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Comment by doctoboggan | Hacker News Reader

Blender is such an amazing tool. I have a side business where I create 3d printed jewelry with my customer's fingerprints on it in gold and silver (https://lulimjewelry.com) and I use Blender on the backend for all of the jewelry creation.

I run blender headless in a docker container on google cloud run. When needed I invoke it with an image and have a blender script "engrave" that image on the jewelry and output an STL file.

It is incredibly flexible to script in python, although its not very "pythonic". The UI is quite stateful (edit mode, object mode, which items are selected, etc) and you have to keep track of that state in your program. But once you get around those issues you can do quite a lot, and its all a free program!

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I have a side business where I create 3d printed jewelry with my customer's fingerprints on it in gold and silver

There's a plotline for an episode of CSI crying out to be written here..

CSI: VRChat

Blender is amazing for the 3D rendering it can do, and for the fact that it is free... But it is intimidating to people who don't learn it inside and out from a production standpoint when they are doing a lot more than just importing simple objects.

But I kind of wish they had a "Blender Light", without all the features and config options, and with a less complex UI... I've been using Panzoid to do certain things, but Panzoid can't do rigging on imported object files...

I usually want to make animated videos in support of the music I release on my label, but right now doing so is either expensive or time consuming. I also don't want to put in film-studio effort or money into each music video release, because that is not a good business model, and my time is limited... The costs of being a creator are rising fast, only solid workflows will ensure survival.

You might be interested in the "Blender 101 (Application templates)" item in this roadmap:

> Being able to configure Blender for personal workflows is a key Blender target, part of the 2.8 project.

> To bring configuring even one step further, .blend files can be used to replace the standard startup file – creating ‘custom versions’ of Blender this way. These templates will allow to completely configure UI layouts, define custom keymaps and enable add-ons to run at startup. A smart Python scripter can design complete new applications this way, using vanilla Blender releases. As prototypes the team will release a couple of simple templates: a video-player review tool and the 100% dumbed down ‘Monkey Blender’.

> A template used this way will be called “Blender Application Template” or just “Blender App”. Planning is to have this working as beta for Blender 3.1, after extensive testing and reviews by contributors and module teams.

I think the bigger issue you're going to run into with "make Blender but simple" is that the subset of features that you want in a simplified blender is a different subset from what other people want. You want to do rigging on imported object files, but for somebody else rigging is a feature that would get cut out completely. They're just trying to model a doughnut and a coffee mug and do a still render of it, or at most animate the camera moving around the scene.

The added value of complex software like Blender is that it makes every task possible, reducing the risk of having to start over a project with better tools because easy to learn software with a constrained workflow and limited features was selected at first. 3D modeling and rendering is particularly suitable for this style of tool because there are many, many editing operations that can be applied to 3D models and many uses they can be put to.

Simplified software is suitable for simple, throwaway needs where the risk of choosing wrong and the cost of changing tools are low: yesterday I had to split a PDF file for the first and presumably last time in my life and I just printed it to a file by page ranges, without bothering to select, install and learn to use a PDF editor like Acrobat.

Mastering general, not "light" software is the only practical foundation for relatively professional "solid workflows" (as opposed to learning the basics of 3D modeling or something else with minimum accidental complexity); there might be a place for very advanced and/or very efficient but very specialized tools (e.g. MagicaVoxel, procedural generators of 3D models, Substance Painter) but only as an addition for equally specialized situations, not as an easy route.

> But I kind of wish they had a "Blender Light", without all the features and config options, and with a less complex UI

I get what you're talking about, sort of an "iMovie" to Blender's "Final Cut Pro". I think 2.80 actually did a ton of work in that regard, if you've seen it since then. It could definitely be simpler though, and with the UI programming the way it is I suspect it wouldn't take all that much internal change.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of the reason it's as intimidating as it is is because the main aim for buy in for now is studios who favor the power user maximal interfaces of Cinema 4D and Maya and the like

> But I kind of wish they had a "Blender Light"

Since Blender is open source, it would be possible for some other group to fork Blender and remove parts of the UI for users like you.

I really wish the core team wouldn't focus their effort on this. Blender is a professional tool for professional users. Having to balance between "dumbing down" the UI for first time users and providing a user interface for power users makes it hard to please either one of them, so I'm happy Blender currently focuses on the pro users.

Totally agree. Some time ago I also ran Blender headless with a script to render 'product shots' of a product that is available in over hundred different combinations. What is also very nice is that you can turn on API hints when you navigate over an element in the GUI. So you can quickly learn how to access or manipulate data.

