Adobe winks at the Blender community by joining the Blender Foundation

Adobe is one of the greats and their software is certainly a greed or an unattainable dream for Linux users, since to date we only have to settle for alternatives (of which many are very good) and with this it is to think that he simply has no intention of turning to the free software community ... Or at least that's what many of us thought until now.

And it is that recently the news was released that Adobe has joined to the development fund of Blender Foundation as a "Corporate Gold" member, with which it will make a financial contribution of 30.000 euros each year to help the development of open source 3D modeling software and its community. The announcement was made yesterday by both parties.

Adobe officially joined the Blender Development Fund as a Corporate Gold member, joining companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Epic Games, NVIDIA, AMD, Unity, AWS, Tangent Labs, Ubisoft, Intel, Google, and more.

But that's not all, since plus adobe too wants to win over Blender users and his move could be considered an "excellent move", since in addition to supporting Blender financially, it also decided to make their Substance 3D and Mixamo tools directly accessible in open source software.

This without a doubt is a surprising initiative, by Adobe by joining the Blender Development Fund as a Corporate Gold member. On its blog, Adobe recalls that "the 3D animation and design industry has never been as large and flourishing as it is today, and it shows no signs of slowing down."

For the proprietary graphics software publisher, 3D is simply the future, and as the field continues to grow, so does the community around it.

"At Adobe, we are committed to being open and connected to the 3D community," explains Sébastien Deguy, vice president of 3D and immersive for the company. “You can't mention the 3D community without also mentioning Blender, a free and open source 3D authoring suite (offering everything from modeling to compositing and motion tracking tools). The organization has nurtured a rich and vibrant community of 3D creators, and today we are able to announce that Adobe is officially a Blender partner. " By joining the Blender Foundation Development Fund, Adobe hopes to do its part "to help ensure the longevity and success of this vibrant open source community."

Also remember that «a One of its main missions is to ensure that Adobe products, such as Substance 3D and Mixamo, are the most accessible and are available to as many people as possible. '

That said, in addition to financially supporting the development of Blender, he mentions that:

“We will help creators work with the best of Adobe directly in Blender by releasing two new plugins: Substance 3D in Blender and Mixamo Auto-Control Rig Plugin for Blender (both now available in beta). 

“Today, 3D artists around the world are creating exceptional video game assets, visual effects, animation and, increasingly, automotive and fashion products using Blender. We wanted to bring you the world of Substance materials, making it easy to access our rich and diverse library of 3D assets and textures without ever leaving the authoring suite. With the Substance 3D plugin in Blender, you can now work with Substance materials (SBSAR files) in Blender. The same goes for Mixamo, Adobe's 3D character animation tool. It will be accessible directly from Blender to facilitate animation.

In other words, instead of positioning its products as competitors to Blender, Adobe wants to take advantage of the popularity of open source software to reach a larger user base for its internal Substance 3D and Mixamo tools.

Disclosing your intentions early on should reassure open source supporters a bit, who still frown upon the approach of proprietary software publishers with their community.

Finally, if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details of the original note, in the following link.