Thread by @pablodp606

So, it seems that "Blender should focus on performance so it can be used in realistic AAA VFX and games" is a perfectly valid opinion but "this development is focused on stylized art" is problematic, controversial and something that should be avoided.
A thread:

Note: here I'm using "stylized" in the same context as these discussions, where is often used to describe basically anything that is not the AAA VFX and games default look.

I've been reading similar arguments since I started developing for Blender, especially after publishing the blog post about the asset creation pipeline.

I know there are a lot of people that support the proposal and the main ideas behind it, but I would like to make some quick replies to some common ideas I've been reading, so you know my opinion on the subject:

> Pablo is developing features that are only useful for his style! They are useless for serious productions!

It is not "my style" as if development was only useful for me. I'm not the only artist in the world that focuses on stylized, which is as serious as any other style.

> The community wants features for AAA studios like PERFORMANCE! Nobody asked for those toys!

If some members of the community are entitled to talk about stylized art as irrelevant and a corner use case, don't expect those artist to be involved in those discussions.

Also, it is very naive to think that the Blender community websites are groups of people full of diversity where all opinions and requirements are represented equally.
Quite the opposite in my opinion.

> This makes Blender useless for other artists that focus on photorealism!

Photorealism is an art direction choice, not a technical specification. If you are skilled enough you can reproduce a photo with pen a paper with 0GB of RAM running at 0GHz.

Photorealism in CGI does not have to mean using the tools as if they were a full physic simulator. There is no need to use a polygon per elemental particle in order to make something look like a photo.

Artists have been doing VFX and photorealistic artworks since forever. VFX was always about triking the audience into believing something is real using any kind of tool. Throwing huge amounts of data to a computer is just one way of making VFX, not THE way of making VFX

> Software should always be designed for AAA VFX and games, other artists will also benefit from that!

True, because art fundamentals are the same, but the experience will never be optimal. This is basically how the often proposed "industry standard" workflow is designed.

There is a huge variety of art styles with their own set of requirements and features that is worth prioritising and explore, as it is a real need for a lot of people.

In fact, I'm completely sure that VFX artists will also benefit from having a software build with this different approach, instead of yet another implementation of the same workflow, with the exact same pros and cons.

The issue here is assuming that the VFX AAA workflow is the ultimate technical achievement every software product should aim for. This considers development targeting the needs of any other artist as a subset of the REAL SERIOUS STUFF, "nice to have" or "irrelevant toys for kids"

> OH NO! Blender will only be used to make cute childish art! This will DESTROY the project!

- Nobody said that
- You are pointing at something *a lot* of people enjoy and calling it a problem, a limitation, and something that will ruin the project. That is the main issue here

> The highest quality studios in the world are making AAA VFX and games! Blender should be there!

Look at the size of the mobile gaming industry or kids content.
When it comes to revenue and market size, it looks like the "serious AAA productions" are the corner case.

If you are concerned about contributions from studios and job opportunities for Blender, I don't see a problem here. A lot of high highly successful entertainment products we have today don't require this "high end" approach to software design.

Also, friendly reminder that your idea of the "highest quality" and most important studio/production is not universal. Working on those VFX studios and games is not everyone's ultimate art goal and dream job.

> Who are YOU to decide what Blender should focus on?

I didn't decide anything. All features I designed are following the same principles that were already in the software since forever.

Every technical decision will have an impact on how the art that come out of software will look like. This is something that happens with every single art software available.

Identifying what are the strengths and weaknesses of the software for certain styles and workflows is key to make coherent designs and technical decisions. That is all.

Improving the performance of a random area of a software won't make it ready for "serious VFX" workflow and art style. There has to be a feasible technical implementation, tooling, UI and content design behind it to properly support those particular needs.

If you have a plan to make the existing codebase fit perfectly the established AAA VFX workflow, we are obviously willing to hear it.
But a plan is not "Just make it faster, more stable and all features available everywhere, that will make Blender the Industry Standard".

> Blender is broken even for stylized art! I can't work with it!

True, currently Blender has parts that due to the amount of legacy code are broken to a point that there are impossible to fix in a meaningful way.
This is why we have the plan on how to tackle these issues.

Even if most of the features are there, they are presented in a disorganized way, scattered across different development branches. We know that this situation is not ideal and that is where we want to focus our efforts.

Despite the limitations, I still believe that it is possible to get nice results and workflow efficiency with the current state of development.

As there is not a fully objective way to measure "workflow efficiency", I can only back up this claim with the artworks I've been doing, which are done with a computer that only has Blender installed.

That said, trying to replicate the workflow from other software in Blender won't be a nice experience. Features are just not designed to work that way. This has also always been this way.

In conclusion, most of these discussions sound similar to "You only play mobiles games, you are not a True Gamer. Play Real Games to understand what being a Gamer is".

This is not a discussion on how features can be used for creating different styles or how their design can be improved. These comments are a "how you DARE not care about creating REAL PROFESSIONAL ART with OUR SOFTWARE".

What concerns me is that having community websites and Blender related content full of messages shaming everything that is not a AAA VFX production is effectively gatekeeping the project.

The idea of "here we discuss the REAL ISSUES of REAL PRODUCTIONS, not childish simplistic artworks" creates a hostile environment for a lot of people. Which, in my opinion, is a much bigger issue for a community project than not being able to sculpt with millions of polygons.

And that is basically it.
Here is Taroumaru.
It may not have millions of polygons, but everyone likes him.