Hacker News Reader

Comment by rollulus | Hacker News Reader

Blender is a nice project. But a 3D modeler that is a bit easier to learn, and deserves a bit more attention imo, is Wings 3D [1]. It might excite some part of the audience here that it is written in Erlang. Internally it uses the winged-edge data structure [2], something that is also worth a read if that doesn't ring a bell.

[1]: http://www.wings3d.com/ [2]: https://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/COURSES/cs3621/NOTES/model/win...

View on HN

> Blender is a nice project

Sorry, but Blender is an amazing project. Its single-handedly the best graphics software the FOSS community has produced by a long shot, and can compete with the likes of 3DS Max and Maya which are owned by the 3D powerhouse monopoly Autodesk. For me, its up there with the likes of linux and maybe libreoffice in terms of quality alternatives for otherwise software monopolies.

Anyway, I've used Blender quite a bit for games and animation and it never ceases to impress. So their devs deserve a huge applause IMO. Also, for those of you who think I'm exaggerating about Blender's quality just check out these links:

1. http://www.blenderguru.com/articles/24-photorealistic-blende...

2. http://archive.blender.org/features-gallery/gallery/index.ht...

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=R6Ml...

4. http://archive.blender.org/features-gallery/blender-open-pro...

Weirdly its also the best video editor that I've used on linux. Only issues I've ever had with it on that front is that rendering is awfully slow.

Haha, KDENLive has caught up with it in my opinion but yeah for years Blender was definitely the best video editor (after some configuration).

To clarify Blender was originally a closed source private software created at Dutch studio Not a Number (NaN). Which Ton Roosendaal was software engineer at and helped create blender.

The source code was then releases by NaN under some licencing scheme. Only after a fund raising drive to buy the code for something like a few hundred thousand dollars from NaN and re-release it under an OSS licence did Blender become open source.

Its important to understand that Animation Studios hire the majority of Computer Graphics researchers, Programmers and Artists. Without the commercial Animation industry there would be a small fraction of the research and innovation that we have today. And also a fraction of the innovative open source Computer Graphics projects that we have.

Open source projects like Open SubDiv (Pixar), Ptex (Disney), Open VDM (Dreamworks), and many others are all projects that are created by Animation Studios and would not be possible without the funding and expertise that these studios have.

And the fund raiser was the Blender Foundation - I was number #884, yay! https://fossies.org/linux/blender/doc/license/bf-members.txt

I'm surprised Wings 3D not only is alive, it also seems to be under active development and recognized in the 3D graphics industry! I remember it ~5 years ago, when I was working in an Erlang company. I'm pretty sure it was one man's toy back then, created to see what Erlang and functional programming can be pushed to do.

It does have a lot of missing features compared to blender, and development has been very slow since Bjorng left the project, but it is really the most intuitive modeler I know.

It does one thing and one thing well. It's still my favorite box modeling application. I can get a character modeled up 2 times as fast as Blender. I'm a big fan of Blender and use it for character animation, but my familiarity with Wing 3D goes back many many years. Back then Blender's modeling was horrible. These days Blender does everything, and most things very well!

Where Blender is vim, Wings is EMACS.

It's also just a modeling package, whereas Blender is a full suite including video editor and compositor.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com