Cogumelo Softworks have released the BakeTool add-on on the Blender Market.
BakeTool is the In-House solution developed by Cogumelo Softworks for Bake Rendering with Cycles. For those that work with Interactive Ambient , Arch Viz, Games… and need a Bake Solution for your Assets, Full scenes, High Poly to Low Poly Normal Maps and others, Bake Tool is just what you need.
BakeTool sells for $14.95 on the Market.
23 Comments
This really looks great. Thanks.
You are obnoxious.
They're also not wrong. The idea of paid plug-ins for a free program is asinine and kind of defeats the purpose of OPEN SOURCE. I don't mind paying for training materials, which I've done many times with Blender, but this... THIS is obnoxious.
Have you looked at the store? A 99$ water shader, models (which by all
rights belong on BlendSwap instead) that are no where NEAR pro quality
being sold at TurboSquid prices, and a couple of "modestly improved
functionality" scripts. With the exception of Contour Topo and Assest
Sketcher add-ons, there is nothing there worth it's pricing, and that's the problem. What normally would be released into the community as free now has a price tag attached because of people thinking that they should be paid for being creative, even if the work doesn't warrant it. CG Cookie and BI should be ashamed, as should all of the people trying to squeeze $20 per transaction out of a 12hr coding/modeling session. Boo!
BI? You mean Blender Institute?
The Blender Market is a completely independent project organized by CG Cookie, Inc. It's not related to the Blender Institute nor the Blender Foundation by any means.
On their website it says "Support the Blender Foundation" where it should say "Support Blender Development" instead. Since the money goes to Blender Development fund (straight to the developers), not the Foundation. The only way to support the Blender Foundation at the moment is by donating directly, getting a Blender Cloud subscription or any other product (DVD, USB, t-shirt, etc) from the Blender e-shop.
Well, I stand corrected and fully apologize (even edited the post, don't want to soil Ton and Blender's good name), from my reading the "store" was sanctioned by BI and BF and hosted by CG Cookie, incorrect as I see now. Honestly thanks for the info Pablo. I do stand by my original point though, that promoting this kind of micro-transaction mentality in our little community will distract from money going to actual development, versus code studios setting up little monopolies on certain functions of Blender for profit a'la Adobe & Autodesk.
Hi KeenTrager and birdsong, Thanks for share your thoughts about it. Looks like there's some confusion about Open Source and Freeware here... There is no contradiction in a Open Source payed app. Take a Look in Unreal Engine 4, MySQL and so on... BakeTool is yet GPL, does not matter how you get it, just go on...
BakeTool is payed cause as a Company we need to raise some money to keep developing our others Free add-ons (BoolTool, Graph Theme). You can choose do not buy it and i share your opinion that some other items in BlenderMarketing are overpriced but take a look on the Videos about BakeTool and just compare with other similar payed solutions in other softwares like Flatirion http://www.texturebaking.com/ that cost $1199,00 when our solution cost $15,00, I think there's a lot of value for that price.
Hello Victor,
Thanks for the feedback, and let me say first, the
plugin definitely looks like a time saver with a good implementation.
So on that kudos. Second, your commitment to expanding Blender is
admirable... but I believe misguided. I don't mean this as any kind of
disparagement, only a clarification of my issue. To that, I think it is
you that have the mistaken distinction between "freeware" and "open
source" - freeware code is owned by the proprietor, open source code is
owned by the community. The entire point of OPEN SOURCE is that the
code is available to freely peruse and modify. With paid plug-ins you
are asserting a right of ownership over that code, which as I said, is
counterproductive to the community as a whole. While it's true open
source doesn't automatically mean free, the idea behind it is if your
code has merit, submit it to the community and let us judge if it should
be part of the branch. I understand the need to finance projects,
believe me, but, doing so in this manner is kind of a slap in the face
to those artists and developers that give freely to the community that
has so generously, and without premium, given to us (especially
considering the other avenues of generating revenue for your project). It's not an issue of price or comparative value, it is one of principle.
About that good guys that done all the good stuff for free... Google it: "BoolTool" , "Graph Theme" , "DataBlock Tool" and "Vitorbalbio Patch" So i think i'm included on that team i'm not? Are you speaking as the entire Blender Community, but look you're not. There's a lot of people that are anxious to see more companies spend your worktime to invest and improve Blender capabilities in areas when BF don't have time or interest to invest, myself and some staff from BF included. If you think it's a lack of principles, maybe you want to revise its principles. As a final word about it, 10% of the BakeTool receipts are destined for Blender Foundation Development Found.
Hi KeenTrager and birdsong, Thanks for share your thoughts about it. Looks like there's some confusion about Open Source and Freeware here... There is no contradiction in a Open Source payed app. Take a Look in Unreal Engine 4, MySQL and so on... BakeTool is yet GPL, does not matter how you get it, just go on...
BakeTool is payed cause as a Company we need to raise some money to keep developing our others Free add-ons (BoolTool, Graph Theme). You can choose do not buy it and i share your opinion that some other items in BlenderMarketing are overpriced but take a look on the Videos about BakeTool and just compare with other similar payed solutions in other softwares like Flatirion http://www.texturebaking.com/ that cost $1199,00 when our solution cost $15,00, I think there's a lot of value for that price.
