Light linking is essential, also, I make ui in blender and am not always chasing photoreal. Not casting shadows solves a huge problem for me as well.

In regards to the new BSDF node: There are a number of changes to the underlying functionality, not simply the UI 1. MultiGGX has been reimplemented using a faster approximation and is now the default 2. There's a new sheen algorithm which has much better results 3. IOR is now used for specular reflections. Before there was a hard coded 1.5 and the specular value was a scalar for that. IOR was used only for transmission. Now to get the same scaling there is IOR level so if you want the same functionality, you can use IOR 1.5 and set the scale. 4. Coat now has its own IOR to essentially act as a second specular lobe 5. Randomwalk (Skin) now has an IOR input as well which means you can give a different IOR value for the scattered light. 6. New tinting for specular which lets you set the color on the "fringe" of the reflection which is good for simulating some interesting paint materials, but also for stylized rim effects

As someone who started out using 3D Studio Max and transitioned to Blender later on, I have never related more to the statement "You could do the same thing, but in a Blender way". The first time I used a lattice structure was a true shock to the system haha

Layered PBR Texture painting was actually a development goal for Blender of 2022, but it never worked out as it seems 😢 They even posted a blog post about it with mock-ups and ideas.

For flattening, the free addon Looptools which has been shipping with Blender for many years now has a flatten option. And either the free MachineTools or MeshMachine (not sure which one because I use themboth) has taken that to a new level. Sure, nowadays you can do that with geometry nodes but why would I bother when there are already premade tools. Not saying the geometry nodes aren't an awesome additional.

ideal modeling software setup for the current era: 1:15:20 (blender, zbrush, topogun, rizom). Thanks OPs for including this in the video

Light Linking is super important for product rendering. Still missing nested dielectric.

Very informative video, thx guys 👍

It's so cool that you are doing this podcast now! :) Maybe you can talk about the flipped normals challenge next time

I feel like these are the good artist friends I don't have in my life right now and they are rubbing off on me. 😂 Thanks for the videos.

For the topic of USD, Omniverse (in my opinion) is really what's going to make the USD filetype to take off appropriately.

With regards to light linking as a coder I might be able to explain why the reluctance. I believe that it was originally conceived as a method for getting usable renders with machines with extremely limited hardware capabilities rather than an artistic tool. If somebody came up to me and asked me to implement light linking in a piece of software I was working on, I would want to know in detail what they were trying to do. I would be asking myself the question is there something that needs to be fixed in the underlying render algorithm because most of the time that's a better solution than creating a manual override that is going involve artists hours tweaking things to acceptable results. Beyond that it adds quite a bit of complexity to the render code and any other part of the software that interfaces with it, so you want to make sure that the feature delivers something greater than the technical debt it incurs. With regards the node tools, as somebody who can handle the python the most exiting about node tools is the performance, converting from C→python and then python→C has a bit of a performance overhead. This makes nodes more of a complement to python coding than a replacement. With the painting tools, these are pretty basic but really useful when combined with the node based material system. This gives you a workflow that's a lot more like Substance Designer (not painter) than anything else. The most obvious example is painting grayscale masks to use on the factor input of the mix color node.

I make template files in Blender for all my advertising images, because I have to really fly through stuff. I do primarily stills with several images composited, so light linking is welcome. I did these for years in 3DSMax using Vray. All my template files include HDRI setups, and some of the original files are why I learned about you guys (from your HDRI video lol). I hardly use the node wrangler short cut for HDRIs because of my templates, so I'd keep jumping to your video. My aging brain 🤣.

Awesome podcast. Also, the industry is not just limited to VFX and games btw. Even if Maya is the industry standard, it's not Maya 2024 but Maya 2013.

