diff --git a/062-blender.txt b/062-blender.txt index a8c4176..2ff065a 100644 --- a/062-blender.txt +++ b/062-blender.txt @@ -20,15 +20,15 @@ C: Mhm. M: So what is Blender? -C: I mean Blender is a little bit of everything. When it comes to graphics it is. It's kind of a graphics powerhouse traditionally originally for 3D graphics, recently also for 2D graphics. Also sorry for the way that my voice sounds because I'm kind of sick today on this episode, but we're still recording anyway because it's excited about Blender and also excited about the podcast. But anyway Blender can do a lot of things when it comes to graphical technology. As said, primarily known for 3D stuff, but as we'll kind of get into, you know, many categories of graphical things that you might want to do, you can do with Blender. +C: I mean Blender is a little bit of everything. When it comes to graphics it is. It's kind of a graphics powerhouse traditionally originally for 3D graphics, recently also for 2D graphics. Also sorry for the way that my voice sounds because I'm kind of sick today on this episode, but we're still recording anyway because I'm excited about Blender and also excited about the podcast. But anyway Blender can do a lot of things when it comes to graphical technology. As said, primarily known for 3D stuff, but as we'll kind of get into, you know, many categories of graphical things that you might want to do, you can do with Blender. M: And it is a free software project overall. C: Mhm. -M: And it also has this connected free culture open movie project arm as well. +M: And it also has this connected free culture Open Movie project arm as well. -C: Right, because Blender, well I guess now Blender Studio, previously Blender Institute did this part of it. But the Blender Studio does these open movie projects in collaboration with programmers. I guess we'll get a little bit more into that later on in the episode. But yes, Blender is interesting because it's not just a piece of software, but it's a software that very much so owns being part of cultural production. So I guess very FOSS and Crafts. +C: Right, because Blender, well I guess now Blender Studio, previously Blender Institute did this part of it. But the Blender Studio does these open movie projects in collaboration with programmers. And I guess we'll get a little bit more into that later on in the episode. But yes, Blender is interesting because it's not just a piece of software, but it's a software that very much so owns being part of cultural production. So I guess very FOSS and Crafts. M: Yeah, it's one of the few things that is free software and free culture working so seamlessly together, like at its core. @@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ C: Mhm. M: So what can Blender do? -C: I kind of already said a little bit that Blender, you know, it's known for 3D stuff with 3D modeling, texturing, rigging and animation. Those are kind of its bread and butter, right? You know, if you want to make 3D graphics scenes, you want to make characters for a video game. You want to rig those characters so that they can move around and make an animation for them. You want to put texture them so that they look pretty, you know, and put some nice, I don't know, textures on them. You can do it in Blender and you can then animate characters in 3D. And that's really where it kind of has its origin. Additionally, one of the other pieces that was part of its origin that's kind of gotten cut, but it's kind of interactivity is coming back is its game engine. It used to be known for having this game engine, but it really wasn't widely used. And I think Godot is kind of being used more for that these days. But anyway, it has two different primary rendering engines that are used for if you wanted to render your individual shots or your animation. There's Evee, which is realtime and fairly fast and looks quite nice. And then there's Cycles, which is a slower ray tracing renderer, which is able to get a lot more details with reflections and like a lot of natural environment type things that are harder to do in the fast path. But I said Blender can do a lot and it can. So it can also do post production. So after you render your image, be able to like adjust, you know, the curves of the lighting, you know, being able to handle things like that. You can also do sculpting in it so you can kind of sculpt more kind of like clay objects. You can do video editing in it. It's very scriptable. It has a Python interface for scripting. And in fact, the whole interface kind of shows off what scripting it is like. If you turn on this feature, it'll show you the Python equivalents of everything you do. And you can do 2D artwork. As we mentioned, you know, the Sophie Jantak episode, you can do 2D artwork increasingly with Blender using its Grease Pencil tool. And then kind of the final thing, even though it's not the only things you can do that will highlight, is that you can also do procedural artwork using Geometry Nodes. I guess you can also do simulations too, like physics simulations. I never use that part of Blender, but it's pretty cool that it has it. +C: I kind of already said a little bit that Blender, you know, it's known for 3D stuff with 3D modeling, texturing, rigging and animation. Those are kind of its bread and butter, right? You know, if you want to make 3D graphics scenes, you want to make characters for a video game. You want to rig those characters so that they can move around and make an animation for them. You want to texture them so that they look pretty, you know, and put some nice, I don't know, textures on them. You can do it in Blender and you can then animate characters in 3D. And that's really where it kind of has its origin. Additionally, one of the other pieces that was part of its origin that's kind of gotten cut, but it's kind of interactivity is coming back is its game engine. It used to be known for having this game engine, but it really wasn't widely used. And I think Godot is kind of being used more for that these days. But anyway, it has two different primary rendering engines that are used for if you wanted to render your individual shots or your animation. There's Evee, which is realtime and fairly fast and looks quite nice. And then there's Cycles, which