"The idea of paid plug-ins for a free program is asinine and kind of defeats the purpose of OPEN SOURCE."
Even free programs take money to develop, upkeep, improve and host. Whether it's someone else's valuable time, or some else's server costs to deal with. Of course, you never worry about the practical side of "free" because you're the one benefiting the most from it.
You're just complaining because there's a dollar sign involved--never mind if in accessing this development, you're helping its development with continual support and some of this goes back to Blender Foundation. You automatically conclude that anything doing such is detrimental to FOSS development, but disregard how much other means simply fall short.
And no, it isn't asinine or defeating the purpose of open-source in making available commercial solutions. You don't understand the philosophy of "open source" very well.
How do you think Red Hat Enterprise Linux exists? Professionals invest in it, getting a level of focused development and customer service that you simply won't get with your standard Linux. it's a specialized product that can only exist from a sure support, which, in turn, their customers get back customer service and their needs addressed. The price has a purpose, and no, it's not greed--it's ensuring a quality development.
The open-source license with Blender not only allows this sort of thing, but Blender Foundation themselves okay what Blender Market is doing, because it supports them, too. This market is an opportunity for growth with Blender that no other means provides.
Blender Market allows developers--most of whom being people who already give back plenty to the Blender community--to focus on better and more complex developments, by having a better means of support than relying on donations, which, by and large, simply does not work. Everyone leans on the next guy to donate, and even when people donate, it's not consistent.
Vitor Balbio, the creator of BakeTool here, is already a generous developer in this community. He developed BoolTool, which is free, and this market probably won't affect his generous nature. He's just seeking some stabler support for one of his better developments--so that it can continue to grow.
When you've got a bigger idea, development in your spare time doesn't work too well, because, more times than not, , it ends up being dropped in priority with your time. But this market raises that priority of one's time. It gives them time back to develop.
These developers give far more back to Blender than you ever will, so it they seek a little more reliable means of support for one of their better projects, dammit, don't you of all people dare judge them!
@keentrager:disqus Oh, did they copy my water shader? :D
Are there some plans to include some of this plugin's functionality into future Blender builds?
There is no plans for this in the near future
Great stuff, good to see such a proactive approach from studios. It's a shame to see such negative comments, though. I don't see any reason someone shouldn't profit from developing for an open source project.
Thanks! Some guys don't understand Open Source and Freeware are different...
it is ok to "pay" for work in some way, or lets say, to receive positive feedback. but there are more valuing sytemes than just money. positiv feedback could also be possibilities, connections, experience and things like that.
for me, it just motivates me to learn python and write my own plugins. but not to sell them.
with blender i use a software, which is made by alot of people, simply because they share the idea of free creative/design software. if i use this software pakage, i see no reason, why i should sell the tools/input i create for this pakage/software/idear. that totally makes no sense to me. i get the software for 0€/$ but (for me) it comes with some kind of promise (especially if one dont have the mooney to donate):
i use the sofware/pakage/idear for free(!), but if i make usefull tools/mechanics/tweaks for it, i (will) share them. Thats the way to keep it runnung and to "positive-feedback" in a "not-with-money" way.
someone has worked "for free" before, to give one the posibilitie to write plugins, selling them seems to ignore this fact.
Hi Paul,
We are a small studio from Brazil, and we have done already some great things for Blender such as Graph Theme and BoolTool add-on. Now we need raise some money to keep developing Baketool and our other Add-ons. We want to help BF to keep blender development as well, so we’re assigning 10% of all sales for the BF Development Found, that’s our way to say Thanks to BF for all the good stuff that they have done.
thats awesome. really. nothing against you or your work, i really appreciate it.
the thing that bugs me is the acess restriction. i dont know how hard it is to pay all this development, but from my art-student point of view i would have liked it (not just your verry helpfull addon, i refer to most of the blender market thing) more, if the "gathering money" would work like some kikstarter-ish thing.
idea, rise money, bam.
i think at my point its about calculating more with "have" than with "probably would have".
I don't know why I'm so surprised at how ignorant and entitled some people are.
Anyway, congrats to the developer for making a tool that people are finding useful.
I think you just have an issue with the idea of addons being sold, regardless of the reason why. I think you're automatically against anything with a dollar sign on it concerning Blender--never mind if that just might be what brings support to developers to continue improving their developments.
Man, every time these Market pages appear, people complain, making bogus arguments against them. It just reaffirms to me that this community at large is hopeless. So much ready stone-throwing around here.
Maybe Blender needs to officially break off into two branches: The amateur hobbyist majority who readily disapprove to all dollar signs (regardless of the reason), and the students and professionals who invest in these serviced developments, seeing the bigger picture of how much these support Blender.
I bet the latter branch would be highly-advanced, up-to-date with industry standards, and on par with other commercial solutions with a couple years.
By the way, I'm so buying this addon. Nice work, Vitor!
Thanks for all your kind words, that give us certain that we're in the right path to improve Blender as software, community and eco system. Hope you have a great experience with BakeTool =)