>Epic Games, as part of the company’s $100 million Epic MegaGrants program, is awarding the Blender Foundation $1.2 million in cash to further the success of Blender, the free and open source 3D creation suite that supports the full range of tools empowering artists to create 3D graphics, animation, special effects or games.
>The Epic MegaGrants initiative is designed to assist game developers, enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, students, educators, and tool developers doing outstanding work with Unreal Engine or enhancing open-source capabilities for the 3D graphics community.
>The Epic MegaGrant will be delivered incrementally over the next three years and will contribute to Blender’s Professionalizing Blender Development Initiative.
>“Having Epic Games on board is a major milestone for Blender,” said Blender Foundation founder and chairman Ton Roosendaal. “Thanks to the grant we will make a significant investment in our project organization to improve on-boarding, coordination and best practices for code quality. As a result, we expect more contributors from the industry to join our projects.”
>“Open tools, libraries and platforms are critical to the future of the digital content ecosystem,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games. “Blender is an enduring resource within the artistic community, and we aim to ensure its advancement to the benefit of all creators.”
let the sperg have this one so that it goes back to its keyboard/headphone containment thread
Lucas Howard
>over the next 3 years lamo Reminder that Blender is about the same age as Houdini, yet its devs are surviving on peanuts(over 3 years) while Houdini its basically dominating the industry and making billions every single year.
Bentley Mitchell
Is this a sign that the game industry wants to leave Autodesk's products (Maya & 3ds Max) behind?
Michael Sanchez
Houdini is a commercial application, while Blender is legally free-of-charge which leaves them dependent primarily on community donations which are completely optional.
Cameron Kelly
I'm 100% sure that there is a catch to this, there is no way this is a donation for the single purpose of actually helping a project. Mark my words.
Hudson Torres
Maybe they should've started selling it, including source.
Jaxson Hill
>blender is now an exclusive download from epic games store™
Angel Wood
>kills gaming on linux >"you have to support free software" fuck this guy
Logan Richardson
Well then, looks like Blender is going down the shitter (Unreal Engine injection).
Fuck epic games and fuck anti-competitive game engines
Bentley Thompson
it's a value-add for ue4. blender's the only FOSS editor that can actually serve in a ue4 workflow, but it's not 100%. epic has been improving blender's fbx exporter for years.
they know paying for even a cheap maya license turns off indies, and indies are the most profitable bit of ue4 and its marketplace
Epic is so based and steamlets will continue whining.
Parker Adams
Epic has also been working on GLTF compatibility in UE4 (which seems to be a great open standard alternative to Autodesk's FBX) and while it's still in beta as of yet, it's looking pretty good so far.
IMO get behind usd or there will just be a bunch of competing "standards"
Daniel Flores
this. they're not gonna toss money at FOSS projects unless it benefits them in some way. which is fine by me but Jow Forums brainlets are probably getting their hopes up that they'll support random lunix and shithub projects
Yeah because blender ui isnt why its a useless piece of shit
Asher Cox
okay, this is epic
Asher Williams
He means that he's never making his own software FOSS.
Also, Ton completely squandered the previous funds he got from Epic to fix Blender's shitty FBX support. This new donation will not be used for anything worthwhile.
Jose Butler
Blender also used to be commercial software, but ended up failing on the market, so rather than discontinuing it and letting it die they made it open source.
Jason Barnes
1 good thing, 10 bad
Eli Brown
>Tencent buys unreal and unity giving China total control over the most accessible game engines >China controls virtually all triple A and indie games What a shame. Every hobby goes to hell once it hits the mainstream anyway.
Joseph Edwards
>>Tencent buys unreal and unity giving China total control over the most accessible game engines did they acquire them both fully? Well at least unreal's source is available
Colton Rodriguez
blender are a bunch of redpilled brazilains
Adrian Campbell
It's a sign that Epic Games might want them to
Parker Ramirez
>Tencent Only cares about money, actually
Dylan Torres
I can see Microsoft acquiring Unity before this happens.
Nathaniel Martin
reminds me of that butt coin rich faggot that donated to gnome