is a slower ray tracing renderer, which is able to get a lot more details with reflections and like a lot of natural environment type things that are harder to do in the fast path. But I said Blender can do a lot and it can. So it can also do post production. So after you render your image, being able to like adjust, you know, the curves of the lighting, you know, being able to handle things like that. You can also do sculpting in it so you can kind of sculpt more kind of like clay objects. You can do video editing in it. It's very scriptable. It has a Python interface for scripting. And in fact, the whole interface kind of shows off what scripting it is like if you turn on this feature, it'll show you the Python equivalents of everything you do. And you can do 2D artwork. As we mentioned, you know, the Sophie Jantak episode, you can do 2D artwork increasingly with Blender using its Grease Pencil tool. And then the final thing, even though it's not the only thing you can do that we'll highlight, is that you can also do procedural artwork using Geometry Nodes. Now I guess you can also do simulations too, like physics simulations. I never use that part of Blender, but it's pretty cool that it has it. M: Yeah, there's some really interesting work happening in that. @@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ C: Well, I guess I've been using it since 2002 or 3, which is right around when M: What state did Blender exist before it was open sourced? -C: The birthday of Blender is considered to be, I think, January 2nd, 1994. So we just hit the 30-year anniversary of Blender. Technically, though, there were actually--some of that code actually borrowed from some previous in-house tools. So Blender was originally founded by Ton Roosendaal at his startup Neo Geo. It's like an art production company. He dropped out of industrial design, if I remember correctly. And he was a self-taught software developer and started this design company in the Netherlands. They built kind of their own in-house tools To let the developer, the artists move very quickly on client designs. And then this rewrite started in 1994, this new foundation that got called Blender. Eventually, Neo Geo shuts down. In 1998, Ton and Frank van Beek, I think, started a company called Not a Number, which is very funny in a floating point math kind of way. They basically decided to make Blender shareware/freeware there. You could get it at no cost and unlock some more features if you paid for it. And they had this game engine that they were really excited about, like "Whoa we're going to do all these virtual world-type things and everything". And there was this video that was released that you can still see online that was called "Did It Done It" that shows off some of the work at Neo Geo and then I think later at Not a Number, and that kind of stuff is really cool to look at, but what happened in 2002 is that, the Dot Com crash had happened and was going on for a while, and Not a Number wasn't able to continue anymore, and so basically that company went bankrupt and Ton Roosendaal, basically in response, opens a nonprofit and says, "Hey, how about we release this as open source? We can give the investors back some money, not nearly as much as you put in, but some money, enough to make you feel like you got something out of it, something back." +C: The birthday of Blender is considered to be, I think, January 2nd, 1994. So we just hit the 30-year anniversary of Blender. Technically, though, there were actually--some of that code actually borrowed from some previous in-house tools. So Blender was originally founded by Ton Roosendaal at his startup Neo Geo. It was like an art production company. He dropped out of industrial design, if I remember correctly. And he was a self-taught software developer and started this design company in the Netherlands. They built their own in-house tools. To let the developer, the artist move very quickly on client designs. And then this rewrite started in 1994, this new foundation that got called Blender. Eventually, Neo Geo shuts down. And in 1998, Ton and Frank van Beek, I think, they started a company called Not a Number, which is very funny in a floating point math kind of way. They basically decided to make Blender shareware/freeware there. You could get it at no cost and unlock some more features if you paid for it. And they had this game engine that they were really excited about, like "Whoa we're going to do all these virtual world-type things and everything". And there was this video that was released that you can still see online that was called "Did It Done It" that shows off some of the work at Neo Geo and then I think later at Not a Number, and that kind of stuff is really cool to look at, but what happened in 2002 is that, the Dot Com crash had happened and was going on for a while, and Not a Number wasn't able to continue anymore, and so basically that company went bankrupt and Ton Roosendaal, basically in response, opens a nonprofit and says, "Hey, how about we release this as open source? We can give the investors back some money, not nearly as much as you put in, but some money, enough to make you feel like you got something out of it, something back." M: And it's not just a complete loss of the software. And all of this work. @@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ C: Yeah. So I don't know of any other crowdfunding campaign happening like this, M: And in the middle or right after the dot com crash too. -C: Yeah. Yeah. So that was pretty big. So Blender then gets released under the GPL and continues with, you know, a bunch of open source contributions. This is around the time where I'm like reading the Blender forms heavily in college. And in 2005, a really exciting thing happened, which was Project Orange. That was the first Blender Open Movie project, which then gets released as Elephants Dream. And, you know, again, we'll point back in the podcast history if you want to listen to an interview with the director of that. So Project Orange was really exciting because it was the first time that you had artists and developers working right next to one another. +C: Yeah. Yeah. So that was pretty big. So Blender then gets released under the GPL and continues with, you know, a bunch of open