The Blender Foundation has published a post summarising its 4 strategic development targets for 2022, as follows:
- Application Templates
Blender already supports Application Templates in an experimental state. However, users can’t easily and properly create their own stand-alone experiences powered by Blender. The authoring pipeline features, deployment and future-proof/compatibility still need to be figured out. A few application examples may be developed as use cases. - Overrides
The collection and object proxy system was fully replaced by Library Overrides in Blender 3.0. The new system exposed some long-standing complexity problems in Blender. This affected particularly the resync performance. The goal of this project is to wrap up the overrides project, assess the future of the override pipeline, address related data management issues and to hand it over to the module. - Physics
The next milestone of the Geometry Nodes project is to support physics dynamics. The first step is to handle interactive physics simulation and to find a solver that can work in real-time. This can support both point-based particles as well as hair nodes, to completely replace the old simulation system. - Texturing
The combination of node-based textures and mask painting will help towards a better non-destructive painting pipeline within Blender. Brushes management and performance are related topics that may be visited as well.
Read the original post on the Blender website.
Good news, Blender currently has a big hole in coherent dynamics.
RIP Houdini 🙁
Commercial software can’t beat completely free programs, which is a bit sad because I love H :((
Don’t go so far!
Houdini is AGES ahead in phisycs and other parts too, in procedurality in general, and their development path is steady and good, so even when Blender is improving a lot and certainly will improve in these areas too, it won’t be comparable to Houdini, it’s not the target, it’s more like being a middle ground between classic DCCs and Houdini play field.
IMHO Houdini will stay with us and if it keeps it’s evolution pace Blender will never reach it, and I hope that’s the case because this means it will push evolution in general 🙂
If blender become 1st,then competition will be dead.think about that.
wait, first will die 3ds Max, lol
If other 3d software dies, blender will charge
I hope for Blender sake they can’t RIP Houdini. It means Blender went to a place i don’t like.
Even if Blender goes the Houdini route as they seem to be going, i doubt they can’t win if Houdini stays steady.
Blender is said to be made as an DCC for everyone, but their great investment today is geo nodes which is not for everyone.
I don’t think Blender management understand that nodes at this low level restrict the application to a minority part of the artist field.
The first thing Nodes system like this fail is due to language meaning and lack intuitiveness. Plus without compounds and interface help, Geo nodes are currently inferior to Softimage XSI ICE when it arrived.
Houdini is developing physics since forever. Look how long it took to get there. Blender can manage the same in one year and less resources. Not feasible.
I believe that more efficient algorithms are showing up, i am seeing lot of stuff coming in Siggraph, etc. that are not in use, so i say that it will be possible.
The most physics are available as open whitepapers. For example from NVidia and others. Look at all the physic implementations in tyFlow for example. It’s a one man project. Those physics are not a secret of SideFX. So if a development team decides to focus on physics they can go forward relatively quickly.
😀 OK, i have a few questions for you:
– Do you think Houdini’s development stops while Blender dev goes on with the same speed?
– Do you think Blender will use the new, “more efficient algorithms” but Houdini won’t? (What about Houdini’s narrow band fluids, sparse pyro, nanoVDB, etc.?)
– Do you know what Houdini offers in dynamics & simulation? (ONLY dynamics, not going into terrain, vdb, shading, scene management, etc.!)
particles, RBD, destruction, vellum / softbody, muscle & tissue, cloth, fur & hair, grains, finite element, fluids (flip, pop, xpbd, whatever), pyro, crowd, sorry i must have missed 1 or 2! 😀
many of them interact with each other, they have modular solvers which means you can turn off features/fields you don’t need, or you can build your own solver based on the existing ones (or from scratch)
– Can you make a guess if Houdini is not developed anymore how many years it will be to bring up Blender (or any package) to the same level in dynamics?
Competing with Houdini by adding features is a MISTAKE. Competing in ease-of-use, intuitiveness (and aiming for Houdini level flexibility) TOTALLY makes sense!
That’s the weak point of Houdini, although they quite nicely work on it for the last 10 years. Simply put: atomic level node based stuff and total control is NOT for everyone, it’s a niche market.
It make no sense to compare houdini with Blender, they don’t even share functionality target.
Houdini won’t disappear because of Blender, Blender evolution has a different path than Houdini, Houdini is ageas ahead of Blender in proceduralism and dynamics, that does not mean that Blender cannot reach good results, but in general for something more specific or super charged, you will be better with Houdini.
Houdini development has a steady pace and won’t slow down IMHO, so even when Blender has also a steady and fast development pace, in some areas Blender will be behind, it’s logical.
Yes, Blender will implement new solvers, new ways of doing some things, etc… that does not invalidate Houdini evolution or quality, or the fact that houdini has a pretty amazing variety of solvers and solutions.
Houdini and Blender are a killer combo, and if you add Storm to that combo then it’s awesome, even when you can do the same you do in Storm with Houdini, Storm is way faster for what it does 🙂
You did not get it villian or you did not want to get it.
You don’t need to get 100% of what level Houdini reached to have a very functional set of Dynamics in Blender. My point based in another author is that there isn’t a secret proprietary source to have good dynamics in a software. so unachievable by Blender.
My wish is that Blender Foundation contact Universities and author papers for them to start presenting their Siggraph prototypes already in Blender.
Now i agree with last part of your post. But that agree also with TubeSmokeGuy and his Tyflow reference.
Pffff. Houdini is fine don’t worry….
Their market share increase years after years in film and even game industry.
While Blender, there is less than 3 movies in existence made with it lol…
And for trying Blender a bit, it’s a joke when you start scratching the surface and want large scale project setups.
Even if Blender is the king for noobs and amateurs, Houdini is in the stratosphere in comparison.
I’m still waiting for a 3dsmax like “edit modifier” for blender in the GeoNodes
No plan for character animation update?