Free and open source 3D creation suite Blender gets funding from Microsoft

Windows exclusive features in Blender in 3... 2... 1...

That said, it’s much easier to configure GPU support in Windows than it is In Linux, so maybe we already have that.


Last edited by damarrin on 29 July 2020 at 2:25 pm UTC

I’m always very cautious with these "good news", but thanks for the info.

What's their intentions with funding Blender?

The thing is, all the big development companies should contribute towards projects like this so that they themselves don't get put over a barrel by the companies who control the creativity software market, e.g. Adobe, Autodesk.

Windows exclusive features in Blender in 3... 2... 1...

A Windows exclusive feature is almost impossible due to the GPL licence, except for an integration of a windows only external tool, which is fine as it's not really a problem on blender side.
And €30K a year is nothing, they would need to pay at least €200k a year to justify the time and money invested to add any interesting features so I don't think Microsoft has any evil secret agenda here, they're just doing like everyone else and helping a bit the blender institute.

Oh that is damn cool. Awesome! And that puts Blender sooo close to reaching it's "20 full time developers" target too!

Blender is unstoppable!

Personnally, I would like to see something similar happen to the likes of FreeCAD or any other CAD software...

What's their intentions with funding Blender?

Primarily it's marketing: they get a good PR boost for peanuts - much less than the cost of an advertising campaign.

However, there's also the concept of "commoditise your complements." That means that all of the things that people use with your product, that you can't control directly, should have lots of competitors that people can also use with your product. If you sell cars you want there to be lots of petrol companies whose petrol your customers can use: you wouldn't want to be dependent on a single massive petrol company who might eventually produce their own car to be used with their petrol.

It doesn't have to be nefarious, it's just a standard business decision. You can see the same thing with Valve's Linux support: they don't want to be dependent on Microsoft, so they're investing in ways to make the OS a commodity that their customers can swap out as they see fit.

Never trust M$, no matter what they do, never trust them.

But I wouldn't use Blender on Windows anyway since the render time is a nightmare. You're loose approximate 25% CPU and 6% GPU performance on Windows due to Windows being Windows. Since time is money and time is a vital part of 3D rendering it's just a waste of money and time if you render larger projects.

This may be why they are sponsoring it!
Like others have said, I still don't trust them as far as I could throw mount Everest.

However, good news for the Blender team.

Damn!Microsoft is like an octopus whose tenctacles are slowly but surely infiltrating into our lives using linux as hobbyhorse.You can't trust 'em. For blender Team, money is always welcome. Hopefully they don't spend the increasing
amount of money in Las Vegas casino. Hardly. Nevertheless I hope good for Blender Team.It's interesting to see what are the results they achieve in the near future.And MS as backer, very dubious. But what this yields will reveal Whenether money from MS is good or bad.End result will tell that.

What's their intentions with funding Blender?

My guess is that all publicly traded companies that are backing Blender, are ultimately just looking out for their own best interests. Sometimes this aligns well with what also the general-public wants, game devs/publishers like Ubisoft probably just want a good reliable alternative to expensive commercial software from for example Autodesk, a win-win for everyone involved.

But some companies are backing just to have some influence. For example Blender is often showcased in hardware benchmarks, and I think that is one of the main reasons Nvidia, AMD and Intel for example are onboard. Even though they are not making any demands, a major sponsor is still a reminder not to forget to optimize for some specific hardware/platform.


Last edited by awesam on 29 July 2020 at 7:42 pm UTC

That said, it’s much easier to configure GPU support in Windows than it is In Linux, so maybe we already have that.

Since when, did I missed something? o.O

I am used to install the Linux NV closed source driver via the package manager and you're done CUDA is right onboard. (Don't know for AMD since I never had an AMD GPU in my Linux boxes)

On Windows it's pretty much the same except of a missing package manager. So basically it's slightly more complicated on Windows because you need to manually download the driver and run the exe if we're super picky here.

But I wouldn't use Blender on Windows anyway since the render time is a nightmare. You're loose approximate 25% CPU and 6% GPU performance on Windows due to Windows being Windows. Since time is money and time is a vital part of 3D rendering it's just a waste of money and time if you render larger projects.

Not to mentioned forced updates and reboots which will probably happen since it's not uncommon to have multiple machines rendering for a couple of days if not weeks for a good quality animation.

Microsoft has joined them as a 'Gold' level Corporate Member.

I really struggle with my point of view on Microsoft this year. In the past it was easy: Screw you Microsoft just decay already.

But these year I really have issues to stand that quote. Yes they do strange things like DX12 for WSL only and some other strange stuff but also they do actually good things here and there which makes it really hard to just plain hate on them. :/

blender have an inferior performance on windows than on linux.
microsoft donate to blender.

*magic happens*
blender do a lot of improvments on the performance, but those improvments only work on the windows version of blender.

its not an conspiration theory, its not malice, some platforms just happen to be better at a few things.
blender being faster on linux than on windows, has nothing to do with an platform being better than the other one, we can see this in the tons of games that run faster on windows than on linux (even some openGL and vulkan games do)

its not about what system is better, linux can be faster at 10 things while windows is at 1, if the program is designed to take advantage of this 1 thing, then windows will be faster at it.
and developers evaluate what is fast and what is not while they code their games and softwares.

for example: playstation games had better textures because there were more space to store textures, on the other hand, n64 games had more poligons because the cpu and gpu were better.
n64 had more open words with few textures, playstation was the opposite.
the load speed, etc all of those things that you take into account when you write an code.

honestly i didnt assumed malice when microsoft made WSL, but now i see the issue, wsl didnt improved the linux marketshare on baremetal, for most people, there is no reason to use linux on baremetal anymore, windows got feature parity, the only thing it didnt got was performance parity, maybe for some application that take a while to build it could make differnce, aside from those, windows will be an better platform for developers than linux is.

another thing that linux could do better than windows, was blender, then sundely microsoft donate to blender.
now blender can do 2 things with that money, improve general purpose features on both platforms (eg: add new features) or, make some optimizations for the windows version of blender, making microsoft happy and ensuring they will donate even more money.
they probably will do both, so we will end up with an better software at the end of the day, but at what cost.

