Facebook Joins the Blender Development Fund | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Joins the Blender Development Fund

blender.org

75 pointsbuovjaga16 comments

I've been looking at some FBX files and came across a FBX to glTF converter that's maintained by Facebook: https://github.com/facebookincubator/FBX2glTF

At the time, I didn't understand why Facebook maintained this project but now it makes a lot more sense.

I assume Blender gets used a lot for VR assets?

For indie games in general, so not only vr, but also Facebook mini games.

AAA studios also use Blender. FBX is most common which sort of necessitates Autodesk apps, but some of the studios are very OSS friendly.

Any known names?

Ubisoft, Epic and Embark are funding Blender. Not sure about Epic but Embark Studios do use Blender for sure. From their blog:

"Many of us at the content team at Embark use Blender daily, and our long-term ambition at the studio is to use Blender as our default program for 3D and environment art."

Ubisoft Animation studios are using Blender and there were some rumors last year that Blender is used in some capacity in game studios too. They definitely did a lot of work on making their content pipeline agnostic to the tool used. Transition will be slow but it's happening.

https://www.blender.org/user-stories/japanese-anime-studio-k... The guys who do Evangelion.

Although Not for games, but for movies Tangent Animation comes to mind.

source: https://www.blendernation.com/2018/08/20/next-gen-blender-pr...

How much control does that give them? I don't suppose anyone would like to see Blender requiring a Facebook account?

They have plenty of corporate sponsors already:

https://fund.blender.org/

I'm generally a Facebook doomsayer but in this case I don't really see them being able to throw much weight around.

Looks like they get a name, a link, and a logo.

They get some say in the future development as well. Blender is a great example of how open source can work together with corporations.

Open Source has always worked with companies, which is why Micro$oft loves it - developers code for free, release the code under an open source licence, and companies just take that code, slap some features on it, rebrand it, and resell it under their proprietary licence.

It is free (as in freedom) software which companies usually don't like and we need more than ever.

What you write helps people in the world, but not open source. Blender gets significant amount of money from corporations in return of giving some control over the development process.

Hope they are donating to some other open-source without those.

Now if only the z-axis was the right way round ;)

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