Yeah you can also have it print the python command called for every action you take in the GUI

Could you point me to some documentation for this? This has been the only hindrance for me to automate things without digging into the documentation myself

You can use the `--debug-wm` flag for that. CTRL+C when hovering a button also copies it's API action. https://docs.blender.org/api/current/info_tips_and_tricks.ht...

You can either switch to the "scripting" tab or just add/change any window to the "Scripting > Info" window. I personally change the animation timeline window to the info window on the main "Layout" tab since I don't do animations.

I just wanted to say that your process sounds incredibly awesome. I was curious, what type of instance do you have running behind your Cloud Run job?

I know rendering can be quite heavy on a CPU, but it sounds like you're running a series of commands to generate a model instead

Honestly I am running it on the lowest level instance, (1 CPU, 512 memory).

And I dont actually do any rendering on this instance, just the STL generation. I use Threejs to display/render the STL once its done.

Cool setup; have you posted more about it?

No, but I have been meaning to one of these days.

That's a really cool application of Blender! I'm also using Blender headless in docker containers on Google Cloud, though not using Cloud Run. I'm doing it for self-service molecular visualizations -- "create your own molecule video". It's at https://bioviz-studio.com. But I run up to 50 dual-T4 instances for speed (Cycles X helps a lot!). And I agree the python API is a bit weird, and hard to use, but once you get the hang of it you can create really complex and interesting scenes just using python.

> my customer's fingerprints

And you get to build a database for any state agencies that might be interested in buying (or taking)!

When I started this I spent some time googling to see what sort of harm came come from your fingerprints being leaked and I couldn’t find anything concrete. It’s not trivial to take a photo of a fingerprint and turn it into something capable of fooling a smartphone fingerprint reader. Someone with the ability to do that probably also have the ability to lift your print from the thousands of things you touch in your daily life.

As opposed to the database the state agencies already have because they take your fingerprints when you get ID?

They mean pub key / certificate fingerprints. Gosh... :)

I’ll happily engrave your public key on a ring!

Huh? Is building a database of actual finger fingerprints not worthwhile?

Not really, unless you're trying to build up a private fingerprint collection which can't be used for criminal cases anyway.

> build a database for any state agencies

As opposed to building a database for private agencies?

I love how hacky this solution is (yet inspiring that it drives a business).

I have a question about your business. Do you 3d print metal yourself?

No, I partner with a casting house.

And the metal is actually not 3D printed. How it works is the design is printed in wax first, this wax is then used to make a plaster mould into which the molten metal is cast.

can ender 3 print wax?

No, you'll want an SLA printer rather than FDM. Something like an Elegoo Mars.

Though there's a bit of an issue going on in that space right now where the company that makes the controller boards for the affordable consumer models has decided to DRM lock their file format and require all of these printers to use their proprietary slicer (Chitubox), locking out the generally better liked open source alternative (Lychee).

If that's an issue for you, you might be able to find an older model that hasn't been updated to recent firmware, but personally I'm waiting on any resin printers until we see how this shakes out. There was some noise about Chitu hearing the community and creating an SDK, but Lychee didn't sound very excited about it.

EDIT - actually it looks like someone has created a lost wax casting filament for FDM printers. Look for "MoldLay". But in terms of printing detail, for small jewelry type projects resin printers are still going to be the better choice.

https://filament2print.com/gb/lay/645-moldlay.html

Using lost-PLA casting?

The rings are printed in wax and then a plaster mould is made using the wax. The gold or silver is cast using the plaster mould.

I don’t do any of it myself, I have a casting partner who can do it for me. You can also find online services like shapeways to do it as well but they charge a lot mire than the real casting houses. Some casting houses I’ve worked with were the back ends to shapeways themselves.

Could you provide the names of some of the casting houses? I've only used Shapeways for some personal projects, but would love to have some more options. Nice shop, BTW.

Sure, send me an email and I can make some introductions. (jack @ domain I posted in my original comment) The casting houses I work with are in the LA jewelry district. I contrasted them to other "online services" because these are more old school business that like to do business over the phone and receive payment via cash/check. You also don't know what the piece will cost until its cast since they charge by weight of the final piece. Most of the casting houses also do not do wax printing or polishing, so you will have to find other people to do each of those steps. Luckily the jewelry district has people who do everything it just take a bit more work to coordinate it all.

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