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Blender 2.33 Re-enables Game Engine

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the back-in-business dept.

fforw writes "One and a half year after becoming free software, the Blender Foundation has released a new version of Blender which finally enables the game engine again. When Blender became free software. the game engine had to be disabled because SOLID, the collision library was not free software. After SOLID's author Gino van den Bergen changed his mind, Blender has now restored all functionality from the closed-source period."

26 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Some Blender Games by c_oflynn · · Score: 4, Informative

    A quick Google revealed a few examples of some games that use this engine, see http://www.spinheaddev.com/gameexpose0.html (NOT HTML clicking to help reduce load on server a tad...)

    1. Re:Some Blender Games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Done the right way:

      http://www.spinheaddev.com/?id=crescentd
      http://www.shadeless.dk/3d/?site=darksquad.htm
      http://project-blender.onlinehome.de/
      http://www.brainstorm-studios.net
      http://zerooneentertainment.org/blengine/sachi
      http://project-blender.onlinehome.de/
      http://www.tudbzd.com/

  2. and another thing for newbies to learn by Goeland86 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    that's nice to have the functionality again... but it's something more to learn for newbies in blender. As if blender wasn't complex enough... I appreciate the gesture though, but there's really going to be a need for a complete rewrite of the online doc... most of it dates from the 2.2 era. So get those renders and movies and now games coming along! It's time for it now...

    --
    ---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
    1. Re:and another thing for newbies to learn by zaphod_bee4 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Their is complete documentation for the 2.3x release available in several formats: http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Using_Blender.80.0.ht ml

    2. Re:and another thing for newbies to learn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      That is not true, the 2.3 manual has been uploaded in html and pdf forms. I do find a paper manual (+- 800 pages and 1 kg) easier to use in most cases, but for quick searching the pdf is nice.

    3. Re:and another thing for newbies to learn by Curtman · · Score: 3, Informative

      I haven't found a complete listing of all keyboard shortcuts yet

      This list looks pretty good.

    4. Re:and another thing for newbies to learn by bob_calder · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The newbies seemed split on it - I checked them last semester.
      (That was a joke for those who wish to report me to the purity patrol.)

      I needed to have interactive design students look at something they had never seen - so I gave them Blender. Half had used 3D Studio Max. The rest, just Adobe and typical high school student fare. There were 17 students. They had to write a tutorial on creating an object that wasn't just a primitive.

      Half of the 3D Studio Max users loved it, the rest were irritated, but found it usable. There was only one student who copped out of the assignment and the rest *really newbies* were able to do a credible job.

      The general consensus was that the interface was different but good if you are a macro stroke user and a pain if you use menuing. I think they were saying 'different' compared to things like Photoshop. Of course 3D is a different interface, so their expectations could not be met. As with anything else, everybody has an opinion! Mine is, as we all know, irrelevant and uninformed, so please, I have a headache. Curtman, I obviously have no idea about Soft Image and others. I can't even remember the name of the first one I used in the mid eighties. I am still amazed by meshes.

      What I can't believe is that Photoshop users think that there have been these great leaps forward in bitmap editing programs because they no longer have to open Illustrator to make type flow on a path. Maybe Zanax would help.

      --
      Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
    5. Re:and another thing for newbies to learn by black+mariah · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I've failed to grasp this interface while learning about five others. How is this in any way an indication of my ignorance? To me, this is an indication of how horrible the UI designers that work with Blender are at designing UI's.

      You want examples? Let's go.

      - Mesh editing is cumbersome and utterly counter-intuitive. This is caused mostly by the focus on hotkeys rather than menus, and also by the lack of a manipulator of any kind. Once you learn the hotkeys, it's STILL a chore to model because the way that most of the tools work is so far from the way they work in nearly every other package.

      - Having separate panels for materials and textures is a joke. The two need to be combined and refined.

      - I, like a lot of people, prefer to model in one large window as opposed to several smaller ones. This is almost impossible in Blender due, again, to a lack of manipulators.

      - No real undo. This is fucking pathetic, really. There is no good reason whatsoever to not have an undo in a program like this. Inexcusable. The addition of a mesh editing undo is good, but it's not enough.

      - What the hell is that stupid bullseye thing? It is completely useless. Get rid of it, and make the left mouse button usable for something other than clicking the damn buttons.

      - Why aren't object created at either the origin or where I click and drag, like every other package ever made ever? Just to be different?

      - Speaking of which, why the hell would I want to create an obect that's aligned with the screen? I don't want to have to change my damn screen position every time I need a new object.

      I can't think of anything else at the moment, but those are some starting points. My ideas for fixing them (in order)...