source contributions. This is around the time where I'm like reading the Blender forums heavily in college. And in 2005, a really exciting thing happened, which was Project Orange. That was the first Blender Open Movie project, which then gets released as Elephants Dream. And, you know, again, we'll point back in the podcast history if you want to listen to an interview with the director of that. So Project Orange was really exciting because it was the first time that you had artists and developers working right next to one another. M: Yeah. And that's a really interesting workflow that Blender has going for it too. Because as for the open source and free culture interplay, you have this kind of like community feedback loop, right, where you have the developers that are able to create the software and then you have a readily available community of artists who are ready to both break it and say, "Hey, this is what we need. Let's make it." @@ -82,9 +82,9 @@ M: Yeah. C: But that's kind of rambling. So one of the things that happened is that in 2007, the Blender Institute got founded, which had tried to do more of these types of things. And in 2008, two big things happened. Big Buck Bunny got released, which was the second big Blender Open Movie project. -M: Which went to different direction as far as that kind of cerebral, like... +M: Which went a different direction as far as that kind of cerebral, like... -C: Completely the opposite, right? You know, it was furry and funny, like, you know, kind of the type of thing that, you know, is very popular for like, CG movies and stuff like that. And it's, you know, it had some bite to it in some ways, but it ended up being a... I mean, like all these Blender Open Movie projects released some cool tools kind of alongside of them. Like this one pushed the fur and hair system a bunch. But also, it ended up being very accessible in a way that like, you end up seeing still today in lots of example, like pictures, even from big companies, and they're showing off their television and stuff like that. They have an ad for it. They still put Big Buck Bunny stills in those pictures and also like little clips of it. So I think in some ways it was really useful to do something that kind of went in the opposite direction, even though I'm very fond personally of Elephant's Dream. And like, there's been a very kind of like a big scattering of things across future Blender Open Movie projects. They're all pretty different. But the other big thing that happened in 2008 was Blender 2.5 was released, which was like a big overhaul of the UI. And an even bigger overhaul of the UI in some ways, well, it was kind of a refinement of that, but also like a rethinking of how to make things more accessible, is that in 2019, I think Blender 2.8 comes out. And I think this is kind of the turning point where I, after 2.8, is when I really started to see people starting to like kind of recognize Blender outside of the "hobbyist" community that it had a reputation for. +C: Completely the opposite, right? You know, it was furry and funny, like, you know, kind of the type of thing that, you know, is very popular for like, CG movies and stuff like that. And it's, you know, it had some bite to it in some ways, but it ended up being a... I mean, like all these Blender Open Movie projects released some cool tools kind of alongside of them. Like this one pushed the fur and hair system a bunch. But also, it ended up being very accessible in a way that like, you end up seeing still today in lots of example pictures, even from big companies, and they're showing off their television and stuff like that. They have an ad for it. They still put Big Buck Bunny stills in those pictures and also like little clips of it. So I think in some ways it was really useful to do something that kind of went in the opposite direction, even though I'm very fond personally of Elephant's Dream. And like, there's been a very big scattering of things across future Blender Open Movie projects. They're all pretty different. But the other big thing that happened in 2008 was Blender 2.5 was released, which was like a big overhaul of the UI. And an even bigger overhaul of the UI in some ways, well, it was kind of a refinement of that, but also like a rethinking of how to make things more accessible, is that in 2019, I think Blender 2.8 comes out. And I think this is kind of the turning point where I, after 2.8, is when I really started to see people starting to like kind of recognize Blender outside of the "hobbyist" community that it had a reputation for. M: Yeah. And now Blender is used much more broadly than it used to be. @@ -92,7 +92,11 @@ C: Yeah. I think if you're starting a new video game company, for example, if li M: Mhm. -C: And so they kind of, I think that was one of the big first times we saw really like a huge production kind of insert Blender in a very visible way into its pipeline. It's using Grease Pencil for a lot of the line art that's in that movie. But I think one of the other big differences that's happened between now when I was learning it and then is that like the prominence of internet video with YouTube and etc. It's much easier to find resources about how to learn things and with Blender being open source, It's much easier for people to default to. So anyway, that was kind of a tour of the history. So nowadays I think there's about three institutions that formally are doing the development of Blender stuff basically. There is the Blender Foundation which holds on to the code and the trademark and stuff, the Blender Institute which is I think mostly where the software is being developed these days. And other projects like that. And then there's the Blender Studio which is the ones doing the open movie project stuff. And those latter two tend to be funded by the dev fund for more of the software side and the Blender Cloud for the open movie project side of things. We talked about this in the governance episode about how kind of all three of these things come together. +C: And so they kind of, I think that was one of the big first times we saw really like a huge production kind of insert Blender in a very visible way into its pipeline. It's using Grease Pencil for a lot of the line art that's in that movie. But I think one