Blender for Symbian OS | Hacker News Reader

Blender for Symbian OS

github.com

81 pointsapp4soft28 comments

JFTR, While ago there was Tigan3D — a fully functional Blender-like 3D editor for Symbian S60 written in PyS60 (Python for S60), but development abandoned.[0,1,2]

There are SIS/SISX packages for S60v2[3] and S60v3[4]. Also there is de-compiled source (PyS60 1.4.5/Python 2.2.2).[5]

[0] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1283331633370759169

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20130607092442/http://tigan.mwb.i...

[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20130607105423/http://tigan.mwb.i...

[3] http://profismart.org/f-210087.php

[4] http://profismart.org/f-180431.php

[5] https://annimon.com/forum/file16034/f000d899_py.rar

For a sec I thought this was the crazyest project for a while, but then I realized that it doesn't actually have anything to do with Blender.

I do wonder about the copyright headers though... they are odd

    *  Copyright (c) 2004-2006 Nokia Corporation.
    *  This material, including documentation and any related
    *  computer programs, is protected by copyright controlled by
    *  Nokia Corporation.

> and any related computer programs

Does this mean all the bundled software is from Nokia, or are they trying to claim copyright over programs made with their software?

I’m assuming those headers are just from whatever he based this code on or autogenerated by some sort of Symbian/Nokia IDE/devtools. But also this seems to be a “lite” version of Blender, what makes you think it has nothing to to with Blender?

Looking at Symbian C++ code after 11 years gives me PTSD. Many years working at Nokia trying to make other frameworks run on top of Symbian so that developers could have an easier life. I do not miss those times.

I have fond memories using Qt on Symbian. Thank you for your work.

A happy customer! What a rarity. It was immensely tough to get the basics working on top of Symbian (Maemo was a breeze) so the experience was wonky and, frankly, kind of crappy. QML and Qt Quick were going to be the salvation, but we ran out of time. I hate what we did to Trolltech.

Ironically I still miss it, when I have to deal with Android NDK tooling.

I still don't get how Android team managed to bork the experience, other than maybe discouraging everyone to try to write C++ instead of Java/Kotlin.

Most likely if it wasn't for game developers, the NDK wouldn't even exist.

Love the use of the -ito suffix here :D

Blendersito

It’s Spanish diminutive. So the meaning of “Blendersito” is like “small Blender”.

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Spanish/Diminutives

> It’s Spanish diminutive. So the meaning of “Blendersito” is like “small Blender”.

No wonder in code "BlenderLite" term is used.[0]

If there are mods here, it might be good to replace "Blender" with "BlenderLite" in this HN thread title.

[0] https://github.com/Dante-Leoncini/Blendersito/blob/main/src/...

Could this be combined with Blender Apps as a way to make apps for Symbian I wonder?

https://code.blender.org/2022/11/blender-apps/

I remember that I used to have a Windows Mobile build of Blender but on 320x240 it was pretty unusable

Let's now run BlenderDMX inside it :)

https://github.com/hugoaboud/blenderDMX

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sbizs-qAwY

I have the EPOC32 emulator for Windows, and I use the Agenda / Time apps to organise my life. Can't beat that Psion 5 agenda.

Nice. I wonder how many phones that run Symbian have hardware floating-point support though.

The ones running Series 60 all had, if I am not mistaken.

In any case the N95 surely had it, as it was the first model to support OpenGL ES in hardware.

> In any case the N95 surely had it, as it was the first model to support OpenGL ES in hardware.

Nokia N95 (Symbian OS v9.2), which supporting OpenGL ES 1.1, was not the first one.

> Symbian has provided a software based implementation of the OpenGL ES 1.0 standard since Symbian OS v8.0a.[0]

As I see at least in Symbian OS v8.0 product sheet there was mention of OpenGL, and in Symbian OS v8.1 product sheet there was mention of OpenGL ES.[1,2]

I'm not sure, but guess, Nokia 6630 might be one of the first with OpenGL ES 1.0.[3]

[0] https://www.25yearsofprogramming.com/games-development/openg...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20080330065954/http://www.symbia...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20080330065954/http://www.symbia...

[3] https://community.khronos.org/t/opengl-es-sdk-available-for-...

You missed the "in hardware" part.

Many of those models used software rendering implementation.

> You missed the "in hardware" part.

Well, I missed that.

BTW, Nokia N95 was not the first one.

In «Mobile 3D Graphics with OpenGL ES and M3G»(2007) book there is a mention of Nokia N93[0] as the first one with OpenGL ES "in hardware":

> From the left: Mobira Talkman, Nokia R72, Mobira Cityman, Nokia 3410 (the first GSM phone with a 3D graphics engine), Nokia 6630 (the first phone to support both OpenGL ES and M3G), and Nokia N93 (the first phone with hardware acceleration for both APIs)[1,2]

N.B. Nokia N95 (March 2007) is a successor of Nokia N93 (April 2006).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N93

[1] https://www.elsevier.com/books/mobile-3d-graphics/pulli/978-...

[2] https://booksite.elsevier.com/samplechapters/9780123737274/S...

I guess I got the generation wrong then.

The Nokia N-Gage from 2003 definitely had OpenGL ES 1.0 as that was one of it's main selling points, 3D games on your phone to compete with the Gameboy. I remember Tomb Raider in 3D running on that.

>Initially, ES support is coming in the form of software engines. Texas Instruments and Symbian have developed the 3D Graphics Library plug-in based on OpenGL ES 1.0 for Symbian OS-based mobile phones equipped with TI’s OMAP digital signal processors. In addition, Fathammer has integrated OpenGL ES into its X-Forge game software development kit (SDK), which is used to develop apps for Nokia’s N-Gage handheld wireless game unit.

Here's some interesting presentations about early 3D on phones. Just look at all those GPU IP companies we had back then: ATI, BitBoys, Falanx, Imagination Technologies, Mitsubishi, Nvidia, Toshiba, and more.

https://gfx.cs.princeton.edu/pbg05/PBG_mobile_gfx_pulli.pdf

https://elinux.org/images/1/1d/Khronos-CELF.pdf

ATI's Imageon was sold to Qualcomm and renamed to Adreno, Falanx was acquired by Arm (who still develop Mali), and Imagination and Nvidia are still around in some form. I wonder what happened to the others?

Yeah, but as you wrote yourself initially it was software based.

OpenGL ES 1.x doesn't require an FPU. Compared to standard OpenGL it makes fixed-point required, removes double-precision floats entirely and adds optional single-precision float support. By the end of the 2000s there were definitely phones with FPUs though (e.g. the iPhone).

Someone teach me Blender!!

https://www.blender.org/support/tutorials/

lots of youtube videos are out there with very easy to understand turorials.

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