NaN Closes Shop, The End of Blender?

lowell writes "The shareholders and directors of NaN Holding BV, owners of Blender, have decided to terminate all activities of NaN Technologies BV and apply for its bankruptcy at the Amsterdam court. It means that effective today, all technology development and website activities around Blender will be frozen. " Nice app. Too bad really.

Comments

Blender?

[TheToon]

Anything generally known that was made with Blender?

Re:Blender?

[lamp77]

I tried it a couple times, I found it to be a pig of an app.

And when trying to bust into an established field, doing a completely unheard of interface is a bad idea.

lamp

Re:Blender?

[(startx)]

darquri's, margarita's, you name it. personal, I'd rather freeze the stuff *inside* the blender, but that's just me.

Re:Blender?

[paRcat]

um, with all due respect, "a couple times" isn't enough to understand a 3D design app.

As any real blender user will tell you, once you learn the interface it's one of the fastest modelers out there.

Re:Blender?

[AndyChrist]

No joke. I tried one of the early windows versions, and couldn't figure out how to even get started with it. I'm looking for primitives and different views, and all I've got is one frickin window and few if any tools I can recognize.

I'm sure back in the days when little was available to compete with it on Linux, it could have won some fans, but those days didn't last terribly long, did they?

Re:Blender?

[AndyChrist]

Yah, and Dvorak is faster than Qwerty. Big deal. If the learning curve is too steep, it doesn't make any difference, it won't catch on. Except that Blender isn't just trying to win over people already used to something else, it IS genuinely less intuitive.

It took me virtually no time at all to get used to the traditional 3 or 4 port view in other modellers. I tried poking around with blender for at least an hour without getting anywhere.

With the traditional interface, you don't have to learn much to get started. This was apparantly not the case at least with early versions of Blender. And you only get one chance to make a first impression.

Re:Blender?

[deacon]

Yah, and people will never make the transition from the horse to the car.

Or from flapping their arms to flying a Harrier Jump Jet.

It took me no time at all to get used to flapping my arms. I couldn't even figure out how to open the cockpit of the jet, and I spent a whole hour. Sure, I did not RTFM, but what's your point?

Re:Blender?

[Psion]

Sorry to disagree, but this "pig" had the smallest footprint of any decent modeling/rendering application out there. Until quite recently, it fit on a single floppy, was available for a bunch of platforms (even IPaq!), and had a growing grassroots community that extended its capabilities and supported the product in a way superior to even the most high-end graphics applications. Unfortunately, their business model wasn't the most solid, and I genuinely believe they over-extended themselves when they decided to get into game engines and web applications. Keep it lean and mean, fellas.

Re:Blender?

[labratuk]

That is very true. Blender confused the hell out of me until I figured out how its interface worked. I absolutely love it now. I can get things done in it much faster than I used to be able to in 3D studio Max.

Re:Blender?

[cduffy]

Yah, and Dvorak is faster than Qwerty. Big deal. If the learning curve is too steep, it doesn't make any difference, it won't catch on. Except that Blender isn't just trying to win over people already used to something else, it IS genuinely less intuitive.

Folks who are doing something professionally (or even being serious about their hobbies) should have the motivation to learn the most productive tool available to them -- otherwise, in the long run, they're wasting time and money. If 'yer too short sighted to look at the long run... well, that's your own damn fault; but don't look for me to sympathize with your whining.

Re:Blender?

[Psion]

You should have stuck it out, Andy. I too came from other programs and was disoriented by the product, but it was the only one available on a range of machines I was likely to use that had most of the features I wanted. So I worked through the tutorials and eventually found the environment very useful for developing and animating models.

Of course, now I've also spent a lot of time on an application that may never see another update again...

Re:Blender?

[paRcat]

actually, there is none. :)

If you're editing a mesh you can hit U and revert any changes back to the original when you entered edit mode, but once you leave edit mode, your changes are permanent. The only option at that point is to find your last temp file. (saved every 4 minutes)

The thing is, I've been using blender for 2 years now and I don't really miss an undo/redo. You learn to model without that need. It's really a non-issue.

Re:Blender?

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't prove it but there were some cartoons on PBS that appeared to be created on Blender. I was going to show to my girl kid to use for an upcoming school project. What we have is still useable. There just wont be any upgrades in it's current form.

And BTW, the Blender code may go to a creditor as it is part of the company's assets. From there, who knows.

Re:Blender?

[nhavar]

I find it odd that this announcement comes so soon after Alias/Wavefront began to offer Maya personal edition for free. I wonder how much of the other companies offering "free" or discounted packages hurt NaN in the end. Of course $5695 for a 3d modeller might not be seen as discount prices to most of us compared to $500 but I wonder.

Re:Blender?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything generally known that was made with Blender?

Lots of frozen drinks:

margarita

3 oz. Triple Sec
6 oz. Minute Maid Frozen Limeade Concentrate
10 oz. Tequila
8-12 oz. Cold Water
3-4 limes
Salt for the rim

daiquiri:

1 1/4 oz. Rum, Lime Juice & a dash of Simple Syrup or Sour mix

Shake with ice, Serve up in a Flute or on the rocks, Garnish with a Lime wedge

Bourbon Slush

Make tea with 4 tea bags and 9 cups of water.
Add 2 cups sugar, 1 can lemonade concentrate,
1 can orange juice concentrate
1 1/2 pints of bourbon or rum.
Mix. Freeze till it has a slush consistency. What you have so far is the concentrated form.

To serve: scoop into glasses, and add Sprite to your liking.

Re:Blender?

[Fizzlewhiff]

The first 3D modeler I ever used was Blender so I approach other programs from the vantage point of only knowing how to use Blender. I sat down at a fiends computer with Lightwave and thought, oh my, this thing is a pain in the ass. I guess it all comes down to personal preference and what you are used to doing.

Re:Blender?

[SixArmedJesus]

I tried poking around with blender for at least an hour without getting anywhere.

A WHOLE hour, eh? Wow. I hope that you don't ever have to learn anything that may actually be slightly difficult or might require a nuance of brain power. Good luck in your career at McDonalds.

Re:Blender?

[AndyChrist]

Well, 3D graphics has barely ever even qualified as a hobby for me.

And by not getting anywhere, I mean EVERYTHING seemed totally opaque. With every other modeller I've seen, all the information you could want, and all the basic tools are right there in front of you...the learning curve between installation and figuring out how to stick primitives exactly where you want them is exactly as long it takes to figure out what icon means what.

Blender...is...completely...unintuitive. (Or was...I should speak past tense because it was...98? 99?...last time I tried it.) Maybe it got better, but I'm sure they made a lot of bad impressions before it did.

And you know, if that wasn't the case, they wouldn't be discontinuing it.

Re:Blender?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out robocock.hku.nl for an example of a realtime 3d game created in Blender!

Re:Blender?

[the-shizit]

Well, no chance for it to be "generally" known yet because we just released it two days before this happened, but we've been working on an a game project demo using Blender's platform and there were several great projects in the works that NaN has made really hard to find by shutting down their website & community because all the developers were sharing tips there. The project we were putting together was a completely volunteer collaberative effort... we were trying to prove a free platform and volunteer designers could do this (check out the game info at http://shizit.net if you're interested)

I'm NOT an expert 3d modeller, artist, or game programmer (dabble in VB, C++ and Perl, but I don't know Python and I'm not proficient enough to code game logic from scratch), but I found Blender's interface extremely flexible, customizable and totally usable... all it takes is willingness to learn and step out of the standard Windows parent/child type windowing scheme. After checking out the demo's they had on their game page, and the work posted by artists in the community, I was totally convinced anything was possible with their tools & game engine.

Also, their Publisher product was not free... I guess they just weren't selling enough to keep afloat (not that we could singlehandedly have saved the company with our purchase, but since we just released the demo & were looking for more developers, we were getting ready to purchase a Publisher license, now it's not even possible).

In the absence of the NaN Blender community forums I'm thinking about setting up a new forum for it - anybody think that is useful? If you're interested in sharing with other Blender users or trying to prove to NaN there's still a market for this, please reply or feel free to email me.

Re:Blender?

[ralphieboy]

It wasn't because it was a bad product that it's being discontinued. It's because they didn't have a good business model. They received funding money and then proceeded to piss it away. And they weren't generating any revenues from selling the product.

They hired a whole bunch of people.
Moved into fancy offices.
Bought a trade show booth.
Travelled around the world to trade shows.
Did stupid stuff like porting their 3D app to the iPaq.
etc...

Re:Blender?

[Pandora's Vox]

the most productive tool available to them - makes sense to me, but then why are so many people still using windows and other microcrap?

Re:Blender?

[cduffy]

I didn't say professionals do use the most productive tool available, but that they should -- that if they don't they're wasting their time and their employer's money using a less-productive solution. Not all people are rational; not all people have the foresight to put up an immediate expendature for a long-term gain; a great many people are stubborn in deciding what the most productive tool is for them.

You could as easily ask why people buy Harley Davidsons when Hondas are available with the same features, better reliability and much lower cost. I don't know -- it doesn't make any sense to me -- but then, not all people are rational.

Re:Blender?

[Anonymous Coward]

the most productive tool available to them - makes sense to me, but then why are so many people still using windows and other microcrap?

Because they are more productive with microcrap in the current context. For instance, I typed last week a technical project with partners... Since most other partners were using Microsoft Word, so did I, because it would have been counter-productive to switch to LaTeX and taught them to use it. Not to mention less than 10% of the time was spent actually typing it, most of the time was discussing and thinking. Even if LaTeX or StarOffice was twice faster to type in, we would have gained that, 5%, after the learning expenses.

Re:Blender?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blender...is...completely...unintuitive. (Or was...I should speak past tense because it was...98? 99?...last time I tried it.) Maybe it got better, but I'm sure they made a lot of bad impressions before it did.

Yes it is (although they added menus after the end of the C-Key attempt). Exactly the same way a Linux bash command prompt is completly unintuitive, and still incredibly powerful.

Daquri?

[GMontag]

It means that effective today, all technology development and website
activities around Blender will be frozen.

Will that be bananna or strawberry?

Re:Daquri?

[Anonymous Coward]

there will be sherbert frozen treats for all at the refreshment bar.

Not good news for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Bleah... Linux has had better weeks. This, along with the zlib bug reported earlier, has made it a pretty bad PR week for Linux. However, we've had a pretty big win, too. Mega Networks this week announced that they were replacing approximately 3,000 Windows desktop boxes with Mandrake Linux boxes. (I submitted this story to /. but it got rejected.) The point is, that this week has not been all so bad for Linux.

Re:Not good news for Linux

[9632]

Did they fire their web designer too? Frontpage sucks.

Re:Not good news for Linux

[Forkenhoppen]

I agree. That was the ugliest website I've ever seen. Even Microsoft knows that if you can express something with just text, use text! Every frickin' word in the menu system was a graphic. Nasty! Not only did it take forever to load, but the required bandwidth to support a bunch of people all grabbing each and every one of those useless little graphics was insane. And that background graphic..?! It all added up to the website constantly being slower than ... (And it didn't help that all the pages were dynamic, too. Talk about shooting yourself in both feet.)

Anyone who's consdering web design, take the Blender site as a case and point example of what NOT to do. (Another good example of poor web design, where the site would've been cool if the creator hadn't gone little graphic happy, is OJuice.net, but at least they have a "Light" version..)

Re:Not good news for Linux

[rusty spoon]

Was that before or after Mandrake$oft announced their impending demise...

Maybe they will Open Source it now.

[punchdrunk]

If they aren't going to develop it anymore and they have already been giving it away for free, why not let us have the source and keep it alive?

Re:Maybe they will Open Source it now.

[neuroticia]

Cool idea. Find an app you really like and then refuse to buy it until it goes out of business then try to get the owners of the source to donate it to the 'community' that put them out of business. ;)

Let's see. Who do we want to put out of business today?

-Sara

Re:Maybe they will Open Source it now.

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

Let's see. Who do we want to put out of business today?

This is Slashdot after all, so the answer would have to be Microsoft...

Re:Maybe they will Open Source it now.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Who do we want to put out of business today?"

"Where do you want to go today?"

Re:Maybe they will Open Source it now.

[dvdeug]

Find an app you really like and then refuse to buy it until it goes out of business then try to get the owners of the source to donate it to the 'community' that put them out of business. ;)

Find an app you really like, and buy the manual because they say they'll free the program if people buy enough manuals; then when they sell out of manuals they take it proprietary.

See http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/03/23/082524 5&mode=thread

and other early slashdot.

Re:Maybe they will Open Source it now.

[UberLame]

Yeah, I was one guy who bought the manual. I guess I'm fine as long as the version on the disk
continues to work, which should be at least for
a few years before the rest of the world moves
on too much. I don't think I ever saved the downloaded file for any of the newer versions though (which is bad because the newer versions had sub-division surfaces, which is my favorite way to work).

Re:Maybe they will Open Source it now.

[UberLame]

Most likely, they will only GPL it if it is determined to have no economic value. Otherwise it will probably be sold to pay off debts. At least, that is what would happen if they were in the US, I don't know how .nl works.

