Autodesk is evil. They buy out all the competition, kill any perpetual licensing, increase the prices and then kill the project when all the value is extracted.
this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
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I still canโt wrap my head around Blender. Itโs so different from Maya. Someday I can dedicate a week to learn Blender.
5 years of on and off trying and I still can't make the doughnut in blender...........
SolidWorks, the most commonly used alternative to Autodesk stuff, is French
Solidworks is nice, but also super expensive.
You can get Solidworks for about $50/year for personal use. Thatโs cheaper than many entertainment streaming services. Itโs not the full suite, but IMO itโs enough to be a really good deal for the features you do get.
FreeCAD or I will go back to my pencil, tee square and compass!
I have used AutoDesk products, (anyone remember starting AutoCad at a DOS prompt? I do), and Solid Works professionally. I have tried Fusion, OnShape, (taught a class to senior high school students for a few years), Solid Edge, and a host of lessor open source projects. All of them suck in some fashion. They are all waiting to trash your 100 hours of design sweat, (I got all the tee shirts). And if that's the case, I'm not paying $50US a year for SW. I will wear the sackcloth and ashes of FreeCAD instead. At least it didn't cost me anything to lose my work.....
Iโve struggled to learn freecad. The flow through the toolset just doesnโt mesh with my brain. Iโve used Maya, 3DSMax, Sketchup, even Blender, but for some reason FreeCAD just doesnโt do it for me. I still hope to figure it out, free is better, and Iโm glad itโs out there.
Oh, like IKEA?
Another reason to use Blender!
Blender was also used to create Flow, the Best Animated Feature at the Academy awards and the Golden Globe awards.
Such an incredible win for open source. I need to get my ass to the cinema and see it.
I watched half of it but didn't get it
As someone who appreciates open source, there are plenty of reasons in addition to the Dutchness to choose blender.
... Is another reason that the logo has orange in it?
I use blender for 3d modeling, renders, then 3d print. Plus it automatically updates with steam.
So useful with huge online support and free. Can't beat that.
Everything automatically updates if you use Linux...
Good to know! More reasons to join Linux!
Correct. These are both examples of software. Good job ๐
The problem is often academic capture. Universities teach Autodesk software and most companies expect you to use Autodesk software.
Blender also isn't really a CAD software. There are other free CAD programs, like open scad and FreeCAD (is that the name) but I've heard mixed opinions on whether they're really up to the task of replacing Autodesk.
Neither is Maya, the listed Autodesk product which Blender directly (and somewhat successfully) competes against.
FreeCAD covers a lot of ground, but is most comparable to Inventor from the Autodesk suite. I still think Inventor wins out but FreeCAD has made leaps and bounds recently.
Autodesk is more than CAD, like Adobe is more than Photoshop
My animation program teaches mostly blender :) But itโs in Europe
And it's animation, not architecture and engineering.
Confusingly, this post is about (animation) movie creation software. Namely : Maya (from Autodesk) v.s. blender
It's indeed confusing. The Wikipedia title says one thing, but the sidebar says another?
i got confused myself ... first I thought it was about CAD software ... then read many comments ... then noticed something was wrong ... then looked again carefully at this image of wiki and thought : okay, this is confusing ... I can say more ... do not know more.
Blender can be used for scripting though, via its BPY.
Recently integrated that in a Django project for checking and correction of uploaded 3D models.
Blender is without competitor in that regard, especially with these capabilities.
My high school STEM classes taught us how to use Autodesk Inventor and I can use it very well now but itโs hard to pick up another CAD software without it feeling weird.
That's why your school got it for pennies.
That's why Apple sells at near cost to schools.
Walk into the garden, don't mind the walls, enjoy your stay, you won't want to leave.
If you are under 16 you can buy my heroine for half price. First hit is free.
And ultimately this is why I want governments and international organizations funding foss cad software. The tools for innovation should be publicly accessible without such expensive costs. And it's the sort of thing that society will benefit from every jackass having access to
Can't agree more.