of the other big differences that's happened between now when I was learning it and then is that like the prominence of internet video with YouTube and etc. It's much easier to find resources about how to learn things and with Blender being open source, It's much easier for people to default to. + +M: Mhm. + +C: So anyway, that was kind of a tour of the history. So nowadays I think there's about three institutions that formally are doing the development of Blender stuff basically. There is the Blender Foundation which holds on to the code and the trademark and stuff, the Blender Institute which is I think mostly where the software is being developed these days. And other projects like that. And then there's the Blender Studio which is the ones doing the open movie project stuff. And those latter two tend to be funded by the Dev Fund for more of the software side and the Blender Cloud for the open movie project side of things. We talked about this in the governance episode about how kind of all three of these things come together. M: Yeah, and how and how having the three separate things allows it to--they have somewhat of a shared pot of money but that also allows them to have like different governance setups for the different focuses. @@ -100,17 +104,17 @@ C: Where are we going next? M: So next we're going to modern application and we talked a little bit about how Blender moved from largely the hobbyist community to something that's being used more and more in like larger industry experiences. So let's talk a little bit more about how Blender is being used these days. -C: So I think just my general commentary on that is just that Blender is really just being used very widely and very much so as a default in many different spaces that are not coming in with their pre existing pipeline. Like every person I know who does independent game development and who is you know started their studio in recent times--Blender is the default. They're going to be using Blender. +C: So I think just my general commentary on that is just that Blender is really just being used very widely and very much so as a default in many different spaces that are not coming in with their pre existing pipeline. Like every person I know who does independent game development and who has started their studio in recent times--Blender is the default. They're going to be using Blender. -M: And that's not just the sample bias in that most of the people you know doing independent games are free software open source people. There is some sample bias there +M: And that's not just the sample bias in that most of the people you know doing independent games are free software open source people. There is some sample bias there. -C: There is some sample bias but I also happen to have quite a few people in my life who are involved in the game industry and like this is my impression from talking to them is that if you are in kind of non triple A game environments. You're going to be using Blender. +C: There is some sample bias but I also happen to have quite a few people in my life who are involved in the game industry and like this is my impression from talking to them is that if you are in kind of non triple A game environments, you're going to be using Blender. M: Yeah. C: And we're starting to see more 2D animation studios picking up Blender because Grease Pencil is really powerful. Since it allows for the combination of 2D and 3D intermixed. It really allows for things--I think Grease Pencil is one of those things that really feels like it's a thing that other things kind of really couldn't do before in some ways. -M: Mhm. And I think part of part of the reason for this more broad adoption is has to do with the GUI and usability of it. So Blender 10 or 15 years ago was a different user experience than Blender today so I. +M: Mhm. And I think part of part of the reason for this more broad adoption has to do with the GUI and usability of it. So Blender 10 or 15 years ago was a different user experience than Blender today so I-- C: That's right. @@ -118,7 +122,7 @@ M: My experience actually using Blender is fairly limited I will admit that like C: It was mostly in my class that you took right. -M: Yeah. So I've taken a couple of 3D modeling classes and, well both of those classes we used software that I didn't really like. One of them we used Strata which was industry standard for jewelry making and nothing else. And it was terrible and Christine was like "let me show you how I would do this in Blender" for something that I couldn't figure out in Strata and then I kind of back tracked how to do it in Strata. And then the other one was using Rhino which was at that point the kind of industry standard for like. +M: Yeah. So I've taken a couple of 3D modeling classes and, well both of those classes we used software that I didn't really like. One of them we used Strata which was industry standard for jewelry making and nothing else. And it was terrible and Christine was like "let me show you how I would do this in Blender" for something that I couldn't figure out in Strata and then I kind of back tracked how to do it in Strata. And then the other one was using Rhino which was at that point the kind of industry standard for like-- C: Was that for modeling I think? I forget. @@ -144,7 +148,11 @@ C: And you needed to know the keyboard shortcuts and then later on like when I w M: So the usability of Blender and the usability of the interface is like so much more accessible these days. -C: Now we should say that Blender--that all 3D software that is sufficiently advanced enough for artists to get interesting things done with these days at least tends to have a high learning curve, and Blender is no exception. It's just like one of those things that there's a high learning curve. +C: Now we should say that Blender--that all 3D software that is sufficiently advanced enough for artists to get interesting things done with these days at least tends to have a high learning curve, and Blender is no exception. + +M: Oh yeah. + +C: It's just like one of those things that there's a high learning curve. M: Well and I just talked about how much I hated the two pieces of software I was using in those classes too, which were the software that they chose for fairly introductory courses.