I have to admit this comment comes before finishing the video :P But hearing the argument against light linking is really odd. Even if it's not possible in the real world we still fake it in reality. I've been part of many shoots for products or car photography. Every shoot without exception we took a lot of shots with wildly different light setups and then mix them in post. For example with cars it was impossible to light it as you'd want in one go because a reflector that does a nice highlight on the hood would completely ruin the reflection in the wind shield and so on. Light lighting allows you to skip all those steps and not have to do a bunch of render and then post them together to get the output you want. This has been my 2 cents. Back to the video :P

join the blender dark side!!!! just kidding, I really like this format, genuinely guys -- this is a great move, its keeping up with the times. I also like what you two have to say and have had a massive impact on my development as an artist. So having a long form format to listen to you two brings me closer to the two of you and also gives you both time to expand on your thoughts!~ keep this up bros

Hey guys, I know I’m a little late to the conversation but I was wondering about a couple things: Towards the end of the talk, describing your ideal software combinations, you said you use maya (for legacy reasons) for the modeling component. Also that aside from maya, blender would be your choice for modeling - since it’s a fairly strong option for modeling. My questions are: Why do you think Blenders modeling is strong? What do you think of modo for modeling alone? How do you think the two compare? Anyway, if you get around to answering at all, thank you! Great talk about Blender!

Great episode, really enjoyed it! On the question about Blender's texturing tools - I hope too that they really improve it, but think having something simple like we have now is much better than having nothing at all. It isn't much at all useful for creating something PBR, but it works OK* if I want to quickly whip out a stylised color map or need to add some variation to a material. And I honestly think the simplicity there should be still possible if and when they develop it to something more advanced, cause you don't always need something PBR or very advanced. *terms apply

For modeling I still haven't seen a SHIFT EXTRUDE like in Max and Maya. This is an absolute must have for modeling!

Really valuable content! Keep it up guys, so I can improve my Blender game while doing some workouts, cleaning up or cooking

The only thing blender needs to become a REAL competitor and REALLY give the giants like autodesk a run for their money is a state of the art, in-depth muscle simulation system that will push high fidelity, realistic character animation to the next level. Something like ziva dynamics in maya.

I love Blender and switch both personally and professionally...but I'd never stick to it for everything. Using it for modeling and sculpting is perfectly fine for what I need. Outside of that, I'm using Substance for texturing, Marmoset for baking, Speedtree for trees and foliage, etc. I have heard, baking in base textures in Blender is a nice work flow, but I've yet to try that.

Tip for you guys, to make these episodes more engaging, add clips and or 2D renders in line with the topic of discussion. If you're talking about light linking, a video demonstrating its use would be better than seeing closeups of 2 guys for over an hour. I don't even think people would want to see a movie star's face so close for that long. Love your content. Always like listening to stuff about the Games and Films industries. Just make it engaging...

Concerning the Mac metal support, the Angle based UV stretching has been bugged for 7 months now. They recently worked on it to fix it and it should be on the 4.1.0 update.

Yeah on OCIO. OCIO environment variable pointing to OCIO folder. Then deal with the long list in Blender. Biggest hiccup for most probably learning difference when to use Output - sRGB, Utility - sRGB texture, and Utility - Linear - sRGB. Just ran a show in ACES out of Blender 3.6 and was smooth otherwise. If they had the sub folders and maybe suggested flagging for inputs like Nuke, would be helpful to those learning.

35:40 Blender has been working with people from industry for a long time, from games, vfx, scientific viz everything

For me it looks like they adopted the Autodesk Standard Surface used by Arnold, Redshift and soon Octane, as the naming and controls look very like that.

Easy HDRI is a good add-on....for me at least

There has always been a resistance against industry standards in Blender development, back in the days, it took almost a decade 10yr or so to get left mouse button to select instead of right. Which seems comically asinine today. I actually submitted a single commit in C code to the compositor node then, I revised that code four or five times and it got accepted right away. So I get it, huge project, open source, lots of ideas competing it has to be up to a certain standard. Back then I also suggested to not rewrite the UI C code from scratch when going from 2.4X to 2.5 instead use the QT C++ framework. But QT is not really open source license and could be abandoned, but I still today this many years later find Blenders GUI a bit wonky. I wonder if it's possible to instead just take the good parts, 3dviewport and such and wrap it in GTK lib to get a better, cleaner UI.

