UBISOFT JOINS BLENDER DEVELOPMENT FUND TO SUPPORT OPEN SOURCE ANIMATION

[MaxTux Wonder]

https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/article/353364/ubisoft-joins-blender-development-fund-to-support-open-source-animation

Ubisoft Animation Studio (UAS), the in-house studio of Ubisoft Film & Television dedicated to creating animated films and series, will soon adopt the open-source animation software Blender as its main digital content creation (DCC) tool. Additionally, Ubisoft will support its development by joining the Blender Development Fund as a Corporate Gold Member.

[Selene Gregoire]

Yay! They finally committed! Woot!

[Kurshie Muromachi]

That's great to hear! This and the recent Epic Games $1.2 million grant to Blender is really showing how the progress from both the developers and the community put into the Blender software is getting noticed.
 

Quote

 

Blender was, for us, an obvious choice considering our big move: it is supported by a strong and engaged community, and is paired up with the vision carried by the Blender Foundation, making it one of the most rapidly evolving DCCs on the market.

We love the idea that this mutual exchange between the foundation, the community, and our studio will benefit everyone in the end.

We believe that Blender 2.8, which will be released in the coming days, is a game-changer for the CGI industry. Blender has been on Ubisoft's radar for a long time already, and in the past year, more and more of our artists have shown an interest in using it in production. The growth of our internal Blender community, as well as the innovations brought by 2.8 – e.g. a revamped UX, Grease Pencil, EEVEE real-time rendering – convinced us that this was the right time to bring support to our artists and productions that would like to add Blender to their toolkit.

 

Important points to really think about.

[Coffee Pancake]

This is really good news .. but then it's also Ubisoft, so will probably just add mandatory fun dependent happy beige loot crates and then blame you for buying them.

[Janet Voxel]

Soooo...what does this mean for us?

[Coffee Pancake]

That you should be migrating to 2.80 if you have't already, and any addons you depend on should have been updated too by this point.

The only reasons to keep using 2.79 now is being in the middle of a major multi frame/scene project (like an animation) and you need absolute consistency in rendered output.

[Janet Voxel]

Well, I was going to do that anyway; but what does Ubisoft supporting Blender’s development actually mean for Second Life?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

2 minutes ago, janetosilio said:

Well, I was going to do that anyway; but what does Ubisoft supporting Blender’s development actually mean for Second Life?

Nothing. This is just good news for Blender, which might be interesting for some people on SL since Blender is [citation needed] the most used modeling program for SL.

[Drayke Newall]

Poor Autodesk, finally looks to be loosing their monopoly on 3D and animation.

[Bree Giffen]

This looks like just the Ubisoft animation studio and not the game developer. The bigger ”news" for me is the Epic "Fortnite" Games support. All the extra money makes a better Blender. 

[Lucia Nightfire]

We can't even get LL to invest in rag doll physics, IK's, dynamic bones and/or colliders and even if they did, they would most assuredly would improperly/partially implement it.

[Chaser Zaks]

As long as it stays as funding and not "buy out". I do not want micro-transactions and loot boxes in my open source.

[Selene Gregoire]

I could see microtransactions in Blender but that would make it for profit and Blender is nonprofit so that won't happen. But loot boxes in a 3d modeling program? Creating them yes but... it would be absolutely pointless.

[Cackle Amore]

I mean, we technically already got that in the form of purchasable plugins made by others

[Wulfie Reanimator]

On 7/24/2019 at 6:52 PM, Selene Gregoire said:

I could see microtransactions in Blender but that would make it for profit and Blender is nonprofit so that won't happen.

Blender Cloud and the rest of their store says hello.

Selling things doesn't make you automatically "for profit" and most open-source projects make money somehow.

Edit: Yes, thank you for agreeing with what I said. 

Edit 2: @Drayke Newall I worked for the Red Cross for over a year doing exactly the same, our store making ~$125k/mo, with 5 others nearby.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Selene Gregoire]

7 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Blender Cloud and the rest of their store says hello.

Selling things don't make you automatically "for profit" and most open-source projects make money somehow.

Quote

The Blender Foundation is an independent non-profit public benefit corporation, established in Amsterdam the Netherlands.

Its purpose is to:

• Manage the facilities on blender.org for users and developers who want to contribute to Blender.
• Maintain and improve the current Blender product via a public accessible source code system under the GNU General Public License.
• Establish funding or revenue mechanisms that serve the foundation’s goals and cover the foundation’s expenses.
• Provide individual artists and small teams with a complete, free and open source 3D creation pipeline.

https://www.blender.org/foundation/

[Drayke Newall]

2 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Blender Cloud and the rest of their store says hello.

👍 As does the Salvation Army, Good Will and pretty much every non-profit company. Of course a non-profit companies can make money.

[HarrisonMcKenzie]

On 7/24/2019 at 2:16 AM, Drayke Newall said:

Poor Autodesk, finally looks to be loosing their monopoly on 3D and animation.

Most professionals use custom inhouse software anyways. Hardly a monopoly.

[Erwin Solo]

I'm using Blender 2.80 now, except using Blender 2.79 when I need Avistar.  Avistar has an update in the works after which it will be Blender 2.80 all the way.  

[Drayke Newall]

On 8/3/2019 at 1:54 PM, HarrisonMcKenzie said:

Most professionals use custom inhouse software anyways. Hardly a monopoly.

No, they may use a custom gaming engine but 3D modelling is still monopolised by Autodesk. Companies have invested way to much into Autodesk products that to change software would take time as well as money. That investment isn't necessarily money either it can be software with them creating custom software as well as plugins all to support and speed up their pipelines whilst using their software they use, which sorry to say primarily is still Autodesk.

There is a reason why .FBX is the standard file format whilst exporting 3D modeling assets. Also keep in mind that as far as exporting and importing 3D models goes Blender is one of the few modelling programs (not sure if this is still the case) that doesn't allow either to be done in the format .3DS.

Dice, EA, CR Project, Eidos, Bethesda, Bioware, Ubisoft (until this announcement) and many more use Autodesk's 3D modeling software for creating 3D assets. Autodesk's software file formats (.FBX and .3DS) are the industry standard for anything from 3D modeling and movies all the way to architecture. It is also the software that is primarily taught to students going into these fields in universities and colleges.

Might not be the case for self employed professionals, but for companies it is the case. Just need to look at their career advertisements to see Autodesk software knowledge listed as a requirement.

Its good to see competition creeping in now.

Edited August 5, 2019 by Drayke Newall

[Maryanne Solo]

I use 3Ds Max and  wont hesitate to kick Autodesk hard while they're down. All these scumbag companies switching to subscription only have it coming to them. Thanks for the Boeing software! (end user matters least). *BOOT! How long the one month subscription option stays remains to be seen. You LOST money from me you grubs! 😛 

Edited August 6, 2019 by Maryanne Solo