Re:Maybe they will Open Source it now.

[neuroticia]

Then sue them for breach of contract? =] Class action suit? Sue 'em for the source if that's what was promised.

-Sara

Re:Maybe they will Open Source it now.

[Espressoman]

I distinctly remember Ton saying that NaN will try the commercialization of Blender first, but if that didn't work out, it would most likely be made open source. I'm sure someone will be able to find a record of this somewhere.

It totally sucks that this has happened without any warning. Why didn't they just beg for money like Mandrake?

Re:Maybe they will Open Source it now.

[jedidiah]

No, it is far more like:

They tried to sell ideas. Selling ideas comes with an implicit contract with the public: you get to make money and we eventually get your product as public domain.

Floating point arithmetic improved!

[IainHere]

Wow! No more NaN errors - I've been waiting for the IEEE to fix FP arithmetic for years now.

Re:Floating point arithmetic improved!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've been waiting for the IEEE to fix FP arithmetic for years now."

I wasn't aware of any arithmetic being involved in getting First Post.

Re:Floating point arithmetic improved!

[clearcache]

Right! NaN...seems like it described their cash flow, as well as their company...

Re:Floating point arithmetic improved!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucky for us the didn't figure out how to change it to Inf;
IIRC it's only a few bits off, but the consequences for the
economy would have been devistating.

mmmmm....

[cswiii]

"frozen"... "blender"...

Thanks a lot! It's not even noon, and now I've got a craving for a good margarita :P.

Re:mmmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

it s 6PM in Amsterdam. I ll have a margarita with that afghan hash, thanx.

Re:mmmmm....

[Ogerman]

"There's booze in the blender. And soon it will render.. the frozen concoction that helps me hang on.." - from "Margaritaville"

Re:Screw Blender

[Anonymous Coward]

Page widening posts only affect people who

• use a Microsoft browser or
  
• browse at -1

You have the ability to fix either (or both) of these problems.

--
Have YOU accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?

Really?

[MantridDronemaker]

I was planning to have a good look at Blender to replace my 3ds MAX habit. Blender is not open source right? They offered a free (as in beer) product and an expanded version for sale.

Seemed kind of buggy but I'd never gotten around to really working on it.

Nuts! :(

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blender is very nice. I have both 3DS MAX and Blender 2.0. I prefer Blender - it's faster, far more stable, runs on Linux, has a game engine, makes AVI's, and I was planning upon using it for my game engine, DPGE ( Main web site and CVS repository). Though I can still use it, it's a drag that there will no longer be support or improvements to it. :(

- Rohan

Please release the source under GPL

[BroadbandBradley]

because you kow if you do, blender will live on no matter what.

Then you can let users develop the app and stick to making money writing Blender Books.

I like Blender, anyone got any suggestions for alternatives for 3D animation on Linux?

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already GPLed, Einstien.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Forkenhoppen]

No it isn't, Edison.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Woops, in that case close the source! Microsoft knows that you can't make money by giving your source code away. That's lunacy.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[FortKnox]

From the article:
But is there a future for Blender anyways?
Internally, and on the public discussion forums, a lot of time has been spent on that topic. There are a lot of believers and non-believers for every topic and scenario. But in general there's a unified feeling among everyone - users, employees and shareholders - that Blender still has a warm living heart, still alive, and worth being continued.
We will come back to everyone with news on the shortest possible term. Thank you all for your understanding,

Sounds like its a heavy possiblity of being opened up.

Good news for animators, bad news for those that paid for licenses.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[torinth]

It's a good wish to get Blender ousted into the open-source domain, but unfortunately unlikely. If they are decalring bankruptcy, that means they have creditors that they owe. And if they owe money, they (usually - maybe not in Amsterdam?) will be encouranged to liquidate their assets, like Blender, to another company who will pay for the technology. So getting it open-sourced is probably not an option on the table.

-Andrew

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're filing for bankrupcy, that implies they have creditors. If the program, and source code (the 'technology') is one of thier assets, they can't exactly devalue that asset by giving it away, can they? Wouldn't that open them up to further prosecution by thier creditors?

Anyone know .nl law?

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[katarn]

Yes. Alias/Wavefront. is a high end profesional package. And it runs on Linux.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[geirt]

Anonymous Coward wrote:
>It's already GPLed, Einstien.

Wrong.

from Freshmeat:

Per the license: "You are hereby granted permission to copy and distribute the Software without written agreement from NaN, only for non-commercial purposes."

Other parts of the software, such as the blender render daemon, are fully Open Source and Free Software, released under the new BSD license.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Dan D.]

bad news for those that paid for licenses.

How so? I paid for a license (a while back now, so I haven't renewed any) and I'd be delighted in it being open sourced. I paid because I wanted NaN to be profitable and keep working on the product. I don't have time to work on a full 3d modeller myself, but I have plenty of use for one, so I'll pay someone else to work on it.

Of course now I feel guilty I didn't pay more, hope they do open it and hope someone with more time than I works on it.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[OneFix]

Try LightWave. Right now you can only run the Windoze version using WINE, but you might be able to talk to NewTek about bringing LightWave to Linux.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Dynedain]

Well, Maya is available for Linux, and having used both it and Blender, I think its a little more intuitive, and a lot more powerfull....but its gonna cost you an arm, a leg, and a kidney.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[neuroticia]

XSI (Softimage) also runs on Linux. I saw 'em at Linuxworld NY. Neither Maya nor XSI are free/opensource though.

-Sara

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Dynedain]

Alias/wavefront is the company, Maya is the 3D app....see next post

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[chill]

NewTek reps have said that there will be an official announcement about Linux and Lightwave "soon". Of course, that was said around November 2001 -- so "soon" is relative.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Picass0]

NaN makes one piece of software - Blender (and varients of Blender). The Code for Blender is very likely the only thing NaN owns that they can sell to pay back it's investors. You can't sell the code and give it away at the same time. So I doubt there will be a GPL version.

Also worrisome - If they find a buyer for Blender, there is no guarantee the new company will continue to build Linux binaries.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[TrollBridge]

It's funny how the open-source community descends on dead and dying companies/projects like a pack of hungry vultures, Blender no exception.

If anyone can point out to me a dead project (like BeOS (and I know it wasn't open-sourced)) that was ever successfully revived, I would love to know.

Not intended to be a troll, just an off-color observation, I guess.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[OneFix]

That's my point...I don't think NewTek will actually do it until they have everyone asking for it. I know what they said, but the question is did they mean it?

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Proaxiom]

Has anyone actually tried this? I haven't touched XSI since v1.5 was released in December 2000, but I know v2.0 came out a few months ago and it shipped for Linux as well.

I'm a little skeptical though: if it runs on Linux anything like v1.0 and v1.5 ran on IRIX, then it's a waste of time.

Incidentally, XSI was written on NT and ported to IRIX (and later Linux). Softimage|3D was written on IRIX and ported to NT. IRIX users were mighty pissed when XSI was released with second-rate performance on their platform of choice (and in particular they didn't like that it looked like a Windows app).

Of course, I have no idea why they ported XSI to Linux anyway. How many Linux users can afford an $8000 piece of software (for the light version, no less)?

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[bernz]

Other 3d Programs on Linux:

Alias/Wavefront Maya

Houdini

Oh? You mean FREE 3d programs. hm. i have no idea. try this, though, 3d linux programs

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[daviddennis]

If you have $7,500 for the low-end version, sure.

Blender was a nice shot at 3D for the masses. I downloaded it many moons ago, even bought the manual, but could never quite figure it out.

I'm sorry their business model wasn't more of a success - they always seemed like a cool bunch of people and I wish them well in the future.

D

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[4of12]

will be encouranged to liquidate their assets, like Blender, to another company who will pay for the technology. So getting it open-sourced is probably not an option on the table.

So, following up with a previous poster that commented that, despite having paid a license earlier, he would be willing to pay to have it open sourced under the GPL

Why don't Blender enthusiasts contribute to a fund with the express purpose of buying the Blender License so as to GPL the code?

If you get more money than you need in the bid at the auction, then consider using the extra to pay for some dedicated time by the author, etc.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Error27]

I personally like tooling around with k-3d.

As a non-animator I first installed Blender and immediately became deeply confused and gave up.

A while later, I installed k3d. There was no .deb available, but it was simple to install. On start up k3d offers a brilliant tutorial on animating. The tutorial moves the mouse around and shows you how to create new shapes, modify them, and move the camera around etc.

Within an hour I learned how to make animations with dancing deformed tea pots.

K3d is GPL. It's available under windows as well, but that's a massive pain in the butt to install.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[daviddennis]

True, but I don't know if Blender's worth much without the developers who created it in the first place. If you bought it out of bankruptcy, who would you have maintaining it?

Intellectual property is a bit odd that way - it would be very rare that a commercial entity would pick up something like this due to maintainability issues.

D

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[neuroticia]

According to the Maya and XSI demo artists at Linuxworld NY (Jan) it sounded like "Major studios" are Linux-based and were responsible for the applications being ported to Linux. Apparently quite a few larger shops are using Linux, while mid-sized and smaller shops are using WinNT.

-Sara

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Patoski]

Please release the source under GPL

Ton Roosendaal has said in the past that NaN woul do that very thing should NaN ever go out of business. I'm hoping that they'll remember their promise if and when the time comes for NaN to close it's doors forever.

... One Sad Blender User

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Lussarn]

[quote]
You can't sell the code and give it away at the same time
[/quote]

First off, the GPL isn't giving something away. It's a licence with restrictions. Look at Trolltech with QT. They have different licences (pay and nonpay) for different audiences.

They could sell the code to 20 different buyers without the (Give back to community restriction) and still GPL.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Demandred]

You can't sell the code and give it away at the same time.

Sure you can....If you are the original copyright holder you can do whatever you want with it, including selling the code to some 3rd party with no open source requirements AND releasing a version of it under GPL or other open source license.

IANAL, but I think that is perfectly acceptable under GPL. NaN could, for example, release a version under the GPL and then turn around and sell the code base to anyone granting them whatever rights they wanted. But after that point, the two code bases basically become independent. Meaning that any developments made by the 3rd party after buying the code will not be required to be released under the GPL. And any developments made by the OS community can't be incorporated into the non-free code without honoring the requirements of the GPL.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[malducin]

From what I remember from an article XSI (probably starting with v. 2) is actually developed under Linux and from there ported to NT and Irix.

There are also other apps. Most people forget about Houdini from Side Effects. There was of course Shake, but now that Apple bought Nothing Real who knows what is going to happen. Photorealistic RenderMan also has run under Linux for quite a while.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Proaxiom]

I like Houdini, Side Effects makes a pretty solid product.

Why is the 3D graphics software industry so Canadian? Side Effects and Alias|Wavefront are both based in Toronto, while Softimage is in Montréal. I wonder.

From what I remember from an article XSI (probably starting with v. 2) is actually developed under Linux and from there ported to NT and Irix.

I worked for Softimage for most of 2000, coding on XSI v1.0 and v1.5. At the time they were working on a port to Linux (actually there was one guy doing this), but there's no way they converted the entire development environment to Linux.

Keep in mind that XSI uses COM extensively. Softimage was owned by Microsoft from 1994 to 1998, and XSI was started as project "Sumatra" during 1996. To build v2.0 on Linux and the port it to NT would have meant an entire rewrite of the software, not to mention retraining the development team.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

LightWave. Right now you can only run the Windoze version using WINE, but you might be able to talk to NewTek about bringing LightWave to Linux.

Lightwave rocks! I've been a user since the 3.5 days.. I'd love to see it ported to Linux.. even if they only ported the renderer (I have a bunch of Linux boxes with spare cycles that would make excellent rendering boxes..)

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[SnowZero]

Netscape looked like it was going to die, so they started Mozilla, which I'm using happily right now. there aren't too many examples, but there are some...

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[BrynM]

It's done and works nice. I met the head of NewTek's animation department at Linux Expo. He showed me LW running on a dual Athalon system under Linux. It was sweet. The next version is going to rock! You'll love the compositing tools and interface changes (compsite interface, not modeller).
It's in beta right now from what I understand. The release will be this spring/summer.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[malducin]

Hmmmm maybe I was thinking of Rayz, which I couldn't remember in my first post. Rayz for sure is primarily developed on Linux. I still think about v. 2 of XSI being done on Linux but I maybe got confused (it happens quite a bit ;-)

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the 3D graphics software industry so Canadian?

It might have something to do with the fact that the Canadian government provides significant tax advantages for tech-related companies. At least it did about four years ago.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[gnu-sucks]

I agree 100% If its open sourced, it will be BSD, no doubt.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[Performer Guy]

That's right, the company is bust so GIVE AWAY it's only significant asset & screw the creditors.

