya upgrade. Your pipeline dept. has some issues .
But, I agree on GPL part. That’s another big concern.
Haha, don’t they all. 
The bigger the studio the more politics there is around tools and pipelines I guess.
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And you have to all the time if you want your software to maintain its leading position or to get to that point. Software development in this industry doesn’t snooze. My partner worked on the Maya API for years, and I can guarantee you it did not stand still for a second. They didn’t willy-nilly make random changes just because they could, but constant changes are still a way of life. And plugin developers (which we later became) had to simply deal with that. If a studio couldn’t or didn’t want to adapt their pipeline tools with each release, they stayed with the old version for longer.
Big studios pay the big bucks not for an unchanging API, but for constant, reliable support. Many API changes are actually customer-driven, nobody wants the API to stop developing. Instead the lack of support is IMO a primary reason why they don’t go with Blender as their main work horse. Blender has no developer support for users, no phone centre answering questions 24x7, no special treatment and catering for the really big guys, doesn’t yank its devs out of bed to fix a show stopper. Blender would need solid third-party companies who provide knowledgeable and reliable support – that approach worked for Linux, it might do for Blender as well. AFAIK there’s now Canonical doing that sort of thing; I don’t know how that’s going. The larger the studio the slower they are to change. But I see Blender pop up a lot more often now than I used to.
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Any issues stemming from the GPL is impossible to fix at this point, even if the core team approved of a change (because you need approval from everyone who contributed and there is no provision for the case a dev. could not be contacted because of political instability or worse). Much of Blender’s code would have to be removed and the application would lose many years of progress.
This is by design to ensure Blender remains free and does not suddenly introduce paywalls, subscriptions, DRM, ect… Good for those who do not want Blender to turn out too good to be true for the price (remember Lightworks?), but it does introduce limits in areas like the industry bringing their plugins to the community.
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They do have corporate tiers in the Blender fund though. I’d be interested to hear if it payed off for the Ubisoft guys to invest in that. I mean on paper a bigger company could just pay for a developer or two to work on whatever is on their agenda.
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Yes ! I agree with you, while it probably cause a bunch of issue it’s also helping / forcing some moves in the right direction. Like studios sharing more tools and working together at least to some extent.
It could be interesting to know the real reasons about GPL causing issues, I suppose people stealing some tools ? or the contamination of tools ?
I think @piranha4D made a lot of good points too ! To me everyone has a good reason to not go with blender but in fact there are always a bunch of them.
If every company had only one reason to not use blender it would be very easy to fix.
It’s more the accumulation of different things, plus the fact that rewriting all the tools, finding artists (especially TD, CG Sup) and dealing with a few limitation is a lot in the end.
But at least more people are using it each years ! And as a secondary tool I suspect it’s used a lot so it already having a foot in the doorstep
Hum, there is really little benefit for investors I think. They can participate in meetings, give their POV, but they can’t decide what needs to be done in blender. They are not clients paying for the software, they are “donators”, who like the project and want it to prosper.
But they can hire developpers, even hire BF developpers, and have their features integrated in their own custom version. Then they are encouraged to make these changes public, which is cool since they don’t have to maintain the code anymore.
But it’s really a 180° change… Before you wanted to buy a pizza you can ask to replace the mozarella by gorgonzola since you are a client.
But now it’s like , hey come to the kitchen and make the pizza yourself and you’ll pay every stuff you use… And you are encouraged to give us your recipe so we can use it, and maybe next time you won’t have to go to the kitchen…
You should really like that restaurant to accept that isn’t it ?
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I think having that, and access to more hands on core developer support is what most companies would be after anyhow.
This was the last drop. I’m debating ordering pizza for the last hour, you just pushed me over the edge.
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Probably ! It’s not as straightforward : the more you change your version of blender, the harder it is to merge it with the current version, and have access to all the new features.
You might end up having your version completely disconnected from the original at some point…
But it can work to some extend, that’s what tangent did , and recently an animation studio called the SPA studio.
But they are not the biggest company ever, so they stay relatively flexible.
Lol, go to the supermaket, download the source code, include your own changes and built it yourself !
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Didn’t they plan to release all their tools at some point? I wonder what happened to that.
It’s Sunday 7pm here, I’m az lazy as a guy can be. I’m fine with whatever is bundled with the default version.
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Another one who don’t understand what the stability means. Sigh.
They did ! And some part of it went into blender, but I think they kind of payed the price of being the first studio to crash test that method
So basically they worked on their own, adding important stuff like for instance light linking.
But they did that in their very own way tied to their production / budget need, it was their first feature with blender, one with a band of dogs before the one for netflix.
So they added light linking but in a hackish way, it was limited to render with 0 bounces since their project couldn’t afford GI. That change for instance didn’t make it, it was rejected by blender’s developpers IMO for very good reasons (that also applies to many submissions in general, they need to fit some standard and QC) .