      - The mesh editing needs to either be like 3ds max or like Lightwave. Right now it's trying to be both. This does not work. Pick one and stick with it.

      - A completely new materials panel is in order. If I thought anyone would listen to me, I'd design the damn thing myself. Implementation would have to be carried out by someone else, which is why I doubt anyone cares about my input.

      - Add a manipulator. Simple enough.

      - Implement a real undo, for fuck's sake. If it's proving difficult, give me some real technical reasons and not just "It's hard to do." Programming is tough, no matter what you're doing, and practically evey program ever devised has an undo of some kind. Fix it.

      - Get rid of the bullseye so the left mouse button can use the manipulator.

      - Give users the choice of either creating objects through click and drag, or at the origin.

      - This point ties in with the previous one.

      Is this sensible enough? Or are you going to bitch more because I said fuck a few times? I'm not ignorant, especially when it comes to 3d program interfaces. I can jump between programs with ease because they all subscribe to the same basic philosophy and it's all a matter of figuring out where the tools are stowed. Blender is trying too hard to be different, and it's hurting itself in the process.

      --
      'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
    6. Re:and another thing for newbies to learn by Curtman · · Score: 3, Informative
      Okay, this is exactly the kind of thing that I would consider constructive criticism. Thank you.

      • Mesh editing is cumbersome and utterly counter-intuitive. This is caused mostly by the focus on hotkeys rather than menus, and also by the lack of a manipulator of any kind. Once you learn the hotkeys, it's STILL a chore to model because the way that most of the tools work is so far from the way they work in nearly every other package.


      This is probably one of those things I don't find confusing mostly because I've never worked with the 'other pacakage's. What impovements do you think could be made? Any specific criticism of the tools?

      • I, like a lot of people, prefer to model in one large window as opposed to several smaller ones


      This one, I'm not too sure about. I like the ability to split windows, and arrange them in almost any conceivable fashion. The other packages I've seen, have a much more static view. I can't imagine how this might be improved.

      • No real undo


      There is an undo. It works, and its real.
      • What the hell is that stupid bullseye thing? It is completely useless/Why aren't object created at either the origin or where I click and drag, like every other package ever made ever? Just to be different?


      That would be your cursor, I believe. You can pivot around it, it sets the insertion point for new objects. LMB does other things besides set the 3D-Cursor position, its probably the keyboard shortcuts again that you're not familiar with. Again, I'm not familiar with the other packages, but are you complaining here that you can actually choose where new objects are created?
      • why the hell would I want to create an obect that's aligned with the screen? I don't want to have to change my damn screen position every time I need a new object


      I'm not sure what else you would align it to initially. You could always just create the object then align it however you like. Personally, I usually have 3 windows on my screen, besides the large one that I do most of my editing in, and I create the object on the one with the alignment I want. Like this It works very well.

      As for the rest of it, you seem pretty preocupied with making Blender like the other software. I don't think that is a good motive for UI redesign, but I see your point that it definetly adds to the learning curve for people transitioning from them. I came across an excellent document with proposals for UI enhancements, perhaps some of its suggestions would placate you? Anything you'd like to expand, or expound?

      The blender documentation addresses everything you've said here. I suppose I could be mistaken, but it seems pretty clear you haven't even skimmed it, lead alone read the thing.
  3. A welcome addition - not just for games by JaF893 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is good news - its not exactly a giant leap forwards but it is important all the same. Improved collison detection is not just good for games its good for modelling. For example a physics teacher could teach his students about the ideal gas law using a series of blender animations.

  4. Great F/OSS by mastergoon · · Score: 5, Informative
    Blender has got to be right up there among the best of the F/OSS software. It may not have all the features of 3d studio max, but for beginner and intermediate modellers, or people with no artistic talent, it kicks ass!

    The controls are a bit hard to learn, though the interface has been getting better recently. In the end, once you read through the tutorials and learn all the keyboard commands you will find them to be great.

    1. Re:Great F/OSS by vivian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Which unfortunately highlights both the strengths and weaknesses of many OSS projects.

      Blender can be used to do pretty much anything you want in 3d animation, and has a fantastic set of features and great potential - but it is simply painful to use. It takes days to learn the shortcut keys that are essential for basic editing, especially if you are also trying to use other 3d programs or 2d programs along side it that have their own shortcuts that the artist has to remember too, witout getting them crossed.

      Ideally, there should be a visible navigable menu for every command, even if they are nested a few deep, with the shortcut Key written next to the command! Better yet, the shortcuts would be assignable to functions, so you could set up the key mapping to what works best for the artist.