If the users of this application were so deserving they'd have paid what it took to support the costs of developing & delivering the software. They did not do so in sufficient numbers. Maybe someone out there will buy blender, but that seems unlikely to me.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[gotr00t]

Yes, I agree that Blender was some great software, and its interface was probably the most usable of any 3D modeling suite I've ever seen complete with radiosity, complex animation rendering, etc. All that, plus a gaming engine, all packed into a file less than 3 megs large. It's simply amazing how a small, and very usable program could pack all those features into a tiny little package, unlike 3DSMAX, which, in essence, has about the same functionality, but costs infinately more (divide by zero :-) ) and occupies 100x more disk space. If you're looking for an alternative, I would recommend Moonlight Atelier, which is also dead in production since the producers went to make more profitable products like Swift3D(since Moonlight was GPL'd, there is a movement underway to develop it, but I don't know how it's doing now). However, if you're really into Blender, and are using Linux, then I would recommend that you would stick to Blender. I know there are not going to be any more updates (anytime soon), but who said it wasn't a perfectly usable piece of software as is? I'm sad to see it go, and this may be the fate of Mandrakesoft as well (I hope not). But I'm very suprised at how Blender came from a tiny, unknown 3D suite, and almost overnight, became more known in the computer graphics industry, and finally, with almost no warning, failed all of the sudden. It's things like this I just can't explain.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[BroadbandBradley]

selling a great "how to blender book" while giving away the software was the plan from the get-go, but , I doubt they lost any money selling books.

going OPEN inspires more people to contribute to the code, I think that would've given them a stronger user base letting them sell more great "how to blender books" while saving them some development costs.

Re:Please release the source under GPL

[swdunlop]

In reference to your last comment, which product is difficult to install? K3d, or Windows? ;)

Oh.. hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, well, what can ya do.

Slashdot reaction to failed open source companies

[markov_chain]

Scenario: company Foo making app Bar figures out they cannot survive by selling free software

Slashdot: The great people at Foo, makers of Bar, are going to have to close their doors due to lack of $$$. Remember Bar? Nice app. Too bad, really. Yawn. Allright, where's that new DVD I ordered?

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

I think not, troll!

Atleast they got their name right

[bobaferret]

NaN, Not a Number...A statistic.

-jj-

/me is sad

[EricKrout.com]

Effective today, all technology development and website activities around Blender will be frozen.

Are you implying that the classic Rob Malda films "Duckpins" and "Hamster Havoc" will be the last we see from this budding star in the animation business?

Surely you jest!

MONOLINUX :: Get Your GNU On

Re:/me is sad

[rho]

If I remember correctly, Duckpins and Hampster were done using Hash Animation Master. Hash is a good proggy--I've played with it a bit.

Blender is better in a lot of ways, but Hash is tough to beat for ease of use. Blender is tough to beat for difficulty of use. Until you learn the gestalt of it, you do a lot of guessing ("what does this button do....AAAAAGGGH!").

Re:/me is sad

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a joke, you fucking loser. Oh well, back to downloading pr0n... - Pr0n K1ng

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried Blender a while ago and found it to be severely lacking in features compared to other 3d applications out there.
I don't think anyone would actually use the app in a production environment. Yes, I know, its free! Now that Maya, Softimage, and 3ds max(sort of) have "free" versions of the software, there is little reason for hobbiest or students to use Blender.

Good thing I didn't go for the job

[Clith]

I talked with NaN about a possible position, but they wanted me to move there for it.

Dodged that bullet..

Re:Good thing I didn't go for the job

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you escaped from a sad fate.

But I would take it -- unemployed and always found the Netherlands very, very cool... peace-loving folks, reasonable football (soccer in US), all in all beautiful landscape _and_ women. Nice place. I.e., if the sea won't rise too much...

no more linux 3d app!

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone know an other 3d application other Linux! That's suck so much. We need more application under Linux not less !

Re:no more linux 3d app!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there is always Maya for linux.

Dang

[Pope]

last I heard, there was an OS X port either finished or on the way. Guess I'll never know now. :(

Re:FP arithmetic improved!

[Anonymous Coward]

FP arithmetic still sucks. At least five people claim FP per thread, when there can logically only be one. Just read at -1 and you'll see.

Well, I tried to see whether everything2.com has

[Anonymous Coward]

an entry, since the links at the top of linked page are disabled (as explanied in-text), but guess what?:
"somethings wrong. will fix.
--[nate] " is the only thing there.
Oh well, there's always google.

--
m iso artistic geek m or female for pos. romance.

It would be nice..

[jmccay]

It would be nice if they Open Sourced all there code before they disappear into History. It would be a great addition to the Open Source world, and the product wouldn't have to die.

That's nice, except that it WASN'T Open Source.

[Svartalf]

They were just kind enough to give out a basic version of a fairly powerful 3D app for free to Linux, *BSD, Windows, Solaris, and Irix users. But, then, this IS Slashdot, afterall.

Here's some good news from IDC

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news this week from IDC:

"Linux has overtaken Novell's Netware operating system to be the second-most popular OS shipped on Intel servers, according to the latest research."

"The news is a big step for the open source operating system (OS) which has been quickly gaining acceptance among enterprise users."

More at Linux Today

Page Widening Posts

[Karma Star]

I agree. Slashdot has let this bug go on way too long. And you know what? Jamie McCarthy has been given the patch to fix this, but he chooses not to implement it!

Well, since Jamie claims IE users are only a small minority of users that thread I posted above, then I guess it won't affect his subscriber too badly, will it?

Why??

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does this get front-page attention, while SuSE discontinuing all North American distribution gets relegated to a sidebar story?

Most of us don't even know what blender is!

Re:Why??

[Anonymous Coward]

You are so full of shit. Make up a story about SuSE someplace else.

Re:Why??

[Anonymous Coward]

You F'n A** F*ck! You probably don't even know your A** from your head. Unless you are just being a plain F*ck head don't post something you don't know anything about! LOSER NO MATTER WHAT!

Blender ... isn't that ...

[Anonymous Coward]

the crazy robot on Futurama???? Oh well, there are rumors about shutting down the rest of Futurama, too ...

Re:Blender ... isn't that ...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that robots name is "Bender".

Weird..

[AnamanFan]

I serfed around the Apple Games Site and linked to the Blender movie, which was then linked to the Blender website that had the bankruptcy notice.

Then I look at /. and behold, the artice is there.

No real relevance, just thought as a bit weird.

As a 3d modeler developer...

[Mongoose]

I'd like to see the source GPLed - if they no longer are going to use it. I would like to pick through the source for stuff and maybe contribute plugins to a new OSS project based around it.

I used to do a Open GL GUI tk for my modeler too, but I always thought blender's layout was too static to use personally. Agian I'm a developer more than an artist. I was just looking into writing some blender plug-ins over break for a guy I met on OPN. Oh well, more time for my project. =)

Re:FP arithmetic improved!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL! Mod the parent up! That's one of the funniest things I've read on Slashdot in days!

sob :(

[lambermo]

This is the 2nd 'reorganization' time for me. sob :(

Re:sob :(

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds familaiar to me too...but now I've got some time left to play games. cobeer.

An OSx version was available

[lowell]

on there website, but cant get it now.

Re:An OSx version was available

[tb3]

The OS X port was a rough alpha, and there hadn't been any work done on it for months. I checked their message boards last week, and they were blaming all their problems (on the OS X port) on Open GL bugs.
The alpha was usable, but just barely.

Goes hand in hand with not making profit...

[PierceLabs]

Personally I won't really miss them much. It was an interesting application but was terrible to use compared to the more 'professional' applications. Its too bad really. Maybe this will hilight the need to make profit to some of the others.

Re:Goes hand in hand with not making profit...

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you say that? As a modeller, it was a much more intuitive interface.. easy to learn, easy to do almost anything you wanted. Much easier than trying to figure out 3dsMAX which has an nice and high learning curve. Sure the renderer sucked, but you could export to anything you want for rendering purposes.

Depends on if they can find a buyer...

[Svartalf]

If they can't find one or if someone like Red Hat buys them, then it's possible to see it being open sourced. Yes, I know, not likely, but still a possibility...

Re:Depends on if they can find a buyer...

[Anonymous Coward]

>>If they can't find one or if someone like Red Hat buys them

I don't think it would be wise for Red Hat to buy them. Red Hat doesn't care about that market anyways...

Re:Screw Blender

[Anonymous Coward]

You can read more about it in Fort Knox's journal:

http://slashdot.org/~FortKnox/journal/

Any mirrors still active?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would at least like to get the latest version for Linux (I believe 2.25) but I can't seem to locate it anywhere.

Does anybody happen to have a mirrored copy?

Thanks

Re:Any mirrors still active?

[protonman]

Yeah I want one too! Does anybody happen to have a mirrored copy op the latest blender3d (2.25) for Linux?

Re:Any mirrors still active?

[Anonymous Coward]

2.25 was the purchase version... the last free version was 2.23.

Re:Any mirrors still active?

[Anonymous Coward]

So? What's your point? They're dead now.

Gimme those boots!

Re:Any mirrors still active?

[ramakant]

I think 2.23 was the most recent version that you didn't have to buy. I'd be interested in it too. Any mirrors out there?

Re:Any mirrors still active?

[ectizen]

2.25 was the most recent non-free version (Blender Publisher). 2.23 was the most recent free version (Blender Creator).

If you're looking at using this with Linux, you'll want to grab a copy of 2.22 as well. The Linux version of 2.23 has an bug that prevents you from importing things from other .blend files.

A reply further up the page mentioned something about a mirror site...

Lack of Apps.

[Picass0]

Owch. This is a bad day to be a Linux desktop user.

NaN folding will strengthen the argument that there are not enough good desktop applications for Linux. It will also strengthen the claims that Linux users will not pay for software.

I doubt we will see OpenBlender. NaN may not be able to GPL Blender, as the code for that application is the only company assest they can leverage to pay off it's debt. We also don't know if they licensed any code from external contractors.

I have a strong interest in 3D animation, I am a Linux user, and Blender was it for me. There are no other 3d programs under Linux with it's level of sophistication. I hate dual booting to Windows to use Lightwave.

Loki is gone - no games. Blender is gone - no 3d.

This makes the siren's song of OSX go up a couple of decibles.

Re:Lack of Apps.

[bjq]

"There are no other 3d programs under Linux with it's level of sophistication."

Maya (possibly the preeminent 3D animation app) is available under Linux. It's just out of your freebie pricerange.

There's also a free "Personal Learning Edition" available, but it's only for WinNT/2k/XP or OSX. So contact Alias|Wavefront and tell them you want to see it for Linux.

Blender really isn't the end-all/be-all of 3d apps the Slashdot crowd makes it out to be.

Re:Lack of Apps.

[Picass0]

Maya (possibly the preeminent 3D animation app) is available under Linux. It's just out of your freebie pricerange.

Freebie? You're making an unfair baseless assumption about me. I do buy software, and did support Blender financially.

Maya is outside of mine and most people's pricerange because it costs US$7000 last time I looked. If 7 grand is something you can spend on computer software, good for you. For most of us in the real world, that price is prohibitive.

The free download is crippled, unless you are using a crack. If you are, you have a lot of nerve calling me a freebie.

Re:Lack of Apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot readers will claim that Loki and NaN don't reflect on Open Source. While neither were open source, they do reflect on it as a business model, and the future looks bleak.

Loki didn't show that linux users wouldn't pay money for commercial software. They showed that linux users wouldn't pay money for commercial Linux software. The games they ported weren't sold since Linux gamers either a) had already bought and played the games for Windows or b) refuse to pay money (preferring to pirate).

Blender wasn't open source, but their business model was similar. They gave away the software, and charged money for support. Sound familar?

Re:Lack of Apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus - this is not a troll. He's not offending anyone on purpose, he's not taking shots just to get a rise out of the crowd. Somebody with a few moderation points should actually read it.

Re:Lack of Apps.

[bjq]

Your comment, "It will also strengthen the claims that Linux users will not pay for software," led me to that assumption; sorry.

Crippled or not, I have a hard time believing Blender is better than the freebie Maya LPE. For most people doing 3d as a personal hobby or just to learn, the nonstandard fileformat is a non-issue. And the watermarking is only an issue if you try to use the images commercially; people browsing your stuff in a web gallery would be pretty understanding that you'd rather have a watermark than a receipt for the $7k worth of software.

FWIW, I have access to Maya in my school's computer labs, so I really haven't played with the FPE, but I have heard good things about it.

Re:Lack of Apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are a professional animator, your employer is paying you $125K this year and won't bat an eye at paying $7K for a tool for you to use.

However, if you're still a dishwaser living in mom's basement, or a schoolboy living in your 'room' you're probably out of luck.

Re:Lack of Apps.

[FreeUser]

Maya (possibly the preeminent 3D animation app) is available under Linux. It's just out of your freebie pricerange.

Freebie? You're making an unfair baseless assumption about me. I do buy software, and did support Blender financially.

You can get your first copy for a mere $5500 or so, you cheap GNU/Linux user you! :-)

I agree. I've payed for plenty of apps under Linux, including Applix, various games, etc. But Maya's pricetag puts it well out of any hobbiests price range ... and comes with the same uncertainty as blender: if and when the app disappears, or changes and becomes unsupported, what happens to the hours of animation work I've done? Am I forced to spend another $5k for an upgrade I can't afford or, even worse, left with no recourse (and useless, may-as-well-be-randomized data)?

