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Blender Apps

code.blender.org

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Seems like Godot already does what Blender Apps does much better:

- Godot is great at importing Blender models/scenes.

- Blender is GPL, Godot is MIT.

- Godot produces much lighter .exe files. Blender Apps are at least 200MB.

- Godot has web export, too.

Godot still has stability issues that can affect larger projects (presently over 7000 open issues on Github[1]) but for smaller demos and art things Godot usually is pretty solid.

[1] https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues

Blender apps as described here seem to be for an entirely different class of use cases. Basically stripped-down versions of Blender itself rather than games, art or whatever. Blender used to have a "game engine" that was more like what I understand Godot to be, but IIRC scrapped it.

> Basically stripped-down versions of Blender itself

Okay, that makes sense. The video on the linked Blender Apps page shows this really simple app where one drags models around and then drags materials onto the models to give the model that material. So something simple like that would work better in Godot. But Blender's 3D modeler is way more powerful than Godot's but has a very steep learning curve so distributing a simpler version of Blender's modeler could definitely make sense.

So this opens up a ton of possibilities for distributing content creation tools.

But the licensing is problematic.

>General Public License

Unlike making a 3D modeling app in Unity , you have to open source your Blender derived app.

Up until I read that line I assumed it exported some binary which could be closed sourced. I personally want content creation tools, but I respect programers don't want to work for free.

The licence isn't problematic, a blender app is a customized version of blender so of course it inherits the blender licence. If someone wants a closed blender there are many alternatives

> Up until I read that line I assumed it exported some binary which could be closed sourced. I personally want content creation tools, but I respect programers don't want to work for free.

This is for artists, not programmers. And art assets don't have to follow code licenses. Ie. You have to share your code but you can keep copyright to your assets.

So would it more be for an artist to distribute their assets in an easy to edit format?

No it's to share visualisations and stuff, similar to a game, but let's face it - the code is going to be incredibly basic, generic and not worth protecting.

Something like a BIM architecture app will be a good idea. Blender makes some progress on this, but an architect or a civil engineer needs an architect gui.

I also hope some day the blender UI becomes a separate gui toolkit for non graphics app. Like a file manager

lots of users could benefit the power from blender yet as a newcomer there is a learning curve that could be solved with an app for a specific usage

While Blender already lets you make workspaces as sparse as you like them, Apps focused on specific usage can make complex 3D + ffmpeg + python options more approachable. A ‘.blendx’ focused on Resizing video, Making quick cuts, Exporting to GIF, MP4 other formats would be handy, e.g.

[Media Viewer by Blender Studio](https://studio.blender.org/blog/media-viewer-by-blender-stud...) looks solid. I want to see more of the ‘Review’ / ‘Annotation’ tools.

200MB for a bundle? I think that's a little large, but I hope they are going to work on making that smaller.

200MB for the core + video, image, material assets does sound large. Checking the last 10 phone apps I updated showed they were @ 150MB - 300MB -- Not a great precedent, but bundle size is unlikely to faze people if the app provides them utility.

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