Blender Institute Announces Blender Cloud Plans
The Blender Institute has just published their concept for a ‘Blender Cloud’ on the Blender wiki. The project aims to replace the current Blender e-shop business of ‘selling plastic’, and to offer file hosting, collaboration and asset sharing solution which is fully integrate with Blender. A first version for testing should be ready early February. You can follow the project on the Blender wiki and through its Blender Developer project.
What would you most like to see in a Blender Cloud system?
Not quite sure I understand, is it like Unity’s Asset store? https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/ The asset store has many scripts, models, and animations for sale. Unity gets a very nice cut to it and I’m sure if Blender has the same it would earn the Blender Foundation a fair amount as well. If we look at it from a financial standpoint, Unity (and its asset sellers) have earned over 100k maybe more just in the past year.
Or maybe looking from the users perspective, the Unity asset store’s original purpose was to allow tiny to small studios the chance to professional create games on par with the big AAA games (sounds a little similar with Blender Foundations goal and vision?) If the Blender cloud is similar to this, I’m sure it’s going the be a game changer for the Blender scene and the industry as a whole.
Maybe one thing I’d like to see on top of this is a platform where you can put out your own professional training that you can sell. This will encourage people to put out some professional tutorials and blender will get a cut as well, helping everybody. Probably something like (http://www.cgcircuit.com) Where you have people selling tutorials as little as a few dollars.
Something which would be great for archviz users, would be a material library, for easy assignement to imported models.
I think that a basic material library would be essential to make blender more user friendly. I’d prefer some to be in the base download or maybe the base image, like the cube and lamp are.
Having an on line library would be great too… but take care that Blender is not becoming a cloud-only product!
Cloud computing and cloud rendering? so we can use the power of the cloud to render and use blender…
I sign under!!
Replace? As in their getting rid of the training stuff?
What about merely moving it? :)
From reading the WIKI this sounds a little like CG Cookie, especially in terms of the dissemination of tutorials. I use Blender Cookie all the time. Love it.
The basic economic tenet worth applying here is: give away the abundance, and sell the scarcity.
The Blender software itself, along with all the digital assets, tutorial materials etc cost nothing to distribute, hence we get them for free. But the time of the developers and trainers, and creators of those materials, is scarce, therefore we should pay for that. Perhaps this cloud service could offer online access to those developers, trainers and asset creators, on a fee-paying basis.
In fact, sounds like there’s some overlap with the Blender Network concept. Could there be a merging of the two?
I do not want to see Blender switch to cloud applications :(
also this method seems a bit odd, as it looks as if the software will be free but the service required to use it will not be free. it wouldn’t really be a point to download something if it’s core functionality is void
A suggestion would be a “Kickstarter” type feature where users can pay developers for certain features.
Im sorry but the original plan looks poor. The foundation is not addressing Blenderartists, Blendswap, not to mention the old Blender.org discussion forum, which are all extremely valuable resources.
There is a lot of fragmentation here and nobody is working to integrate and monetize it following the right path.
The Blender network is closed for those who can’t afford it, there is no clear link to an open channel.
Overall a real mess.
I personally feel like a cloud service where people post and download content integrated into blender would be a little bit odd and would take away from the DIY feel of blender… frankly seems a little unprofessional. I am sure if it was added this then many of the images and content posted made with blender would start to turn into reused stuff instead of the many self made (sometimes laughable but creative) content we are used to seeing in our forms today. I am sure that many of the newbies to blender would instead of trying to create stuff from scratch, would instead turn to pre-made models and not really learn anything but to “copy and paste.”
not to forget that we are making a lot of progress in our reputation of blender and are finally starting to shed the “amateur” Image that many in the professional CG community used to see blender as, if all of the sudden forums are spammed with images re-used content by the newbies it will turn us into a laughing stock and by beginners we will be compared to as an alternative to “Alice 3D.” lets not forget that Daz Studio revolves around this concept and all I have seen from it are images I should probably report and ads I keep trying to mute. even though some users will only start to use this as a tiny shortcut, if its easy enough it will turn into a nasty habit.
Its like the introduction of Social Networking into computers: we hand mankind a device capable of alternate reality and complex simulations that can be calculated in a fraction of a millisecond, and most people use it to send short, poorly written messages to each other and then the developers see these people as their targeted marketing group and you end up with Windows 8. you hand a child a computer in the 80’s and tell him to play around with it years later they will be a computer genius… today you hand a child a tablet all they will be is dependent on technology for the rest of their lives and probably see something they should not that ends up ruining their lives. Its the instinct of beginners to take the accessible easy way of “use” without exploring its deep foundation avoiding any cumbersome work doing it themselves and then spreading the image of their platform based on their shallow experience calling themselves “users”…
long story short noobs flock, pro’s leave and not many are made.
Though I am not opposed to the development of this service as long as its not integrated into blender as a “Lightbox” style menu (at least without an add-on.) and I would like to see this feature a way to watermark your uploaded content in the final render (I know that may be hard to achieve development wise without some crazy change the file structure)
all that being said I have the upmost confidence in Ton and the blender foundation as well as the entire blender community that they will continue to make developments that will keep putting blender on the map. and I would like to remind everybody that making blender “mainstream” is not to be taken too literally (like simplified interfaces)
okay that’s my rant…
So you currently feel Blender manages to be both having a “DIY feel” and be “professional” at the same time?
Interesting…
the thing about “cloud services” is that it’s often cold and locked up; i.e. they control all the content and only give the users a small portion.
Sir I am Deepak S Engineer from India, How to subscribe to Blender Cloud yearly subscription in Rupees as i am unable to pay it in terms of Dollars or Pounds. Also do let me know the charges for yearly subscription.
Thank you
Please contact the Blender Cloud about this; they may not see this comment.
Thanks for your kind reply, I am unable to pay through paypal. Hopefully pls let me know when you accept the subscription in Rupees, then i shall pay it for all the hard work for which you all guys deserve.
Thankyou