I will do all my future animation work only under GPLed or BSDed software, even if that means writing modules myself to do what I need. The time I saved by using Blender I just lost, big time, with compounded interest. The animations I've done will grow less and less useful with time, ultimately (in a year or two) becoming worthless as it becomes more and more difficult to get the aging Blender binary I have (the latest version prior to their disappearance) running against current libraries and software versions.

RMS and the Free Software Foundation were right all along, and I, in my "pragmatism," was very shortsighted and very wrong.

Never again will I make that mistake.

Re:Lack of Apps.

[HiThere]

Or a programmer, who isn't doing it professionally
Or a teacher who buys their own tools
Or a artist, who doesn't have a wealthy angel
Or ...
The list can be extended quite a way.

I will grant that for a professional animator whose tools are purchased by a company rather than out of their own pocket $5000 isn't totally unreasonable ($125 as an animator's salary? Not any that I've ever met!) But it does mean that you will only be able to use it at work. But this sure isn't most people. I doubt that it's even near to a majority of animators.

To be honest, it would be cheaper to buy a Mac and put Director on it. That will handle the kind of animation that I need to do, and would be a bit cheaper, hardware and all, than $5000.

Re:Lack of Apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

NaN folding will strengthen the argument that there are not enough good desktop applications for Linux. It will also strengthen the claims that Linux users will not pay for software.

And it would be inaccurate. As a very active participant in the Blender forums, I was more than willing to pay, but not for what NaN was offering. I had no interest in a Publisher license, and I also felt that Blender's lack of some key features made the asking price a little unreasonable. Blender wanted the status of a commercial product, but it didn't have the credentials.

Re:Lack of Apps.

[Kismet]

Yes, $5500 USD for Maya Complete is just ever so slightly out of freebie price range. Right down there with a nice used car, decent wedding ring, or Carribean Cruise.

I'm sure Maya is quite worthy of the two month's salary price tag, but for the poorer of us, we'll just have to settle with AC3D, Pov-Ray, BMRT, Blender, Ayam and the other low-cost or free rendering and modelling applications for Linux.

Re:Lack of Apps.

[Fjord]

NaN folding will strengthen the argument that there are not enough good desktop applications for Linux. It will also strengthen the claims that Linux users will not pay for software.

I don't really understand. Blender was on Windows as well as Linux. Does this mean that there are not enough good desktop applications for Windows and that Windows users won't pay for software?

I tried blender. It was very confusing to me. I'm sure it was a great product for those who did know how to use it, but I never did figure it out. It now sits in My Programs.

Loki is gone - no games. Blender is gone - no 3d.

Loki and Blender were far from the sole providers of native games and 3D on linux. And wine is getting better each day. It seems to be running lightwave for some people.

Re:Lack of Apps.

[jedidiah]

Many false inferences can be drawn from Loki's demise. We simply don't have enough information to judge whether or not the idea was sound or if it was just poorly executed in a particular way.

The performance of CivCTP and titles like it should form the basis of any more general conclusions.

Re:Lack of Apps.

[Anonymous Coward]

Owch. This is a bad day to be a Linux desktop user.

It will also strengthen the claims that Linux users will not pay for software.

What?!? Blender was available for Windows & Linux (with an OS X port on the way). Based on your logic, this will strengthens the claims that Windows users will not pay for software. Your bias is showing!

This is frustrating

[boris_the_hacker]

I have always loved coding, it's what I do and what I am good at, but recently I have been moving into doing more art and playing with 3D in the background. [Art is my second love, I would also go as far to saying that programming is an art form] Anyway, I have been playing with 3DSMax under Windows but I want to move to Blender because it works where I work - under Linux. It has been at the top of my list to try out again, I was kinda erked a while back when I wouldn't play ball accellerated using the Nvidia drivers. I go to get it and you can't anymore. I hope it's opened if only to allow part time fools, like my self, the oppotunity to play with 3D modelling and animation.

Good luck in the future to the developers at NaN.

Can anyone point me to a url with the latest for download, and does it play ball with nVidias accelerated drivers yet?

Re:This is frustrating

[Zurk]

Version 2.23 can be downloaded from here :
http://www.download.blender.pl/mirror/versions/ 2.2 3/
I think version 2.25 was the latest but it got wiped before they could release it to the public and the mirrors could catch up.
real pity -- i really like blender.

Re:This is frustrating

[SquadBoy]

I'm not sure if it is the latest or if it plays well with Nvidia, mostly because it has been ~6 months since I last had time to play with it but Debian has a package for 2.23. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/blend er.html

Re:This is frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

Blender works very well with the current Nvidia drivers. I think it was more a problem with the fact that Xwindows did not support direct hardware acceleration (which has also been fixed).

Re:This is frustrating

[Spiral Man]

i have 2.23, and it works great using the accelerated nvidia drivers. has since i first got an nvidia based card (a few years ago). as far as i know 2.0 on up work. make sure you get the dynamicly compiled version though...

Re:This is frustrating

[Pig Hogger]

Here are the same files, closer than Poland.

OT...testing new sig :-)

[the_2nd_coming]

mod me down guys....

Re:OT...testing new sig :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Well ya knows what? Sigs are rendered dynamically on /. for reasons that need not be explained at this juncture. Just check any of your old comments and voila! New signature appears. No karma burn neccessary.

Re:OT...testing new sig :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

cool

Thank God for handheld organizers.

[heroine]

Corel Computer, VA I.O.U., Suse, Mandrake, Loki: they didn't make handheld organizers.

Ojuice

[Anonymous Coward]

Well judging from the speed, Ojuice.net has about 10 min of life left in it.

Another one bites the dust.

Has anyone thought of using /. as a weapon?

Re:Wow

[Perl-Pusher]

It wasn't an open source app.

Blender could have been more than a toy.

[lowell]

Not only was it available for Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Irix, and OS X, it could export to .3ds format, used by Max. It also could be used as a modeller for Pixar renderman, BMRT, and Pov-ray.
Through the use of python, just about anything that wasnt built in to the program could be added with a script.

Its really ashame, because things were just beginning to happen over at NaN. I think that they were just a couple of versions away from a really proffesional 3d package.

http://blendererotica.netfirms.com/

What's Blender?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is Blender?

victum of free software

[Anonymous Coward]

Well its almost certain...you have to charge in order to survive. More deaths are to come, if something does n't change.

Blender Bitching

[Craig Maloney]

Y'know, I'm a little tired of the people slamming this application. Honestly I think it was, and is a very good 3D application. Sure it wasn't the fastest, or the most intuitive, and it didn't have the bells and whistles of the competition, but it did have some very good and unique ideas. How many other 3D applications had a game engine built into it? The trouble with Blender is it was the first to truly put a 3D plugin of any value into a web browser, and it was one of the first to create a fully 3D game construction set. Being the first as a fledgling company doesn't translate to much, except when the finger pointing comes into play when you fail.

Thank you Ton and company for the many hours of rewarding 3D creation. Maybe someday the finger-pointers will wake up and realize what they've lost.

Re:Blender Bitching

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll agree that those seem to be clever ideas, but if no one cares about 3D web and no one cares about a so-so game engine and the rest of it is just Yet Another 3DApp then there won't be too much interest. You not only need to be first, but you need to be on target. I'd say the finger pointing is pointing out the true failures of the company. Being first or 10th has nothing to do with the finger pointing in this case.

Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

A company makes an innovative software product, and can't remain afloat, thanks in part to the pathological cheapness of the Linux crowd.

The company goes into bankruptcy and there are already numerous suggestions on /. that the company GPL the source code, with no mention of the possibility that the company could reorganize and become viable.

Am I the only one who sees how poisonous this attitude is? "Why the hell should we pay for it? If we don't pay then the company will go out of business and we'll get it for free, anyway." Normally you have to deal with professional politicians to see that level of shortsightedness and arrogance.

Keep it up, cheapskates, and Linux will never grow (in the desktop market) beyond being a hacker toy. You're the ones who all but completely destroyed the Linux book market, sent Mandrake into begging mode, and did who knows what other damage to your own cause and other businesses. I hope you're happy; I'm sure Bill Gates is delighted by how savagely you treat your own.

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

blender was released for windows and mac OS more than linux. it was competing against alias wavefront's maya and other packages. they were giving their software for free with no revenue source. they were using a bad business model.
its not linux and the fact they had a closed source product in a competitive market was their downfall.

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

You're yelling at the ants for crawling all over your picnic lunch.

That's lame. They'll continue to be ants no matter how much you yell.

Face reality. Things aren't gonna change.

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

The *reason* they're asking for it to be GPLd is so that it doesn't *die*. So many companies take whatever they build with them when they go under. I'd pay for it, like I paid for the ENTIRE loki game library, even though I don't play them much. I even paid for my copy of Mandrake 8.

You lump all OSS/GPL advocates as cheapskates. Your comment is a troll, and should be modded as such.

Re:Figures

[AxelBoldt]

You got it backwards. People like you, who applaud every commercial app on Linux and want Linux to "succeed in the marketplace", are shortsighted. Every commercial app is built on sand; the company dies, gets bought out or decides to discontinue the product, and it's over. There is never any security unless you have a decent free software license in hand. That's the lesson of the Blender fiasco. Never use nor support non-free software.

Re:Figures

[Synn]

I love how when 100 windows oriented companies go down the drain each day it's because of bad business practices.

But when a company goes down and happens to make a Linux port on the side, why then it went under because the Linux crowd is a bunch of cheap bastards.

Re:Figures

[Anonymous Coward]

The lesson of the "Blender fiasco" is not that commercial software is wrong or "built on sand". Although the original poster who spoke of cheap Linux users was a bit harsh, he was a bit closer to the truth. The major strengths of Linux are its open source nature and the fact that it is free. There is a plethora of good, free software, but it sometimes lacks a certain polish. The people who write open source software have other jobs and don't always have the time and resources to dedicate to a software project. The GIMP is pretty cool, but Adobe spends millions of dollars and a ridiculous number of man hours from a dedicated team, while the GIMP is a hobbyist project (if skillfully conceived and rendered) where free time after work or class is spent working on it, not the entire work week. The problem is, you have a professional, well made piece of software like Blender released for Linux how do you manage to make make sure that quality is high, generate a profit, and make it attractive to users who rarely have to pay for software? Open source is wonderful; it ensures that software lives on and it allows for user level changes to be implemented, but people who spend all of their waking hours working on quality software should be entitled to some compensation for their efforts from the end users who find their product to be useful. There really needs to be strides made in the Linux community to find a happy medium when it comes to the open source vs. commercial holy wars.

Re:Figures

[PhrackCreak]

I hope you're happy; I'm sure Bill Gates is delighted by how savagely you treat your own.

Bill Gates founded a company based on monopolistically destroying all competition. "Buy or Bury" has been the motto of Microsoft for a long time - a lot more savage attitutude than the zeitgeist of the open source movement.

Re:Figures

[AxelBoldt]

There is a plethora of good, free software, but it sometimes lacks a certain polish.

Well, then sit down and polish some of if for heaven's sake! Linux is not a spectator sport.

The GIMP is pretty cool, but Adobe spends millions of dollars and a ridiculous number of man hours from a dedicated team, while the GIMP is a hobbyist project (if skillfully conceived and rendered)

You are arguing my point. All you need for high quality software is a bunch of enthusiastic and knowledgable volunteers. You can flush your millions of dollars and man months down the toilet.

but people who spend all of their waking hours working on quality software should be entitled to some compensation for their efforts from the end users

If you make something which volunteers are happy to make for free then you are not entitled to compensation.

Re:Figures

[Bob Uhl]

A company makes an innovative software product, and can't remain afloat, thanks in part to the pathological cheapness of the Linux crowd.

No--it's not pathological cheapness. It's an attachment to freedom. To quote Patrick Henry, `Give me liberty or give me death!'

Keep it up, cheapskates, and Linux will never grow (in the desktop market) beyond being a hacker toy.

And what, exactly, is wrong with that? So the lusers don't use our software--can that possibly be a bad thing? Look what they did to the Internet. Incidentally, Linux is my desktop at home, and I spend a good 80-85% of my time at work using it (Windows is reserved for Notes and other nasty IBM-internal software).

I hope you're happy; I'm sure Bill Gates is delighted by how savagely you treat your own.

But NaN are not our own. They wrote some very interesting code, certainly. I'm sure that they are very good people, loving their mothers, refraining from kicking dogs--that sort of thing. But their software was proprietary and encumbered. Hence, it is alien to what Linux stands for: freedom to code; freedom to hack; freedom in general. While they've all my very best wishes in their future endeavours, I've no intention to ever use their software--unless they write a game[1].

