Blender new viewport Eevee

[romullus]

From my experience Blender handles FBX just horribly. I was never able to exchange model between 3ds Max and Blender through FBX. Last time i tried, was about a year ago. Maybe newer Blender is better in this regard?

[melviso]

From my experience Blender handles FBX just horribly. I was never able to exchange model between 3ds Max and Blender through FBX. Last time i tried, was about a year ago. Maybe newer Blender is better in this regard?

From the interview with Blender's creator I posted, he noted how autodesk are always changing coding for their fbx exporter used with their apps. So Blender always has to update theirs so it can import assets from autodesk seamlessly. The last time I used an fbx from an external app was in December and it worked. I am not sure about now though. I have also imported sketch up files as well directly into blender, I used an addon specifically for that.

[Jpjapers]

I used fbx from blender into max about 5 years ago and it worked fine.
I have conference calls with the max dev team monthly so next time i might bring the viewport up and see what thy have in store. I know for a fact they are working closely with unreal engine and epic.

[Ondra]

There are 2 major problems with supporting blender:
1) technical - the API is python, not C++. Which is unnecessary complication for us, and it is slooow, compared to C++. So the plugin would take longer to develop and would be slower than for example 3ds Max one
2) legal - the application is not public domain (what would be fine and we would be developing the plugin right now, probably ;)), but GPL. Which means no closed-source plugins. We would have to complicate stuff even further to get around this one.

We cannot significantly improve upon the current approach with exporter and Corona standalone with these limitations. But if the application is released under less restrictive license (LGPL for example), and adds C++ API, it would immediately jump to the top of our list.

[melviso]

There are 2 major problems with supporting blender:
1) technical - the API is python, not C++. Which is unnecessary complication for us, and it is slooow, compared to C++. So the plugin would take longer to develop and would be slower than for example 3ds Max one
2) legal - the application is not public domain (what would be fine and we would be developing the plugin right now, probably ;)), but GPL. Which means no closed-source plugins. We would have to complicate stuff even further to get around this one.

We cannot significantly improve upon the current approach with exporter and Corona standalone with these limitations. But if the application is released under less restrictive license (LGPL for example), and adds C++ API, it would immediately jump to the top of our list.

This sheds light on a lot of things. Thanks for the explanation, Ondra. ;- )

[Ondra]

I was looking at some more blender stuff... and I really hope they will come up with LGPL C++ API, so we can join in ;)

[Nejc Kilar]

I was looking at some more blender stuff... and I really hope they will come up with LGPL C++ API, so we can join in ;)

Perhaps you need to get in touch with the devs, put some pressure on them :)

[romullus]

... and I really hope they will come up with LGPL C++ API, so we can join in ;)

Is that possible in principle? I recall that i read somewhere that they would need to get permission from every single person that ever contributed to the Blender...
Anyway, the day you would officially anounce about Corona plugin for Blender developement, would be the day i start to learn Blender :]

[melviso]

I was looking at some more blender stuff... and I really hope they will come up with LGPL C++ API, so we can join in ;)

That's cool to know Ondra :- )
Blender is ever changing. I think somewhere down the line, this might happen but when would be hard to tell.

[melviso]

Realtime raytracing? The impossible is happening?

https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/19/17139358/nvidia-rtx-real-time-ray-tracing-volta-gpu-gdc-2018

[maru]

Realtime raytracing? The impossible is happening?

https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/19/17139358/nvidia-rtx-real-time-ray-tracing-volta-gpu-gdc-2018

I'm pretty sure it's been happening since some time already. ;)

[davemahi]

Thanks for the info. Then why the pandering towards Maya then? Is Maya easier to write code/ incorporate features for than 3dsmax?

based on how it usually looks in bigger companies, they are not "pandering" in any way (such as "we are putting more developers on maya" or "we are forbidding max developers to add features" - they just have 2 independent teams, each working on single software, and one of them produces more new features for various reasons (such as legacy issues)

From what I can see with Maya is they are buying and slapping plugins as fast as they can. I remember reading Vlado commenting about how they are also slapping in lots of bugs into Maya by doing this too. They are more concerned with making Mayas look better, they are actually not going back, or have no time to fix the technical problems with the plugins.
I remember a day when everyone made fun of how many plugins max has or needs. Now I see the same thing going into Maya.

[melviso]

I'm pretty sure it's been happening since some time already. ;)

But this is really cool. So many things are going on graphics wise :- ) Maybe we might be seeing this for next gen gaming consoles? Realtime graphics is catching on pretty fast.

[Benny]

I was looking at some more blender stuff... and I really hope they will come up with LGPL C++ API, so we can join in ;)

So is your code or approach different than that of Vray, as I understand there is a Vray version for Blender?

The sad fact is that I'm not particularly interested in learning Blender or jump ship from Max if I don't have to, and it would seem logical that Max sooner or later also will have a PBR viewport. Unfortunately I guess in the case of Autodesk it will mean later.  :(

[lacilaci]

I was looking at some more blender stuff... and I really hope they will come up with LGPL C++ API, so we can join in ;)

So is your code or approach different than that of Vray, as I understand there is a Vray version for Blender?

The sad fact is that I'm not particularly interested in learning Blender or jump ship from Max if I don't have to, and it would seem logical that Max sooner or later also will have a PBR viewport. Unfortunately I guess in the case of Autodesk it will mean later.  :(

Oh man, this is so much more than just having a pbr viewport.
I was using blender for a longer time, but last 3 months almost exclusively (aside some rendering) and while I had to adopt some concepts that seemed weird at first I gotta say it's incredible. I really can't believe what these guys done with this software in past few years. For me, the only thing missing is corona.
But cycles is progressing too (principled shader, cpu+gpu rendering, denoising, filmic color management...)

The 2.8 pbr viewport is to be fully compatible with cycles, same shaders. So you setup everything realtime and then just switch to rendering having the same shaders, no preview needed to check for materials. 2.8 is also to have lot's of workflow changes on how scene is organized etc... And in some video there was even talk that aside making a new game engine that uses eevee rendering they want to build some simplified tools that allows to build interactive scenes.

If you look at how much progress max goes through in a year or two and then compare to blender it's ridiculous. Not mentioning that there are addons for almost anything you want, and even whole customized branches of blender. Whenever I have to open max these days it feels like going 10 years back, slow and full of bs.

Sad thing is, I don't think blender will change it's licensing. I think, it's been working for them so far so I guess, why change?