I'll add, from a organisational risk perspective, a government should ensure its not locked into reliance on corporations. There's certainly an assumption especially in the government's I work in, Microsoft 365 has no viable alternative. Yet that itself should be warning for the ACSC or signals directorate invest in open code such that if the provider aligns with a country you change positions on, you can fork your code, tender off its continued support to new maintainers, and continue on.
Well, I know that ultimately nobody will get in trouble even if fears became reality. Everyone will put up their hands and say "we couldn't see this coming and we had no alternative so there's nothing that could have been done to prevent it.". It's just a disappointment that it becomes a missed opportunity for taxpayer investments to be invested, instead of lost to corporate fees straight overseas.
Autodesk = Adobe
Dat is geweldig, dat wist ik helemaal niet eens, joh!
Did not know Blender is Dutch. Awesome!
Itโs kinda funny how much FOSS stuff is dutch, Lemmy.world for example is also Dutch.
Makes sense since we Dutch are know to be stingy people and we all pirate software.
And Python
The future starts in the Netherlands as always
Did not know that either - I've recently discovered that a lot of the things I use are already European!
I'd recommend looking into the history of it a little. it's crazy how committed this guy was to the idea of blender and more importantly his principles.
in the last few years blender went from being a joke to not only formidable competition but possibly the best software for a lot of use cases. funnily enough blender3d is probably the best 2d animation tool out there.
I also remember blender was considered a hobbyist tool and in last couple of years it has been used more and more for hardcore professional stuff (note that I'm not in the field to know the specifics, might be for much longer).
Here's to hoping FreeCAD reaches similar status!
yeah that's what I meant. it was updated at a snail's pace up until 2.8, and then the dam broke. it's been getting updated so fast now it's hard to keep up honestly. somehow it doesn't feel as bloated as Adobe AI or PS.
Must be really exciting for people who have been using it for a longer time! And I have heard that adobe products have gotten really slow. Thankfully I don't need them.
affinity's apps blow them out of the water in terms of performance. and unlike Adobe's suite they actually work well with each other. meanwhile adobe products call the same filter different things on each app, pen tool works differently on each app, etc.
affinity suite is not FOSS but they only sell you major versions (1.0, 2.0) once and you get all updates until the next major version for free. obviously you don't even need to buy new major versions (although 2.x is so much better than 1.x) and can keep using your version without paying anything forever. so 1000x better than Adobe's ~~extortion~~ subscription plans.
I've heard people praise and was excited adobe has a competitor. I know I'm not the target group for such apps but it still makes me sad that they don't support linux.
I know someone who really wants to switch fully to linux and stop dualbooting, but they can't due to professional software in their fields not being supported on linux :( hope this changes or that our beloved FOSS apps gain similar momentum as Blender.
to be fair serif (affinity's company) is tiny compared to Adobe. so they have had pretty limited resources and it makes sense they targeted Windows and Apple systems, which is where nearly 100% of designers are.
but they got bought by canva, so that could be good or bad. they put out a pledge to not enshittify affinity but a company's word has no worth we'll wait and see. but maybe there's a remote chance they might look into Linux support in the future now that they have more money behind them.
still a very risky move for a business. it makes much more sense for FOSS apps to do that but design apps are a huge undertaking.
gimp just released a major update and I downloaded it, jesus christ it still is unusable for an actual designer, and looks fugly to boot. this is not up to hate on gimp but these projects just usually don't have actual designers working on them so there's only so much coders can do.
I think there's a barrier to entry. we should think about an ecosystem where designers can contribute to such projects without the need to understand how software works. anytime someone mentions git my eyes glaze over.
Yeah I fully understand that a small team can't support linux if most of the customers are on mac/windows.
I agree with everything you wrote - the same person I mentioned earlier is not a coder but would love to contribute in design (already does with language), but finds it very difficult.
The ecosystem could be similar to the translation tools for FOSS that are quite nice!