`Our own' are hackers. Our own are those who appreciate freedom. You, you animal, are most definitely not one of our own. Aures habet, sed non audiet. Or something like that; my Latin is rusty:-)

[1] I believe that the game industry is the one case in which free software does not necessarily make sense. It does for games such as NetHack, but for Quake and its ilk. Granted, I'm not certain that Quake and its ilk really are games. And I entertain a certain fancy that in a world of free software we'd have the graphics of Quake and the intricacy of NetHack. Still, I am quite willing to pay for the efforts of artists.

And no, I don't consider programmers artists in the sense that painters are. And I'm a programmer myself.

Re:Figures

[TandyMasterControl]

A company makes an innovative software product, and can't remain afloat, thanks in part to the pathological cheapness of the Linux crowd.


Yeah except that you forgot Blender was just as much a Windows app (if not more so - hw acceleration was an afterthought for the Linux version).
Let's hear you praise the generosity of the Windows crowd and damn Linux users again. Go ahead.

Now as for whether NaN merited money from either the Linux or Windows community, you seem to take this for granted, but I'll say this: I've never seen a "professional" graphics application of any kind without a fucking UNDO function, mapped to CTRL-Z or somewhere else. Everytime I downloaded Blender there was no undo. That was true at least for a couple of years and still true until fairly recently as far as I know.
I won't blame anybody for saying that they found Blender a bitch to learn. I agree. I won't blame them for concluding it was not worth the effort to learn: Ctrl-Z is the most frequently used function of any kind of graphics app for new users. Blender ignored this and all the off-putting effects it has on new users. Who was the market for this app? Not 3d professionals who either have borrowed copies of what they use at work, or self-purchased copies. Newbies were the main market. Hobbyists. Blender asked for their money, but they might have done better if they had kept new users completely in the dark about the app's useability problems by offering no free download, and no trial period. Most people don't have the patience to learn a 3d app UI in the first place, Blender was after the market segment least likely to have a reason to adapt to a complex interface, and frankly they behaved in a cavalier manner in attracting their business.
Sorry.

I'm sorry to see them go, but they didn't earn my money. I expect I gave them more of a chance than most people would .

Am I the only one who sees how poisonous this attitude is?
No, but I bet you got the first dibs on being Grand Inquisitor.
Normally you have to deal with professional politicians to see that level of shortsightedness and arrogance.
Arrogance ?
How about the arrogance of judging others you've never even met? Some would say singling out a group of people to carry the blame of others, calling them "cheapskates" "pathological" "poisonous" and "shortsighted" in the process is a maybe wee bit arrogant itself.

Re:Figures

[Vulture_]

I use the GIMP because I can get it (I can't even begin to afford Photoshop), it's easier to use, it works, and it's open source.

Open source is important for these reasons:

• I can actually afford it. Since I have no money to spend on commercial software (and, in fact, I don't really have any money at all), I would end up pirating any commercial software I needed badly enough. So the company doesn't make any money from me anyway. And if I couldn't pirate it, then I wouldn't use it at all. (For that reason, the software companies' theory on "lost revenues" from piracy are largely horse shit. But I digress.)
• I generally regard all closed source software as a potential Trojan horse program, and will not run it because of the undue security risk. There are exceptions, such as Blender, of course.
• Bugs generally get fixed in a timely manner. See also the recent Slashdot article regarding the zlib vulnerability; you can bet this bug will be in some closed-source code for years because the company doesn't give enough of a shit to fix it.
• It can be recompiled to target virtually any combination of operating system and architecture. Compare that to Photoshop, which only runs on Microsoft Windows on Intel platforms, and the Macintosh. The closest thing to a UNIX system that Photoshop will run on is Mac OS X, which is hardly a decent excuse for an operating system, let alone a UNIX system. And it's not open source, either. (To the retarded reactionaries: Darwin != Mac OS X.)
• If Adobe folds, Photoshop goes with them. Therefore, there is no assurance of the continuity of Photoshop.
• Adobe doesn't deserve my money. Or anyone else's, for that matter. They've been getting way too trigger-happy with the lawyers lately. (The ElcomSoft eBook Reader case comes to mind. Yes, I know they backed down. Doesn't mean they're not going to sue others over something equally ridiculous.)

Making it polished and professional is not relevant. Besides, is GNOME not polished enough for you?

and i was going to...

[Hooya]

use half my vacation time (starting this weekend) learning Blender. Am I like the inverse of midas? whatever i touch goes out of business... that really really sucks. I was just starting to get a hang of the UI too. and was going to order the 'official blender book' from a local bookstore. any other animation/rendering option for linux out there? hope they GPL that puppy. I guess I still have my downloaded copy of the binary.

Re:and i was going to...

[Anonymous Coward]

What version? Can you post it somewhere?

Re:and i was going to...

[mark-t]

Am I like the inverse of midas? whatever i touch goes out of business... that really really sucks.

I don't mean to be unsympathetic, but can you please start using Windows more?

Dont forget

[lowell]

There was also a render dameon, for use over a network for batch render jobs.

if you're willing to pay

[Anonymous Coward]

get maya for linux or realsoft 3d.

Dang, too bad.

[AJWM]

Blender's cool, and there's a sad dearth of (affordable) 3D modelling, animation and rendering tools for Linux. Okay, sure, using OpenGL for the GUI toolkit was a bit funky, but you got used to it.

Re:Dang, too bad.

[Vulture_]

What's wrong with that? OpenGL covers 2D drawing (eg, for graphics toolkits) as well.

That's how you get those 2D 'heads-up displays' overlaid over your view in many 3D games that use OpenGL.

Also, I think I've heard of at least one full GUI toolkit (not counting what Blender uses) for OpenGL.

Thanks NaN, great product

[fire-eyes]

I have been using blender for a month, and truly fell in love with it. Thanks for a great app, I sure hope things work out :(

I wonder if the Maya Personal Ed hurt?

[Mongoose]

Anyone know if the release of the Maya Personal Edition in feburary had anything to do with this?

Re:I wonder if the Maya Personal Ed hurt?

[Anonymous Coward]

With the huge watermark MPE puts across your images, I doubt it. It's not "Maya Light", so it's still a different market.

Re:I wonder if the Maya Personal Ed hurt?

[tb3]

No, beacuse

a) It doesn't run on Linux,

b) It is hopelessly crippled,

c) It watermarks every damn thing.

Re:I wonder if the Maya Personal Ed hurt?

[Psion]

I doubt it. Not only was the Maya release limited in its tools and output formats, but Blender has been distributed as a free application for quite some time. While free versions of very high-end software might have lured a few people into other camps, Blender has always been dedicated toward a low-end business/graphics hacker mentality. Their business model of giving the jewels away, but selling the mounts was interesting, but not very successful. And the strain of developing the application into a gaming engine/web application tool in addition to a sweet modeling/rendering environment is probably most responsible for the collapse. They over-extended themselves.

Open Source Blender?

[PenguinX]

I would pay money to the shareholders if they were to open source blender. This way it would be able to live on as the great tool that it is. Anyone else willing to chip in?

This is a sad outcome for Not a Number though.

Re:Open Source Blender?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd contribute without even a second thought.

Re:Open Source Blender?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good idea. People should jump up and create a petition and get some commitments.

the burned hand teaches best

[stevenj]

This is what you get when you value short-term convenience over freedom, when you get excited over something because it's "cool," when you think that any software for Linux is good for Linux (forgetting what made GNU/Linux special in the first place).

You're completely dependent on the whims and fortunes of a single vendor, and are now up a creek. By all means, beg them to release it as free software, but don't hold your breath.

There's a time and a place for proprietary software, but there is also a very real cost that has nothing to do with price. Valuing freedom over features is not just thinking with your gonads.

Re:the burned hand teaches best

[Psion]

I've been burned by 3D application makers before...anyone remember Imagine? While you're right that some have been burned by the loss of NaN, I can argue that most haven't. I have the latest (free) copy of the software. It is still extensible with python scripting. And for almost anything I want to do, the application itself has been more than capable for the last six or seven releases. The most intriguing developments (from a modeling and rendering standpoint) were taking place under the control of independent/grassroots developers who probably won't stop their work just because the main application may now be frozen.

Still, I am hoping for someone to decide to GPL it or for the company or product to return to market.

Re:the burned hand teaches best

[Svartalf]

"While you're right that some have been burned by the loss of NaN, I can argue that most haven't. I have the latest (free) copy of the software. It is still extensible with python scripting."

For how much longer is that app going to run for you? It depends on a glibc that eventually will change and break Blender on you. It's dependant on a version of Mesa that may/may not change on you and then break Blender on you. At some point, you're going to be frozen in time on your software unless you move to another application or they open source Blender. Now, that may not be a bad thing in and of itself- it does definitely pose problems for you, some could be bad.

Re:the burned hand teaches best

[elflord]

I can still run versions of Applix that use libc 5 (which shipped with Redhat 4). You just need to use either a static binary, or install the old libraries in a seperate directory, and use a shellsscript to set the environment up for the application. Your existing glibc isn't going to bite you like some sort of hostile cobra or something. It's true that new versions will be released, but this isn't really a problem.

Blender was Fantastic

[FreeUser]

As any real blender user will tell you, once you learn the interface it's one of the fastest modelers out there.

That is absolutely correct.

I've been working on a film project using blender for some time, and have tried other 3d animation products on other platforms and blender was, hands down, the best at nearly everything one needs to do to make good, high quality animations. There were, of course, failings, and some things for which one would choose to use another tool, but for the vast majority of tasks it was excellent and, as you say, once you learn the interface, the most intuitive without sacrificing power and features.

This is really tragic. I really, really hope they GPL the source so that the project may live on, but I have a feeling this is going to be an example where the Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman's much maligned stance of "avoid proprietary software at all costs, you'll pay in the end if you don't" may very well be vindicated, in the form of hundreds of hours of animation work that will become less and less usable as the existing binaries age and become more and more difficult to get running (as glibc and other libraries change with time).

If anyone from NaN is reading, please, please, please GPL the blender code.

As an aside I am surprised they didn't go with the "you pay for the release today, or wait 12 months and get the features in the GPLed version." Many would have paid, and the delayed, GPLed version would have been insurance against this kind of thing happening. Oh well, twenty-twenty hindsight and all that ...

:-(

Re:Blender was Fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree to that.
Once, I was working on a science fair project, and I needed a high quality 3-D model (or a desk, blah) very very badly (my project involved autoamted assembly).

Anyway, I went to blender ... their tutorials -- very nice tutorials, even allowed me to print the entire 5-6 page long tutorial with one click!

Cutting down the chase, I was able to pick it up in 5 -hours flat .... beat that !

The "extrude" feature and how well everytyhing integrates aronud it is truly innovational.

Bandwagoninng, I also really hope that it gets GPLed (perhaps we can through together a fund to buy the source code from Nan?)

Re:Blender was Fantastic

[Warped-Reality]

(note: this is _not_ intended to be a troll or a flame)
5 hours
I got the hang of 3D studio max in 1... I _still_ haven't gotten used to blender, and i've tried it on and off for several years
and how is an "extrude" feature innovative? every single modeler i've ever used has an "extrude" feature. And they've been around a lot longer than blender.

Re:Blender was Fantastic

[TandyMasterControl]

and how is an "extrude" feature innovative?
No no no. Extrude wasn't the innovation, not being able to undo the extrude was the unique innovation of Blender.

Re:Blender was Fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, the head of NaN promised that if the company should die, they would GPL Blender.

Re:Blender was Fantastic

[Anonymous Coward]

I used LW for my job, im more fluent in max than any high priced 3d progy out there and have a great grounding with maya. And i agree with you that blender, for its price did pack the punch of these software though i dont think its the overall best yet. On my opinion, given a few more years, it could easily topple the best out there. too bad it apparently wont see those days. (?)

I dont think they will GPL blender3d. Remember, they are bankrupt, mening broke, meaning they have an obligation to to their employees, which comes first then to the program which is second priority.

The strategy to do this is to sell the company to -foremost- save it and retain jobs to the people working in it, and secondly, to let the product survive. Of coures to be able to sell the company they should have a certain product or quality that others would be dying to buy. And guess what it is? yep blender.

The third party ofcoure wont "redeem" a product just for the sake of a somewhat ahead of our time idea - zero fee software(atleast in business terms). They always take over another company for profit. They shall own the sources of blender and develop it to look diffrent but do the same thing more or less, add minor impovements and a major price tag to it. If you guys remember how Adoptec Easy CD was free untile Roxio bought the company, this is what i mean.

Another theory is that some big shot company out there has seen Blender as a threat to their product. This company/s(?) see their profit fall and offices close(you know who they are) due to free 3d apps that rival their product so they buy the company to shut it down. Its a completely legal strategy to 'silence' the competition. Its called a corporate takeove usally seen in banks. When this senario is the case, dont expect GPL either.

The wishfull scenarios(atleast for a lot of you) are: 1)the aquiring company or new partner shares the same ideals NaN has and continue development(wich is unlikely cuz its these ideals which brought Nan to its demise) 2)No one buys Nan and releases the source code(but im sure for autodesk or alias aquring nan would be like shelling out cheap change and it would profit them big time in the end) 3)The most unlikely scenario: blender gets shut down and the aquiring companies Kill the progy from existance(including copyright?), then GPL programmers can work together on an existing(k3d? frontend?) or new program that would work like blender, look like blender, and be blender in every respect cept its open source. But that would take years and people will find a new obsesion by then.