And I think a few very big and cool patch didn’t make it for similar reasons.
But I think after it went a bit better and they worked hand in hand with BF, I’m not sure everything made in but at least a much bigger part of what they did on that production.
To be clear, I think all their work is available, but not integrated into vanilla blender.
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Ah, makes sense. I guess non of that would have made it through code review. I lost track a bit after Autodesk acquired their cloud pipeline solution.
Thanks for getting me up to speed!
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Yeah I don’t recall all the detail to be honest. Maybe someone can correct me if needed.
Anyway it’s in everyone best interest to include these contributions. But it’s also a lot of work to fix them if something doesn’t fit blender’s design especially when it’s big patches.
Then it’s eventually stored here, waiting for someone to resume the work :
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Blender’s popularity has skyrocketed over the last few years, the entertainment industry is in upheaval and I think that’s driving more people to alternative solutions and Blender is one of them. But I also think Blender needs to start adapting too, the geometry nodes is a good start but I’d personally like to see all of Blender become more modular and easier to develop for.
Even your operation system does change… and in the case of Windos you have to pay extra so that you are not updated by force…
I’m still on linux debian 9 and it works… well i have to update at leat to 10 i guess but of course there are some possible problems so i use another computer for that…
For Blender: i think a great benefit is that you also can use different versions at the same time… actually a blender 2.49 is installed on my machine…
Even in some other areas there are some updates which i don’t like (browsers for example… getting bigger and bigger and adding features which i don’t need: Notes, Calendars, PIM… ) but sometimes i have to because some bugs are resolved sometimes related to safety…
So if you go for stability you are free to use any older blender version and in linux also…
…so i don’t really understand that lamenting about API changes… especially if this only ends up in:
So what’s the point ?? Just don’t upgrade… (or just stick to any LTS )
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Blender developers don’t have infused science of evolution of software.
They can not be sure that, what they chose for API will stay pertinent for future contributions, coming from anywhere.
My point has never been that Blender’s API is stable. There are breaking changes at each release.
My point is that is as much stable as it can be, due to context of an open source software, that is evolving a lot.
Blender is not a web framework.
It is a graphical suit in mutation, with an interaction with user, constantly criticized by user feedback.
Blender development has a limited amount of developers working on API and they are releasing quickly stable version of Blender, to obtain a quick feedback.
They need an API communicating changes of software between numerous versions available to keep contributors up-to-date.
They don’t have manpower and interest in support an accumulation of aliases, that will add confusion about version used and its abilities.
There are 3 new blender versions per year.
Short release cycle is the reason why they cannot guarantee a support during a longer period.
They would not have to remember particularities of 6 blender releases but more than 10.
If they tried to provide support during 5 years.
Let’s be factual.
API breaking changes are listed and explained in release notes.
https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.5/Python_API#Breaking_changes
There will be 7 breaking points for 3.5.
There were 10 for 3.4.
2 for 3.3. 7 in 3.2. 1 in 3.1. 13 in 3.0. 5 in 2.93. 4 in 2.92. 4 in 2.91. 1 in 2.90. 2 in 2.83. 1 in 2.82. 10 in 2.81
API was completely new in 2.80.
Python version was changed in 2.81, 2.93, 3.1.
That does an average of 5 breaking changes per release, 20 between 2 LTS, 40 between 2 LTS spaced by 2 years.
Not everybody will be impacted by 40 breaking changes. But that is not negligible. And everybody will encounter an issue and have a fix to do.
The bigger the production is, the more breaking changes will impact it.
That being said.
Fixing 40 documented breaking points in code is probably work, that can be handled by a production lasting several years.
That is not the end of the world, if artists are only switching in production, from one LTS to last one, 1, 2 or 3 months, after its release.
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I’ve been wondering…we can scale almost all UI elements of Blender - something that I rarely use.
But one of the things that can’t be scaled is the color picker…
Why?
Its tiny.
200x330 pixel hardcoded that don’t scale up when you increase the monitor resolution.
The bigger your monitor resolution the smaller it gets.
Nobody thought about this?
BAD UI DESIGN.
Why is there such an glaring inconsistency in UI, why can’t I scale the color picker?
Its not only very fiddly, it has no quality of life features, compared to what luxury other programs provide its actually quite pathetic.
Blender wants to be industry standard - but it falls short of the standard by failing with simple stuff like this (that could be fixed with minimal effort).
To top it off it doesn’t work with color spaces, which makes it unfit for purpose if you want to work with ACES for example.
I thought it would get fixed someday and I even forgot about it for a while, but I guess nothing will happen unless people complain about it.
This is how it looks like in Houdini and it makes dialing in colors 10x faster.
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