Like others have said, I still don't trust them as far as I could throw mount Everest.

None of us techies seem to trust Microsoft, but somehow this does not matter. Almost all companies seem to blindly trust this corporation which has one of the dirtiest track records ever. Every crappy Microsoft product no matter how disfunctional, every suspicious deal no matter how disadvantageous, they swallow up and get entangled in its terms like if it was one of the Great Wonders. It's close to incomprehensible and deeply frustrating in a professional setting.

because microsoft dont back slash then most of the times.
they make their partners happy most of the time, so if one company decide to fight back against their monopoly, they will be by then selves, as valve is.
epic is enjoying the time that valve waste money on linux, to steal away marketshare from steam, almost everyone is doing the same.

microsoft keep their partners happy then some times they decide to compete with one of then, and for those, its already too late, they are eaten by the monster they helped to breed.
its like an deal with the devil, where you dont have any choice due to their cheer marketshare, and at the same time, its very unlikely that you will be their next victim.

speaking of Epic, fortinite was the same.
it was made to compete against an game made on the unreal, epic had all the know how that one company can ask for, in unreal, they were an gigant company trying to compete against a bunch of newcomers who got the lucky of making an sucessfull game.
pubg is still alive, but god knows for how long, well, if they managed to survive until now, they probably will be fine, but that was just an good example of what i was describing.


Last edited by elmapul on 29 July 2020 at 8:59 pm UTC

What's their intentions with funding Blender?

My guess is that all publicly traded companies that are backing Blender, are ultimately just looking out for their own best interests. Sometimes this aligns well with what also the general-public wants, game devs/publishers like Ubisoft probably just want a good reliable alternative to expensive commercial software from for example Autodesk, a win-win for everyone involved.

But some companies are backing just to have some influence. For example Blender is often showcased in hardware benchmarks, and I think that is one of the main reasons Nvidia, AMD and Intel for example are onboard. Even though they are not making any demands, a major sponsor is still a reminder not to forget to optimize for some specific hardware/platform.

optimizing for some specific hw/platform has an cost, and by donating, those companies ensure that cost will not be the excuse.

I can't fault Microsoft for, and I hope it produces better quality software for everybody.

oh, great, now i can quote an small part of the full text, this is a must have feature in any forum/comment section that most don't have!

suck it facebook!

jokes asside, most of the open source code is done by volunteers, but there is a limit on how long you can work for free when you're learning or as an side project aside from your main job.

there is nothing wrong in donating to make sure the project will have an good support for your system, the issue is when they demmand exclusivity features, that is literally paying for an company to not work.
example.
Zombie U was going to be an Xbox360 and PS3 game, but nintendo paid then to axe the Playstation and xbox versions and make it exclusively for then instead, that was literally paying then to work less, yes they saved then from the risks of not having an return of investment on the game, and they reduce their own risk of not selling consoles because they secured some sales by making everyone who wanted the game had to own their platform, but i cans see why people see this deals as harmfull for consumers.
at least when an exclusive manage to sell the console, they ensure that the consumers wont waste money on a platform with no games (since thirdy parties will come if enough people purchase the console for their exclusives, unlike what happens to linux as an gaming platform).

honestly i rather not see those exclusivity deals, but after 10 years of using linux without seeing its marketshare growing i have to admiti, this strategy works and it may be the only one who do work.

What's their intentions with funding Blender?

My guess is that all publicly traded companies that are backing Blender, are ultimately just looking out for their own best interests. Sometimes this aligns well with what also the general-public wants, game devs/publishers like Ubisoft probably just want a good reliable alternative to expensive commercial software from for example Autodesk, a win-win for everyone involved.

But some companies are backing just to have some influence. For example Blender is often showcased in hardware benchmarks, and I think that is one of the main reasons Nvidia, AMD and Intel for example are onboard. Even though they are not making any demands, a major sponsor is still a reminder not to forget to optimize for some specific hardware/platform.

optimizing for some specific hw/platform has an cost, and by donating, those companies ensure that cost will not be the excuse.

Yea, not saying that these companies backing Blender is a bad thing by any means, just that we should be realistic about the reasons/intentions they do it. It is great news regardless that Blender gets more funding

I was expecting more WHATABOUTISM using ego defense mechanism RATIONALIZING how Microsoft is GOOD or TRUSTWORTHY or I LIKE THEM, lol.

Good for Blender, and good on the community not being over CHARMED by these simple business deeds.

that's not much when split between a few developers

90,000 Euros is not much when split between a few devs? You could hire 30 devs off that. Maybe 20 after taxes, but still.

that's not much when split between a few developers

90,000 Euros is not much when split between a few devs? You could hire 30 devs off that. Maybe 20 after taxes, but still.

Depends on the developers you'd like to have. A senior programmer with decades of experience in 3D graphics could easily cost 10K€/mo (considering all the taxes).