Conclusion: Youve heard it so many times in such a small span of time and im not hesitating to repeat it once more; Blender is dead.

SGI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe SGI should pick this up .... but i dont know what other offerings they have in that area.

Re:SGI?

[daviddennis]

They own Alias|Wavefront!

D

Yes there is an Opensource Alternative...

[Wolfier]

Let's pull some resources to port it.

http://www.openfx.org

Re:Yes there is an Opensource Alternative...

[dpm]

PrettyPoly is another open-source 3D editor. It's not ready to replace Blender yet, since it lacks essential tools like extrusion and UV-editing, but it's a good start:

http://prettypoly.sourceforge.net/

Re:Yes there is an Opensource Alternative...

[Anonymous Coward]

The future will be modellers like Wings3D. It is based on the ideas from N-World (Mirai, Nendo, etc.). Free, as in BSD free.

That whole group of modellers is simply the best, fastest, and easiest to use applications ever. Not to be another Blender basher, it could do a lot of stuff, but it was too damn hard to use. 3D application writers rarely seem to put thought into how the application will work as a whole (including the UI).

Re:Yes there is an Opensource Alternative...

[Anonymous Coward]

One software which i was looking at a while back which could have potential
http://innovation3d.sourceforge.net/

A Sad Day ....

[jest3r]

Alot of people here bashing blender. Blender is a FREE and POWERFUL 3D app. It may have a very 'different' interface but after using it for a while it becomes second nature. In fact I thought the interface was the best part .. Blender also has a great online community generating massive amounts of step by step tutorials to help the novice get started. Blender gives you the ability to create work that previously would have required a $3000+ investment in software. All this for FREE .. basically available on any platform .. I hope they can get some funding or find some way to keep it alive ....

---
Blender supports multiple cameras and lighting, which can be used to create very lifelike images, especially when scenes incorporate realistic surfaces. The program even has a plug-in facility that will accept new surfaces and features created by third parties.

Animation is one of Blender's most impressive features. Not only can objects move along paths, but their attributes can change along the way. For example, lighting effects can increase, decrease, or change color. We were even able to introduce lens flares and motion blurs. Another animation enhancement is particle support, which allows multiple objects to be created and animated based on procedures that can simulate natural laws.

Blender even handles postproduction jobs that utilize images or videos from other sources. For example, Blender can be used to add an animated, walking lamp, complete with its own shadow, to a video using masking and animation features.

The printed documentation is definitely worth the price. It's far more extensive than the free, downloadable version and is packed with useful details. The manual sports many colorful examples, even if the font is so small it practically requires a magnifying glass to read. While the documentation adequately covers the program's numerous keystrokes, menus, and mouse actions, a reference card would be nice.

Whether you need a production-quality 3D system or just some basic 3D scenes for a presentation, Blender fits the bill. If you're prepared to spend some time learning how to use it, the results will be well worth your effort. This is one of the best 3D packages on any platform.

(Taken from LinuxMag review)

Re:A Sad Day ....

[Psion]

Absolutely! Blender was/is a fantastic tool. I built a model of the Soviet helicopter carrier Moskva in it, and found the software very easy to use. There was a bit of a learning ledge when I first tried to use it, but once I was over that, I fell in love with it.

A good program

[PablosBrain]

Its unfortunate that NAN is no more. I've been working with blender for the last year or so and for its size and for being free it was a great program. Definitely would not replace Lightwave, Max or Maya but in its own right is a good program. I hope some entity can pickup Blender and move it forward. Maybe the direction they were moving wasn't right... maybe it was. Sad to see it go.

And to clarify... Blender 2.23 was the last free version. 2.24 and 2.25 were the purchase versions that had bug fixes and upgraded functionality.

I was just starting to use it

[codexus]

Now I wonder if it's worth spending too much time learning it. Yes, I can use the version I've got but learning to master a 3d application is a huge investment in time and without the promise of a future maybe I should rather look at some other apps.

Anyway it would be sad to see blender go, I hope that somehow the development will continue.

Do you know of a mirror site

[lowell]

Are there or will there be an archive to download current and past version of blender

I would pay to see it GPLed

[FreeUser]

How so? I paid for a license (a while back now, so I haven't renewed any) and I'd be delighted in it being open sourced. I paid because I wanted NaN to be profitable and keep working on the product. I don't have time to work on a full 3d modeller myself, but I have plenty of use for one, so I'll pay someone else to work on it.

Exactly right.

I was going to spend some of my tax refund on a copy of blender (they'd just gone to a "pay and get new features now, or don't pay and get the same features in a few months" model), and I wouldn't have felt cheated if they'd GPLed the pay version a day later. Why? Because if it had been GPLed I would have known that the software would never die, and the hundreds of hours of animation work I had invested ... worth far more to me than the price I would have paid for the software itself ... would remain useful for the forseeable future.

Indeed, I would pay a fair chunk of change to see it get GPLed.

Re:I would pay to see it GPLed

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet no one was willing to pay a small chink of change to keep them in buisness. How ironic.

Re:I would pay to see it GPLed

[Zurk]

umm..your animation work is not wasted. blender files are just openinventor files (iv). just rename em and any 3D app can import em. ive used blender models with 3DS Max, Maya, TrueSpace and others. they even work ok as VRML files.

Re:I would pay to see it GPLed

[FreeUser]

I probably shouldn't feed the troll, but what the hell:

And yet no one was willing to pay a small chink of change to keep them in buisness. How ironic.

Demonstrably false, as other posts (and any casual perusal of the Blender Forums, now alas no longer accessible) prove.

However, it was only recently that they moved to a sustainable model of selling current features and giving away slightly older, slightly less feature rich versions for free. No one was going to buy something that is being given away for free (unless it has added value, like a book, convinient CD medium, or something else), but plenty of people will pay to have a new feature today instead of in six months, myself included.

It is unfortuante they took so long to find this approach, and even more unfortunate that they didn't "insure" those who paid by GPLing the delayed, free version as insurance against just these sort of events.

Re:I would pay to see it GPLed

[otopico]

my 3d rig has always been;

model in blender, animate and render in maya.

i was one of the folks the ought blender way back. they still have maya and lighwave beat as far as good docs with examples.

i will miss NaN

Re:I would pay to see it GPLed

[KenSeymour]

So buy the rights and GPL it.

I'm sure the creditors of NaN would be happy if you did.

Re:I would pay to see it GPLed

[Anonymous Coward]

However, it was only recently that they moved to a sustainable model of selling current features and giving away slightly older, slightly less feature rich versions for free.

They had the C-key a while back, which afforded paying members (of which I was one), access to current features, releasing them later to those who chose to wait. I don't know why NaN terminated this revenue model...I felt the price was reasonable, and it could have made it into a periodic subscription. But then at that point, onging development didn't require anywhere near the amount of resources that NaN has to cover today.

I don't agree that 'no one was going to pay.' If the features being added are of sufficient value (if they're what people actually want), I think people are more than willing to pay. If I recall correctly, there were quite a few C-Key owners.

Re:I would pay to see it GPLed

[FreeUser]

I don't agree that 'no one was going to pay.' If the features being added are of sufficient value (if they're what people actually want), I think people are more than willing to pay. If I recall correctly, there were quite a few C-Key owners.

I'm sorry, I don't think I made myself clear.

People are generally not going to pay for something if they can (legally) get that exact thing for free under the exact same conditions.

They may pay for convinience, for receiving the product in a non-volitile (eg. CDR) medium, for additional documentation, or for additional features, or some other added value, but if one can download something at no cost, or pay $10 to download the exact same thing, with no additional immediate benefits, one is not very likely to pay the $10. Actually, I'm more likely to pay than most people, because I actually do buy things "to support the company," but most people don't.

The C-Key approach was one way of doing this (but the timing and circumstances were ugly, having just sold a book for "freeware" that suddenly became unfree after a bunch of us bought the books.). A far better approach was the one they adopted toward the end: pay and get the latest features today, or don't pay and get those features a few months from now.

Most of us would gladly pay to be able to use something today, rather than in six months. I certainly intended to, as soon as my tax refund check arrived.

Good product but hard to find money

[Vapula]

I tried Blender without prior experience of any 3D system (except from POVRay). And, from a clean point of view, the interface was well thought...

But I agree that for people coming for the infamous 3D Studio MAX, it may be disorienting... As for people coming from any other similar application. Each has it's own shortcuts, each has it's own defaults and each has it's own features... 3D isn't a simple matter as Word Processing... So there are many way to do it.

I'm happy to have bought the various reference books from them beore they went out... And I think I'll continue to use it. Now, I'd find it great if it can be open sourced and go even further, even if it's unlikely.

I'm not using blender professionnally, it's only on freetime to create some simple scenes. I would certainly NOT invest thousands of Euros in buying a commercial package. For people like me, Blender was a good LEGAL way to do some 3D graphics (unlike all these people using PIRATED versions of 3DS MAX). That's one thing we owe them, bringing 3D to people wanting to have a try...

By the way, I intend to make last version available from my Web Site as it is allowed by the license. If the company can't survive, let's help the soft survive !!!

You are hereby granted permission to copy and distribute the Software without written agreement from NaN, only for non-commercial purposes.

Re:Good product but hard to find money

[donglekey]

Actually 3D Studio, Lightwave, Softimage, and Maya all have free versions that are not very limited at all for people to try. There are time limitations on some, a watermark on Maya, and the free version of 3DS is stripped down, but for someone wanting to play around with 3D there are certainly better alternatives.

Hash in not NAN

[Mop]

He used Animation:Master, not Blender.

Not Time Wasted

[omega9]

This certainly stings. I'm just getting up ~12:54pm because I was up till 4:30am last night learning how to use Blender. I've been meaning to tool around with it for quite some time and finally got the chance. I must have gone through every tutorial on they're web site (which had not been updated yet). Never mind that last week I bought The Official Blender 2.0 guide for $50!

The same thing happened when I found an interest in Broadcast 2000. As soon as I decided to spend some time with it they pulled it from their site! Quite frustrating!

Re:Not Time Wasted

[omega9]

And just to add...

WTF is up with the new static site? I mean, do what you have to with the product, but why can't we still have access to the tutorials??

Re:Not Time Wasted

[t_allardyce]

I was planning to learn blender. At the moment i use max (pirate copy) and i'm trying to convert to free/os software. Now i'm not sure what to do. Will someone else continue it? what other free 3d modelling software is there that lives up to blender?

Re:Not Time Wasted

[avij]

The same thing happened when I found an interest in Broadcast 2000. As soon as I decided to spend some time with it they pulled it from their site! Quite frustrating!

I'm sure most of us here would be delighted if you suddenly decided to spend some time learning how to use MS Windows (and other MS products) more efficiently. Could you please do this?

Thanks!

Re:Not Time Wasted

[darkwiz]

Bcast2k in the word of Monty Python is "... not quite dead yet!"

If you want to check out the latest "backups," of the codebase, look for Cinelerra on sourceforge.

It is still being developed, but you can expect basically no support (compiling it can be problematic).

Bcast2k is an excellent program. I do feel it is unfortunate that the authors decided to withdraw it from public view.

buh bye

[Anonymous Coward]

I own a copy of Animation Master, and I upgrade every year. To charge the same amount for Blender, which I've used for about 2 years, is a little much for me.

$150 would have been a much better and realistic price.
And enough with the 3d web. I can't imagine anyone wanting to see 3d on the web in it's existing form. It's overrated, and NAN decided to invest their energies in that regard.

another one bites the dust...

[h4x0r-3l337]

Moderators: you can moderate this as troll all you want (just like you did my comments when Loki and Mandrake reported problems), but it should be obvious to anyone by now that there is NO MONEY to be made with free software.

I'm going to stop reading Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Always went I go to read some news at Slasdot thers bad news. Just the other day there was Mandrake. Today NaN. Damm.

Well Thank you Ton, you shure made my life a bit more fun wehere I was playing with the Blender. It is nice pice of software.

Hm, if I remember corectly there was some talk - when the NaN was founded - that if they go broke they would relese the source code!

Thank You

[FreeUser]

umm..your animation work is not wasted. blender files are just openinventor files (iv). just rename em and any 3D app can import em. ive used blender models with 3DS Max, Maya, TrueSpace and others. they even work ok as VRML files.

I did not know that. Thank you, I confess to being very, very relieved. Maybe my libraries of stuff aren't so useless after all.

Re:Thank You

[manjunaths]

Ummmm...hello ? Blender file the .blend format is a binary only propriety NaN format. It is not .iv. But it can export rudimentary models (and maybe textures) to vrml 1.0. Which when renamed to .iv works with inventor. But you still have to fiddle around and edit the .iv file manually sometimes (texture file paths etc.,). But no blender's default file format in which the animation is stored is not in .iv format and it can only be viewed by blender.