      Blender suffers from the same problem that the first CAD I wrote has - only the programmers know all the hotkeys and commands, and they make 100% sense to the programmer, but not neccesarily to the end user.
      Eg. I like to work in 3d by basically selecting a point, and draging it in the screen's 2d plane, and rotating the object to a different view if I want to move the point outside the initial plane. Ideally, left dragging would move the point and right dragging would rotate the object. If it was possible to map the input interfaces (ie. mouse dragging/clicking,buttons and keystrokes) to program functions ( eg. rotate target, drag target , scale, rotate, zoom,copy, etc) then I could set it up the way that works best for me in the same way that Blender brilliantly allows you to completely customise multiple views and panels.

      The lack of a full undo (ie. multiple steps, on all functions) really holds blender back. I hope this gets done before anything else. It really holds discourages experimentation and steepens the learning curve beause a mistake can screw your model, or cause problems for alignment (eg. no undo for having rotated the view)
      Other than that, I think it's great and would be a much stronger challenger to 3d Studio Max if these things were implemented.

    2. Re:Great F/OSS by dcuny · · Score: 4, Informative
      I agree. However, there's been a lot of work to redo the Blender interface, and that work is continuing. For example, the Blender Funboard newsgroup was put together for this purpose.

      Unfortunately, this newsgroup hasn't proved entirely successful. One problem is that long-time users are loathe to have their beloved interface changed, since they feel that it's just "dumbing it down", and any changes will also slow them down.

      Another issue is that coders would rather add new features (ambiant occlusion, new texture models, etc.) than work on the UI. Ton (the primary architect) has been working on the Blender Book, and the other major coder has been off on vacation.

      I recently tried to learn RVKs. What's an RVK you might ask? They are Relative Vertex Keys, but the rest of the world calls them Morph Targets. And where the rest of the world allows you to actually select a named morph target and drag a slider, Blender insists that you create IPO curves (interpolation, not initial price offering) - somehow remembering that RVK curve #7 was a left blink, and RVK curve #8 was the phoneme "o" - and then ctrl+click on the IPO curve and drag to create a spline for the RVK ...

      It's a freaking UI nightmare!

      The refusal to use common nomenclature and standard UI tools here pretty wells sums up the problems with the Blender UI.

      Still, William Reynish (aka Monkeyboi) has put together a great set of proposals to fix the UI, and many of his prior suggestions have been incorporated. So I'm hoping that Ton and others concentrate on getting the remainder of Blender UI out of the "dark ages" so the rest of us can use it.

    3. Re:Great F/OSS by agentk · · Score: 4, Insightful
      It takes days to learn the shortcut keys that are essential for basic editing, especially if you are also trying to use other 3d programs or 2d programs along side it that have their own shortcuts that the artist has to remember too,

      This is true for every serious modeling & animation package there is. And any other highly specialized software with a million features and a very tight and fast workflow.

      --

      VOS/Interreality project: www.interreality.org

    4. Re:Great F/OSS by dcuny · · Score: 3, Insightful
      The problem isn't that there are hotkeys. Hotkeys are a great thing, and are a necessity. For example, g to grab an object, and then x to constrain it to the x axis. Nice and fast.

      The problem is that for many critical features in Blender, the UI offers no clue that a particular option might exist, or what hotkey/mouse combination you need to press if you knew it existed, but forgot which hotkey it was. Given Blender's roots - an in-house production tool - this sort of interface isn't unusual. But now that Blender's gone "open source", there's been agreement from Ton and others that the UI is broken and needs to be fixed.

      Take a look at Art of Illusion or JPatch for examples of open source applications that are "user friendly" - they support hotkeys, but any important functionality can be reached through the UI. When you are in a particular mode, the status bar at the bottom of the window displays hotkey modifiers and mouse options that are available. (I don't include Wings3D because it's pretty much specialized for modelling).

      I'll readily that the example programs are currently less capable than Blender (and Art of Illusion is due for a UI overhaul in a few releases), but they show how these sorts of things can be added to the UI, even for complex processes.

      And while Blender's made a lot of progress in making the UI better, but it's stalled in the last couple months - especially in critical areas like RVKs. Hopefully, people will get back on track with overhauling the UI.

  5. This is really good news by SavedLinuXgeeK · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As a Highschool Student I did an entire project in Blender's 3D Engine. It essentially had the ability to navigate look around and view objects in all dimensions. While this may seem a little base, as it was, it was not too difficult for a 17 year old to pick up and run with.

    It actually gets even deeper when you combine the python scripting with the game engine, as opposed to using the built in object functions. The games can get really complex, and with the inverse kinematic options for human body(mapping theh way the human joints move), it makes for some really interesting possibilities. Personally as I am learning python now, I may go back to the blender engine, and see what havoc I may be able to create.