Id be really curious about both of your opinions on the UX changes in the Blender fork Bforartists. Their goal is to keep all the functionality but make it less hotkey dependant and more mouse friendly.

Blender painting tools generally get used for things like paint maps, simple masks and the npr community

Hoping to see something like Ziva coming to Blender...animating join based muscle is cumbersome....

The point of blender is not to compete with dedicated software, it's to give access to tools for ppl that wouldn't be able to do it otherwise... It was the opening talk by ton in the last blender conference.

1:07:06 if someone is not a 3D artist then how'd they know anything about 3D or what anything means and what to look for? That's the whole problem with UX and intuitiveness, because people use one software for years and years and then when they try another software and if the new software doesn't have the same buttons in the same places with the same names, they don't find it intuitive, that's confirmation bias. To them, the intuitiveness of the new software is defined by the similarity of the design to their previous software.

I have exactly the same relationship to python 😅😢 Would be so useful, but just too much of a hassle to get into properly.

What is that UV app called?

I wish blender will find a way to change the N panel, as more addons being installed, it's a chore to find tools and switch them regularly.

I know there were some plans to develop the paint tools something similar like mari there is a web were they were workign on it but it is and old plan I think they stopped it. let me find it I will share to you guys

you know how we say organic food now as some sort of label? i think art will go the same way with regards to if its ai made or organic.. think about it. you can get ai to do that creative project but it's not organic and might not "taste" or be as good as something home made with love and care. just my 2cents

I wish yall had visual examples/loops to what you are speaking about in the moments. It would be a shit ton of work but man, it would be fire.

You guys should look at womp 3d

lol, for me it's having to go to file-export, and chosing the format everytime. I wish it would just give you an export window so you can choose your format there, like in maya

As a UX designer, Blender's interface won't transcend until they realise that the interface isn't just a way for the user to interact with their technical workarounds.

Second comment gang

I feel the same way you guys feel about blender about maya. Maya crashes non stop on large projects. Tons of non stop bugs. D to set pivot point now it’s the pivot point for everything you select until you set the pivot point to a new location, get rid of the history button constant bugs revolving around that, fricken non-manifold geometry kill me now. The list goes on blender really is so much more user friendly. Maya is just not well taken care of or ever really any good fixes and upgrades. I can’t wait for blender to add in the few additional steps to put those products to bed for good. Just a better base system building to be the best in good time.

Can you talk about Gaussian Splatting next time? I would really love your thoughts on how it might effect the 3d modeling and vfx industry in the future...

Why not upgrading in aces instead of agx..

I would argue that it is industry standard for hard surface.

In what terms /only closer/ 🤔 I mean when we ultimately erase Maya from the market? The worst buggy software ever I had to use with outdated functions / render problems and extremely convoluted UI. Comparing the 2; well Maya served its time.

Light Linking is a new feature? What is this 1999?

The UV tools are utter shite and do need a total overhall. ZenUV is pretty good but you shouldnt really need addon's for bread and butter operations.

"Studios and software providers spend decades building software together to tweak it so that it fits production. Blender has been outside of that sphere for a very long time" It's FOSS. If those studios were interested in bringing it up to "industry standard", they could hire people to contribute to it.

If Maya was free, would you still move to Blender?

It would be great if Blender could be broken into several specialized softwares like sculpting, video edit, and of course, general 3D. Keeping all into one place is messy and cumbersome like a teenager’s room.

I'd really love for the people who cry about Blender missing features to donate them first before asking for features, you don't pay for this software, they don't owe you anything, the software wouldn't just develop itself

Blender 4.0.1 is horrible all the time closing by itself in cycles

talk guest is ......?? great talking points .. .. .. thx .. 💪💥🗯🔥💭❤💨🕊 sculping , modelling ,& VSE in the past boost up over a period of time and then its nearly stoped and landed harsh and stagnated. some times the community and some guys restart the engine and boost up some times.. missed oportunity. . . . but thats part of the Blender story too. ...feature wish .... subscenes. mipmaps... Evee next light link. Outliner stack/ list cntrl.... etc...etc..etc.... UV, Tex , baking, is only for hardcore fetish workaholics in blender...