It is a great app

[snkline]

Even though the user interface took some getting used to I thought it was a great modelling and animation program (although the renderer left alot to be desired.) Hopefully a company will buy it that will continue development. Its a slim hope, but its better than the hope of them releasing the source.

Link to Download 2.23 or 2.25?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody have a location for us fools who have not downloaded Blender, to obtain a copy?

Troll me if you want, I'm sure people who never touched the software who see this article would like to play with it now.

3D Animation in Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I got a suggestion, switch to MS or Mac. Jessuscripo, you linuxheads crack me up.

This sucks BIG TIME

[-ryan]

I use Blender all the time. I really hope they open-source it. Please send email to the board and to B@rt or who ever would be appropriate pleading for them to open-source Blender so it doesn't become abandonware.

time to try povray.org

[zome]

It has even better render engine than blender. NOt GPL (I guess), but source is there

Could other people get the manual?

[shoor]

I downloaded Blender and the documentation that was downloadable. They wanted you to buy the manual and I was willing. Tried to purchase with my credit card and it wouldn't take it. There was some business about it being international and some extra code which I tried to enter according to directions but it never accepted it. I'd been meaning to try again one of these days but now I suppose it's too late.

ask ILM or Henson Associates

[brokeninside]

Of course, I have no idea why they ported XSI to Linux anyway. How many Linux users can afford an $8000 piece of software (for the light version, no less)?

Because powerhouse graphic workshops like ILM and Henson Associates like Linux. And they can afford $8,000 pieces of software. Of course just because it's built doesn't mean they will come. Henson's Creature Shop is rumored to be quite fond of Maya on Linux.

Regards,

Lee Irenæus Malatesta

Re:ask ILM or Henson Associates

[Proaxiom]

Fair enough. I didn't know those goes were going that route.

Interestingly, I've heard it reported that ILM often doesn't have to pay for that software anyway. Software houses will give it to them for free as an incentive for them to use it. The advantage of being able to say "ILM uses our product for this and this and this" is easily worth the lost revenue.

Re:ask ILM or Henson Associates

[malducin]

As far as I know is that they get the software and hardware at very discounted prices, particularly from SGI, Alias/Wavefront and Pixar. With Pixar it seems that one of the conditions for Lucas to sell it to Jobs was to have early access to Pixar's technology, mainly PRMan (and I could guess also RAT now). From SGI they get early access to hardware thanks to their JEDI agreement (Joint Environment for Digital Imaging), I think it's JEDI III at the moment. According to some rumors is that part of the agreement is that ILM doesn't mention other platforms. They get the gear and give feedback to SGI along braging rights. From Alias/Wavefront they are also among the beta testers for all new versions. But in the end they wouldn't give it away as an incentive. Even if it was free if it didn't fit their pipeline it would be pointless.

There are plenty of articles detailing Linux increasing use in VFX. Here are a some:

Linux Helps Bring Titanic to Life
The Little Engine That Could
Penguin Power
Linux Invades Hollywood
VESTECH 2000
Linux takes Hollywood by storm
Linux goes to the movies
Nixed for Linux
DreamWorks Feature Linux and Animation
Industry of Change: Linux Storms Hollywood

Re:Well, I tried to see whether everything2.com ha

[Anonymous Coward]

Which one to download? ;o)
http://www.filesearching.com/cgi-bin/s?q=blen der&m =1000&t=f&w=a&l=en

OpenBlender is a bad idea...

[i7dude]

...what if some little kid comes by and sticks their hand in there...ouch!!!

...what???

dude.

Can't say I am surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to see it go... It was really a pretty decent app. But I never saw what NaN's business model was.

At $300 Blender was in the same market as programs like Amapi, Carrara, ZBrush, and maybe Rhino. With Blender's canyon-wall like learning curve and lack of features, how did they possibly think they were going to compete?

It was just recently that the program offered a decent set of booleans. Their answer to file export was DXF and VRML 1.0. They were relying on the community to develop import and export options for more common file formats like OBJ and 3DS, and the ability to develop those scripts wasn't available in versions of the application above 2.04. (They were adding them back to 2.25, but that was only available to license holders).

Blender had some good features. Its UV mapper was one of its highpoints in my opinion. But the only factor Blender really had going for it was that it was available for Linux. While that one advantage may have served it well in the near future, I think the 3D graphics market for Linux is still too small to support an entire company.

So the company was offering a product with a steep learning curve missing numerous features one would expect from a product in its price range for about the same price as several entrenched competitors.

Their answer to this was to try to establish a web based 3D format. I just don't see NaN out-marketing Macromedia.

Re:Can't say I am surprised

[Spiral Man]

>and the ability to develop those scripts wasn't available in versions of the application above 2.04. (They were adding them back to 2.25, but that was only available to license holders).

not at all true. all versions had python export/plugin capabilities, they were changed after 2.04 to a different api, but they then changed back around 2.20, but left both api's available, so you could run scripts written on either one. the api was usefull for a lot more than just import/export plugins. you could write a plugin to manipulate verticies/models as well. one company wrote a cloth plugin for it. the api even supported adding buttons and creating an interface for your plugin.

that being said, the api lacked many things that should have been in there from the begining. there was no way to access either the original "IKA's" or the new bones. animation support pretty much sucked or was non existant (in the plugin api, not in blender itself).

unfortunately, NaN wasnt very supportive of the OSS community. they were really ticked off that the render daemon didnt get done the way they wanted it done. basically, they saw it as a way to get somebody to write code for them for free, and then they could do whatever they wanted with the code, which isnt the way OSS works. i really doubt they will open source it, regardless of the money issue (having to sell the code to pay off debts).

i certainly think that their emphasis on games and web plugins was a mistake. most of the people using blender to create games were script kiddies who dont pay for software, and the people that were more willing to pay, the people who used it for 3d modelling/animation, didnt have any reason to pay other than to support the company (the only features paying for it gave you were related to the web plugin and game engine)(these are of course, generalities, there were plenty of good people who used it to make games, just the majority of the people seemed like script kiddies to me)

also, the game engine was slow as crap

Re:Can't say I am surprised

[shadowbearer]

Did anyone ever write a good (node order and all that) dxf export plugin in python for Blender that you know of?

I love building the vertices in blender but exporting to game models is problematic, to say the least.

I'm not familiar enough with the formats to do it myself, tho I'd like to.

AG

Nice troll...

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't dignify it any more than that...

Re:Nice troll...

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose it was meant as a joke (ie. Funny). Unfortunately I don't have any moderator points to prove it at the moment..

Some Mirrors

[ramakant]

http://ftp.linux.hr/pub/blender/
http://californi a.linux.tucows.com/files/blender2. 20-linux-glibc2.1.2-i386.tar.gz

Good things about blender...

[digitalhermit]

This sucks. I've been in the process of creating a tutorial on blender here. Blender was featured because it was a relatively powerful package and did many things that much higher priced packages did.
Many people complained about the interface, but once you learned the shortcuts it was probably one of the easiest to use. Someone had even created a python based blender to POVray script that allowed you to model in blender and render in POV, so shortcomings in the Blender rendering engine were quickly made moot.
It is not the only package available for rendering, but it was one of the best for animations. Funny that this occurred a day after I saw the QuickTime preview on the Apple site.

Re:Good things about blender...

[shadowbearer]

I thought personally the ability to python script blender was one of the greatest OSS inclusions ever. I'm going to miss it.

What I personally love Blender for is vertex editing. Once you get used to it it's quick and easy.

Keep the tutorial up. If nothing else someday someone may recreate blender (with better dxf export!)

AG

Re:Remember

[Anonymous Coward]

IT DOESN'T MATTER how 'innovative' Blender was, or what features it offered, or what it was missing. What matters is whether or not people find its value sufficient enough to justify NaN's asking price. What MATTERS is whether or not Blender allows users to do what they need to do, with an acceptable degree of hassle. As for the game engine...is this something users WANTED, or NEEDED, or was it something that NaN was trying to push on its own? Ever heard of a solution without a problem?

I've spent many, MANY hours learning and using Blender (never for commercial gain), and frankly, I'm sorry to see that NaN has shut down. But I refuse to feel guilty because NaN misjudged the market. I will miss the comunity, though.

Here is a mirror

[nphillips]

I just set up a mirror based on the 2.14 release (from the Texture CD NaN sold). This has versions for all platforms they supported at that time (no OSX).
Also the 2.23 Solaris release is there. Later this evening I will include the 2.23 Linux version I have at home.

I just checked and the "The Official Blender 2.0 Guide" is in stock here.

Re:It's called the marketplace

[Anonymous Coward]

Again...the question is, "Is NaN offering a product with features that *I* need, at a price I'm willing to pay?" It's completely irresponsible to suggest that linux users ONLY want free software. I WANTED to pay, but not on the terms that NaN was offering.

Mirror of Blender

[baffle]

I'm mirroring the files on ftp://ftp.stenstad.net/mirrors/ftp.blender.nl/ now, as ftp.blender.nl seems down..

Re:Mirror of Blender

[thesurfaces.net]

Thanks for that :)

Re:Mirror of Blender

[shadowbearer]

Thank YOU!!

Blender is Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Blender is the biggest bulkiest over-rated freeware program on the market. Maybe if you're a programer you might find it impressive but from an professional modeler/render standpoint it's pathetic. Pov-Ray is more usable.

What?

[cbodine]

Quote from the article
"Nice app. Too bad really."

So he is saying that it is 'to bad that it is a nice app'

Well this will fit in line with why Gimp is so big- it's crappy too.

Maybe Blender isn't crappy enough?

Open Season on 3D Developers.

[MrBomb]

It's a sad day for NaN. However, I don't think it's because of the company opensourcing Blender. Alias/Wavefront is closing offices and laying off folks too and Maya costs serious money. It all comes to bad management. Hopefully, another company will take over Blender, but keep the source code open.

mismanagement

[Anonymous Coward]

until version 2.23 they had all blender products free, and obviously burned a lot of money. they thought they could get some money out of the webshop, and the books, but didn't calculate that running a webshop, as well as printing books is expensive.

without any sight of a future - some dumb ass thought, blender could be used for game production - which was a non-brainer. game-production is made on low level programming, and not build out of a 3d app. does maya try to offer a programming interface for games? NO! and they know why - maya is a 3d tool, and so is blender.

along with the decission, that blender as a tool to produce ugly little games will succeed. NaN made their next mistake. they stopped the free version, and released a so called "publisher" at a ridiculous price as an "unlimited" license. when i read that, i knew they just wanted to pull off as much money as virtually possible - cause if you calculate it in a long-view, a "unlimited" license for a specialized application like blender thins the market in a very short time-frame. soon every corporation (that would rather spend money on blender as on maya/lightwave one has to consider) would have purchased an unlimited version, and where would NaN get their money from?

i see this as the worst SCAM in history of good applications.

the next steps from NaN are obvious, the last thing they would do is release the sourcecode under GPL - instead i bet all my money on them taking the source and sell it to some corporation ( be it alias/wavefront or mircrosoft ) as long as they get money out of it.

remember! until i read this post on slashdot, the Blender-community website was full of news and no news about NaN shutting down - there was even an article with a sketch about a planned community website.

i am sorry for those people who bought this unlimited license, and sorry for all other blender users, that hopefully made a backup of the fabulous "blender knowledge archive" that had tons of hints how to accomplish cool stuff in blender. NaN really suck, cause they pulled all this from their website, and the only thing you can read now is this fsck*ing lettter.

--


enhance visionary services ! - the webeconomy bullshit generator

May I inform

[Anonymous Coward]

you that povray 3.5 is almost here! Years of waiting for that new version!

The current beta (#12) expires tomorrow, on 15 March and may be the last Beta!!! Read more at www.povray.org.

I also saw an interview somewhere, one or two years ago that povray may perhaps be GPLd, and that they were debating heavily back and forth over pros and cons - let's pray.

both sides of the argument are flawed.

[Anonymous Coward]

To tell you the truth, I'm getting tired of these things being framed as the result of two things:

(1) Linux users won't pay their fair share for commercial products.

or

(2) Commercial software development is inherently flawed.

It's neither, people. Yes, there are people who are cheap. And yes, commercial software development has its problems.

I think the real problem is just a chicken-and-egg one of developers developing for an audience. There just isn't a massive Linux desktop user base right now. It's growing, true, but still nothing compared to Windows or OSX. Anyone who develops for a tiny market better be aware that they are developing for such a tiny market. When you're so specialized and don't diversify, you're going to fail because you don't have a lot to ride out the bumps with. Linux software development is and will continue be lucrative when (a) the user base increases, and/or (b) Linux development is undertaken by institutions that diversify their mission outside of Linux or outside of one service.

If software development wasn't tied to the OS, it wouldn't matter so much. But thanks to certain institutions, it is, and we've got to deal with it one way or another. The only answer to this problem is to break the link between the OS and the software, at least at the level of typical software development. If the code for a program worked on all OSs, there wouldn't BE an issue of developing for Linux, because developing for Linux would be the same as developing for everything else, except for technical support lines or some such thing.

Re:both sides of the argument are flawed.