    --
    je suis parce que j'aime
  6. Collision detection by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It's nice of Gino to make SOLID free software.

    Good collision libraries are fun. I've written one, as part of Falling Bodies. I think I was the first, back in 1996-1997, to use axis-oriented bounding boxes with GJK, which is what SOLID, and everybody else, uses now.

    Lin and Canny are the ones who really cracked this problem. Before Lin and Canny, algorithms for collisions in a space with N objects with M faces each were O(N^2) * O(M^2). They got that down to slightly worse than O(Nm), where Nm is the number of moving objects. Very clever.

    I-Collide was the first generally available package for this. The original version was in LISP, which was translated to C, retaining much of the LISP style. They used axis-oriented bounding boxes with a linear programming package. This had some problems with numerical error, and the linear programming package was rather bulky. But it demonstrated, back in 1996, what was possible. Then everybody (well, the half dozen or so people into this stuff) went to work and built better systems.

    Actually, collision detection is a pain to code, but well understood today. Collision response, the actual physics, is much harder.

    The end result of all this is that games can now have really big worlds with working collision detection.

    1. Re:Collision detection by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It would be nice to see ODE integrated into Blender instead of SOLID. ODE is a complete dynamics simulator, not just a collision detector.

      SOLID is a nice library, but its license terms are still unfriendly to commercial products. The author wants a couple thousand dollars to license it for even a shareware game, which is just silly when ODE is free under a BSD-style license. ODE's collision subsystem isn't quite as, well, solid as SOLID, but it's good enough for many applications.

    2. Re:Collision detection by fforw · · Score: 3, Informative
      It would be nice to see ODE integrated into Blender instead of SOLID. ODE is a complete dynamics simulator, not just a collision detector.
      ODE is mainly a rigid body physics engine. ODE offers built-in collision detection based on the geometric primitives (Ground, Cube, Sphere, Cylinder etc.) out of which the rigid bodies consist. Triangle collision is only avaible via plugin mechanisms. Currently there is an OPCODE plugin. It may be possible to write a plugin which drives SOLID.

      Maybe SOLID should be replaced by a ODE/OPCODE combination - but that would be incompatible with the existing blender games.

      --
      while (!asleep()) sheep++
  7. Re:what about Undo? by DavidLeblond · · Score: 4, Informative
    This is great news but when is UNDO gonna be implemented, if ever? This is a major feature for a software like that to be missing.


    Its been there for awhile now. Press U in edit mode.
  8. Blender doesn't need a game engine. by JessLeah · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It needs GOOD DOCUMENTATION. I'm a pretty smart person, if my test scores are to be believed, but I find Blender's interface to be completely inscrutable. And I have managed to work with other 3D modelling programs before...

    --
    Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
  9. Just plug in a Python script by ReyTFox · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://bane.servebeer.com/programming/blender/

  10. Game engine = worst...idea...ever by sahonen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I firmly believe that shifting the focus of Blender to the gaming engine at the expense of the rendering engine is what killed NaN in the first place. When Blender went OSS and the game engine had to be taken out, Blender took on new life as new features were added to the rendering engine including the much-requested raytracing. Now that the gaming engine is back in, I fear that Blender will soon fail again.

    It was nice having it while it was around.

    --
    Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
    1. Re:Game engine = worst...idea...ever by zaphod_bee4 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Being a contributor and hanging out with the Primary Dev's I can reassure you that the Rendering engine is still a high priority. Not to mention the new emphasis on Yafray integration. I doubt you will have to worry about this being neglected.

  11. Speaking of Collisions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    The best collisions in life are free. Like, for example, Porrasturvat and Rekkaturvat.

    http://jet.ro/dismount/

  12. Lightwave vs Blender vs Max by Wizard+Drongo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    OK, it's nice that blender has a game engine again, which is something I feel is lacking in Lightwave 7.5 (i know game sdk exists, but it would be nice if it was a little more intergrated). However, the point is, what is Blender trying to be? An open source alternative to the big hollywood rendering soloutions, capable of doing boradcast level animation and compositing? Or is it trying to be an open source alternative to 3d Studio Max, a sorta half-game, half-studio, totally lame program that does neither modelling nor rendering very well? If you look into a lot of production games, modelling these days is done increasingly in Maya or Lightwave. Not 3ds max. Surely basing it's development model a little on max is a road to distaster? At the end of the day, Mx is neither fish nor fowl, nor good red herring. It doesn't really do anything very well. For games development, it's fairly good, but rendering in it is horrible, and modelling in it's a joke. I sincerely hope that Blender, which as someone rightfully said is one of the gems of the OSS world, does not follow Max down that road now it's got it's game engine back.

    --
    The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.