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Blender 3.0 Released


Larry Shelby

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I wish we had a DAW equivalent of Blender: a well-funded, well-supported opensource project with a healthy community of users and contributors.

I remember the thread where someone asked the possibility of open sourcing Cakewalk. Several people from the staff reacted emotionally. It was sad to read all those comments in this age.

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15 hours ago, daveiv said:

I wish we had a DAW equivalent of Blender: a well-funded, well-supported opensource project with a healthy community of users and contributors.

I remember the thread where someone asked the possibility of open sourcing Cakewalk. Several people from the staff reacted emotionally. It was sad to read all those comments in this age.

Any reactions in the past aside, as a Linux and open source fan of many years, and also a long time Cakewalk user, I will point out that the core of open source lies mainly in cross platform development.

Cakewalk, as a Windows only application, is most definitely not a good candidate for cross platform porting. At least not without a nearly total re-write. Cakewalk is built upon and highly leverages the Microsoft programming libraries and Windows audio engine. So even if it was re-licensed as open source, the Windows only subset of open source might not develop into a well funded, well supported community.

Cross platform is a major key to open source community involvement and support.

 

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16 hours ago, abacab said:

Any reactions in the past aside, as a Linux and open source fan of many years, and also a long time Cakewalk user, I will point out that the core of open source lies mainly in cross platform development.

Cakewalk, as a Windows only application, is most definitely not a good candidate for cross platform porting. At least not without a nearly total re-write. Cakewalk is built upon and highly leverages the Microsoft programming libraries and Windows audio engine. So even if it was re-licensed as open source, the Windows only subset of open source might not develop into a well funded, well supported community.

Cross platform is a major key to open source community involvement and support.

 

Well, it would be a start. Blender wasn't initially cross-platform either.

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14 minutes ago, Dave Maffris said:

Is this a tool for a graphic artist, or can a musician with aspirations to make films learn to use this?

Yes, you can learn to use it for film.  It's a "3D" Program...and it's quite nice...especially for FREE,
so what's to lose?

Edited by cclarry
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10 minutes ago, Dave Maffris said:

Is this a tool for a graphic artist, or can a musician with aspirations to make films learn to use this?

Is a tool for 3d artists.
If you want to make films with real footage, you might wanna try  Htfilm or DaVinci Resolve. those are free
I am a working musician but moved to 3d to get more freelance work :)

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26 minutes ago, arnoldoo said:

Is a tool for 3d artists.
If you want to make films with real footage, you might wanna try  Htfilm or DaVinci Resolve. those are free
I am a working musician but moved to 3d to get more freelance work :)

I have used DaVinci Resolve Studio (paid version) for quite some time now. Although I'm proficient at the basic functions, the Fusion engine process is a mystery that I have no patience for. And so I wondered if this tool would be different or add some functionality to my toolkit. And since it's free I truly could try it and see.

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30 minutes ago, cclarry said:

Yes, you can learn to use it for film.  It's a "3D" Program...and it's quite nice...especially for FREE,
so what's to lose?

Nothing to lose, but the notion of a 3D rendering program is kind of arcane to me--but what the heck...I learned how to use DaVinci Resolve and that's a fairly complex program, but then again, I'm not doing any graphic design, just putting clips, fx, and music together. We will download and see.

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2 hours ago, Dave Maffris said:

Is this a tool for a graphic artist, or can a musician with aspirations to make films learn to use this?

It is, as Larry said a 3D program.

As the artist, you are working inside a virtual box, or room, similar to a photo studio with x, y, and z coordinates. There are two main phases, modeling and rendering/animating.

While modeling the scene in there, you can place objects, control lighting and camera angles, and pan and zoom to get a camera angle from any point.

You can render a scene as either a still frame, or as a motion sequence along a timeline. To render a motion sequence requires multiple frames per second to be rendered, at your required movie specs. That motion sequence can then be exported and used as a movie clip within a movie editing application.

I tried some 3D programs 15-20 years ago, when I first became a Photoshop user and was fascinated with the new digital darkroom capabilities. But unfortunately, my Pentium 3 and 4 class computers at the time were barely up to the task of showing real-time 3D previews, much less animated renderings. Still renderings was as far as I ever got, and even those took several minutes each.

This latest generation of 3D software, combined with a strong multicore CPU and GPU, looks like it should kick *****!

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1 hour ago, abacab said:

It is, as Larry said a 3D program.

As the artist, you are working inside a virtual box, or room, similar to a photo studio with x, y, and z coordinates. There are two main phases, modeling and rendering/animating.

While modeling the scene in there, you can place objects, control lighting and camera angles, and pan and zoom to get a camera angle from any point.

You can render a scene as either a still frame, or as a motion sequence along a timeline. To render a motion sequence requires multiple frames per second to be rendered, at your required movie specs. That motion sequence can then be exported and used as a movie clip within a movie editing application.

I tried some 3D programs 15-20 years ago, when I first became a Photoshop user and was fascinated with the new digital darkroom capabilities. But unfortunately, my Pentium 3 and 4 class computers at the time were barely up to the task of showing real-time 3D previews, much less animated renderings. Still renderings was as far as I ever got, and even those took several minutes each.

This latest generation of 3D software, combined with a strong multicore CPU and GPU, looks like it should kick *****!

What is daunting for me is that while I seem to have a knack for video editing software, I have NEVER been able to use photo editors adequately--some part of my brain doesn't understand how to do it...oh well, I'm gonna give this a spin at some point.

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15 minutes ago, Dave Maffris said:

What is daunting for me is that while I seem to have a knack for video editing software, I have NEVER been able to use photo editors adequately--some part of my brain doesn't understand how to do it...oh well, I'm gonna give this a spin at some point.

3D software has a much steeper learning curve than photo editing software.

There is a huge market for 3D assets, such as finished 3D models and materials, so that they can be imported. This can reduce some details of assembling a scene and rendering it rather than designing all assets from scratch. Making your own models is analogous to making your own samples and loops for your DAW use. Very time consuming, but some folks with the patience and knack for it love it!

Do give Blender a spin though, it's totally free! All professional 3D software used to cost hundreds of dollars, similar to the old Cakewalk Sonar!

Pro studios are now the main users of high end paid programs like 3ds Max for CGI animation and video games. But Blender has made some inroads to professional TV, Film, and video game studios.

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Blender can also double as a somewhat alright video editor.

The closest thing to Blender on the audio side would be Tracktion Waveform right now.
It's available on Linux for free (as in gratis, not FOSS), and at least part of it is open source (Tracktion Engine), dual licensed under GPL/commercial licensing.

It even runs on raspberry pi. The same way it runs on x86

 

Edited by Cristian
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29 minutes ago, Cristian said:

Blender can also double as a somewhat alright video editor.

https://www.blender.org/features/video-editing/

Quote

Blender comes with a built-in video sequence editor allows you to perform basic actions like video cuts and splicing, as well as more complex tasks like video masking or color grading.

The Video Editor includes:

  • Live preview, luma waveform, chroma vectorscope and histogram displays.
  • Audio mixing, syncing, scrubbing and waveform visualization.
  • Up to 32 slots for adding video, images, audio, scenes, masks and effects.
  • Speed control, adjustment layers, transitions, keyframes, filters and more!

 

Edited by abacab
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