[spitzak]

All this is interesting but everybody seems to be ignoring the fact that Blender also made a version for Windows users. In fact they marketed the Windows version a lot more, and when I last saw a demonstration (at Siggraph) the Windows version was a later revision than the OS9 or Linux versions indicating that development was done there first.

Re:both sides of the argument are flawed.

[AxelBoldt]

If software development wasn't tied to the OS, it wouldn't matter so much. But thanks to certain institutions, it is, and we've got to deal with it one way or another. The only answer to this problem is to break the link between the OS and the software, at least at the level of typical software development.

Check out any decent open source app, apache, php, imagemagick, gcc, emacs, perl, tex, and you will see that it compiles on any platform out there. The problem of OS dependency has been solved long ago by GNU configure. I agree that non-free software is not as evolved, but who cares?

small market

[realkiwi]

3D is a really small market. You got lots of kids playing with 3DMax but there are few clients for high end stuff.

I was trained on Wavefront before it became Maya - you bought the Wavefront licence and they gave you an O2 to use it on...

Blender was good. I have a binary round here somewhere but nowadays I only play with 3D - I am not a buyer. If I was a buyer it would be Maya on Mac OS X.

Re:small market

[cbodine]

Well video games for both ingame content and game cinematics
the movie industry
tv spots and commericals
previsualization of every thing from cars to pants and everything else
the web can use what is done on "high end stuff"
All the current generation console use this was well
even down to some fields of science are doing simulations with maya
so this a very big market, you just need to see how to apply it.

Re:small market

[PablosBrain]

3D is far from a small market. Almost every feature film out there has some sort of 3D in it. Look at ICE AGE coming out tomorrow... hmmm all 3D.

Just to let you know

[Treeluvinhippy]

Blender was free as in beer, not speech.

Re:Just to let you know

[MrBomb]

I know, but also I've heard some parts of Blender were opensourced too. Though I'm usually not an opensource fan, I hope that if another company doesn't get the product, maybe some commitee can be formed and Blender fully opensourced. Maybe.

But They Promised!

[WWWWolf]

I was under the impression that Blender had, somewhere in the website, a comment that said (basically) "if we go out of business, Blender goes open source; If we sell it, we won't sell it unless they promise to do the same thing". (I remember something vague about BSD lisence, but I could be wrong.)

I certainly hope they won't find anyone to sell it to so we get the thing =)

Anyway, as a long-time Blender user (but not long enough time, that's for sure), I have to say that it's a shame that they had to go. I hope they keep the word now and Blender will once again be visible, either still as freeware or under DFSG-compliant lisence.

Re:But They Promised!

[eclectro]

glad I wasn't the only one that caught that. It went something like "If NaN stops then the blender source will be released under a free license." The only thing is that I think that was before they became a company, and they may have changed it :(

Any nice galleries with renders?

[MConlon]

Does anybody know of a gallery (or two) with high-quality (i.e., impressive looking) Blender renders?

Every Blender render I've ever seen looks plastic, and the meshes I've seen look simple, compared to output from other programs.

I don't mean to dump on it (I've played with it a little myself, and found the modeller layout quite innovative) but I am/was able to get better images out of other programs.

Every decent 3D program has at least one Picasso user who's head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd... where's Blender's?

MJC.

Re:Any nice galleries with renders?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, one of the good galleries was on the Blender website itself, which is now off-line.

but check out the galleries at this place(which by the way is a good "blender community" site):

http://www.elysiun.com

the 3d works section of this guy's site contains a lot of things done in blender, some blender +pov:

http://www.graphinc.com

there was an F1 contest recently, the entries are on this site, some of these are good-looking too:

http://www.seesystems.com/f1

there are certainly many Blender guys whose work is worth checking out, but I just can't remember most of these people's web addresses

Re:Any nice galleries with renders?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://jjh.xware.cx has stuff I have used blender to make. I'm not a 'picasso user' but at least this is an example of some of the stuff you can do with blender.

I mostly used povray to render after I modelled with blender, but 'Bees' is rendered in blender.

Re:Any nice galleries with renders?

[PablosBrain]

http://www.pablosbrain.com/workart.shtml

And so it goes...

[Eric Damron]

I use to believe that companies that gave their software freely would still receive enough support from the "grateful" thousands (sometimes millions) to survive.

But with the demise of Blender and the cries for help from Mandrake that are being met mostly by a lot of "I'll use Mandrake but I'll never pay for it. That's what open source is all about so if they fail they fail..." replies, I don't think so anymore.

I just don't believe that a company that produces free software can make it in a community that is mostly devoid of compassion or common sense or whatever it is that will make a person take out their wallet and send so cold hard case to a company that provides them with a service even though they don't gain anything extra by doing so.

What should be leaned but won't from the failures of companies like this is that you may not gain anything extra by sending in some of your money but, in the long run, you will lose if you don't.

I'm just really bummed out to realize that we will always carry the Microsoft yoke because as a society we are incapable of breaking out of the box and doing what it takes to support the people who would empower us all.

Re:And so it goes...

[Vulture_]

Actually, there are two reasons I didn't donate anything to Mandrake:

1. I have no money to give them.
2. They are a commercial company, not a non-profit organization.

Especially note #2. This is why Debian still exists, functions, and has all the resources it has (particularly servers and bandwidth, which must have cost a damned fortune). It takes money to run an organization like Debian, and yet, amazingly enough, despite how cold-hearted you claim Linux users to be, they are still kicking, and still pumping out new packages and package upgrades at a breakneck pace.

To NaN:

[Trogre]

Quick, GPL it now, so development can carry on!
Don't just kill it off, pass the flame, man.

BSD is even better than GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

If the source is already available under the
less restrictive BSD license, then that's even
better than the GPL.

Re:BSD is even better than GPL

[lambermo]

Only the render daemon source is released.

I just figured out armatures. :(

[seanfuller]

I can't believe it. Just when I figured out how to use armatures, they go bankrupt again. It's really awful that they shut down the web site. The natural instinct is to go to that site to discuss things with the rest of the blender community, but now all you get is a single page at www.blender.nl/. The trick with the armatures was to create all of them and then to use the join command to put them together, and then parent the mesh to the group of armatures with vertex points named with the same exact names as the bones in the armatures. It is really easy to do once you figure it out.

I had warned them..

[Ogerman]

At least a half dozen times in the past few years, I kindly suggested to the Blender folks that they open source *all* of their software and adopt a services-oriented business model while building a support and development community around the code itself. "You have no market for proprietary 3D software," I told them, "Who is going to spend money on small-name software when highly superior Maya, Lightwave3D, 3D Studio, etc. are available?" But they never listened, "it's not our business plan." Apparently their shareholders had firmly decided that there was no money in Open Source (sounds aweful familiar to the trolls on /. eh?) Even though Blender was free (as in beer), they refused to open the code because they knew that it would kill the (non-existant) market for Publisher. Folks, it's not easy to make money in software no matter what approach you take. However, all things considered, you have far greater chance to succeed with community backing. And if you fail, at least you'll still have something to show for all your hard work.

Re:I had warned them..

[neoteric]

Surely now they _must_ Open Source the code if they have no buyer for the business.

Blender in my opinion could rival 3DS Max, and they already had a very slightly cut down _free_ version, so if they let it die it will be a great loss.

Anyone interested in 3D Content Creation really must do all they can to try and get NaN to open source this program.

I agree strongly with the post I reply to, the services avenue would have been a very good idea and really the only strong way to make money when competing against 3DS and Maya.

Consider Open Source NaN!! Don't let it die. Do the community a favour and Blender may go from strength to strength !!

Re:I had warned them..

[Ogerman]

Surely now they _must_ Open Source the code if they have no buyer for the business.

Unfortunately, the same braindead shareholders who insisted on keeping Blender closed to begin with will no doubt try to sell the rights to somebody else. Hopefully that somebody else will have the vision to turn it free and use the services model that NaN should have used from the start.

Re:I had warned them..

[shadowbearer]

Unfortunately it could be a *very long time*. I don't imagine it will take more than a year or so of non-activity to kill Blender completely, while the "corps" keep trying to find a buyer for a stagnated 3d format.
I love Blender, and I've echoed your concerns as well to NaN, but this just may well kill Blender completely. I hope they realize that the project is worth keeping alive and opensource it immediately rather than waiting around....and waiting....and waiting.....

What a loss..

[arsaspe]

I've been using Blender for years, and while the interface drive nuts at first, I would now swear hands down that it is one of the best 3d modelers out there. It is a quality piece of work.

Hopefully they will have the sense to release Blender under an open-source licence, so that work on it may continue. It would be a shame to lose such a fine modeler.

Re:What a loss..

[shadowbearer]

I agree. It is a steep learning curve, but the ease of vertex editing makes up for that.

Of course the lack of really decent .dxf export kills a lot of other uses.....

OS X for X86! (for newbies, of course)

Whats this got to do with Linux?

[ikekrull]

People saying 'Linux users won't pay for anything' should probably note that theire are far more Windows Blender users than Linux users out there.

Frankly, the reason why they couldn't make money was because their app could not compete with the other, more polished solutions in the market.

Ipaq port...

[Anonymous Coward]

It was nice to see a Ipaq Port of Blender before NaN went away. It's amazing that it runs on such a small pda.

Yes! I made a complete animation on my Ipaq! Modeling, animation, particles, rendering, and compsiting! WOW!

I wish NaN will be back soon, and release a new Ipaq version.

Thanks Nan for a great product!

r

Re:Any mirrors still active?-2.23

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.download.blender.pl/mirror/
ftp://ftp. cs.umn.edu/pub/blender/pub/
http://freedom.dicea. unifi.it/ftp/pub/linux/debian /pool/non-free/b/blender/

*****older***

http://www.cs.trinity.edu/ftp/pub/Other-RedHat-R PM S/
http://ib.ksc.komi.ru/ftp/pub/Linux/X11/3D/Ble nder /

Moderators DON'T mod this up. If people really want blender let them come down here. Besides I don't need to tell anyone about the "./" effect, now do I? Also It bears repeating Mirror, mirror, mirror.

Sell out to Apple

[TALlama]

Apple seems to have been purchasing these types of things recently...
witness their recent buy of Shake.
And there's been a rumor floating about of them looking at Maya with a wad of cash in their hand...

Right here.

[Scott Francis[Mecham]

Shigeto Maeda, author of [ka - ra]. Every image on the site was created with Blender(every month or two he'd post one at the Blender message forums).

Also, try the 2002 Blender F1 Competition to see what a diverse group of people can do with a single idea(including my entry!

I see

[Anonymous Coward]

really strange ...

Plz go on the the project

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that Blender stay a free application in the futher. Make a GPL project from it, that will b great.

Where Have All the Blendors Gone

[ralphieboy]

If anybody knows where the Blender user groups have moved, please let me know. Blender is still plenty useful and a terrific product. I am sure many people feel a great void because the web site and discussion groups have shut down.

--Ralph

Re:Where Have All the Blendors Gone

[the-shizit]

we've just created a new one at http://shizit.vectorstar.net/forum . I don't know if there are any other discussion groups in the absence of the Blender community forums they had on their site, but hopefully this will help

In case there are some Blenderheads reading this..

[Picass0]

Looking for Blender discusion forums. Anybody know where there are some good forums besides NaN's site?

Re:I just figured out armatures. :(

[shadowbearer]

There is a need for an independent user group. I don't offhand know of any. Anyone?

We could start one but need a good threaded forum server. Ideas?

Blender Files Proprietary, Data Now Worth Nothing

[FreeUser]

Blender file the .blend format is a binary only propriety NaN format. It is not .iv. But it can export rudimentary models (and maybe textures) to vrml 1.0. Which when renamed to .iv works with inventor. But you still have to fiddle around and edit the .iv file manually sometimes (texture file paths etc.,).

You are, regrettably, correct. I took the previous poster at their word that .blend files were in fact open inventor files, but discovered this weekend that you are right ... the format of .blend files is a proprietary NaN format and, as such, my animation work is rapidly becoming worthless.

As I said before: never again. I will only use free(dom) software for any future animation/special effects work I do, even if that means I have to write the damn program myself.

:-(

URL to the NaN GPL promise

[Anonymous Coward]

Taken from NaN's March 1999 web page:

Commitment

Thanks to the enthusiastic support of Unix/Linux/FreeBSD users worldwide,
Blender has become the popular tool it is now. The current userbase is
very important for NaN. That's why I make this promise:

If NaN stops or fails, the sources will be GPL-ed immediately.
Blender won't be sold to another company without guarantees it continues
developement within the current open and free strategies. When NaN
becomes a big succes, you can count on me being insane enough to continue
what I did last year: choosing what is best for Blender, looking for
exciting different ways to proceed and just having a lot of fun!

Ton Roosendaal NaN march 1999

Re:Blender Files Proprietary, Data Now Worth Nothi

[manjunaths]

Not really. There is python scripting ability to blender. I know that there is a way in which you can write a script to export to whatever format you want. Get on the Crystal Space mailing list and ask. They might be able to help you. crystal minus main @lists dot sourceforge dot net.