Blender Lab
268 points
1 day ago
| 10 comments
| blender.org
| HN
frustracean
23 hours ago
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If anyone else is having trouble loading the CSS for the page, go to https://www.blender.org/wp-content/themes/bthree/style.css?x... to be Captcha'd by Cloudflare - it should load fine after that.
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Joeboy
23 hours ago
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Yeah the page is currently loading very quickly and is very easy to read due to an issue with Cloudflare.

Edit: If I'm honest, I find this specific css fairly innocuous. I have a more general grudge that raw HTML is easy, free and accessible but we collectively insisted that it's not OK to use it.

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sim04ful
23 hours ago
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It's actually funny, the lack of styling actually makes consuming the info alot easier.
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hbosch
22 hours ago
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The page is objectively and substantially better in every aspect of legibility with CSS loaded.
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catapart
22 hours ago
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Hey, take it easy! It's not nice to pick on those poor developers who can only read text that has been piped into their preferred TUI.
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NewsaHackO
21 hours ago
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Yea, "Minimalism is better!" is like a reflex for some people
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raxxorraxor
54 minutes ago
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It often is. Turns out this page does fit the bill, CSS or not.
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spiderice
21 hours ago
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> objectively

I do not think that word means what you think it means

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rendaw
21 hours ago
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All art is a combination of objective and subjective aspects.

The objective improvements from css here include: shorter lines are easier to read (per multiple legibility studies), the styling distinguishes navigation and secondary site elements from the main content (without css you get a half screen of navigation links), and the visual importance of in-page anchor links is reduced.

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hbosch
8 hours ago
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I used it to mean that it's inarguably true and unrelated to opinion.
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yuters
23 hours ago
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It is way more readable with CSS, I don't know what you're all on about.

The font is bigger, the lines are shorter, the navigation doesn't take half the page. The only thing worse would be the contrast but it's not that bad.

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a2128
23 hours ago
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On mobile it's actually super readable and lines are a perfect length, and having to scroll past the top navigation doesn't affect readability much
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saretup
22 hours ago
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The top navigation definitely put me off, I immediately came back without even scrolling down.
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badosu
23 hours ago
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Funny if not tragic. I was impressed at how good the styling of the page was until I realized the css did not load.
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amelius
20 hours ago
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Except I like to have some margin. And since I have a wide screen, the number of words per line is too large.
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prmoustache
19 hours ago
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That is a weird take. Having a wide screen doesn't force you to maximize the window.
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cassepipe
13 hours ago
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I don't know about most people but to me seeing bits of my desktop on the sides of the window I care about feels like visual noise. I like to have all my apps maximized but maybe is that just me ?
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imp0cat
5 hours ago
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Hate seeing bits of your desktop showing? Try a tiling window manager, you might like it!
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latexr
23 hours ago
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I tested repeatedly, always clearing the cache, and there was essentially no speed difference in loading with or without the CSS. In one instance, loading with CSS was even faster.
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nashashmi
20 hours ago
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Normally I like CSS naked websites. But some of them have multiple SVG icons right at the top that take up the entire width of the page. And that hurts.

Devs: please practice observing your site without css

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ncr100
18 hours ago
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matthewaveryusa
22 hours ago
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So what's the issue here (I know what the issue is in terms of the subresource not loading, a bit like an oauth redirect not executing properly if a user needs to log back in.)

Is it because of a misconfiguration on blender's end that should allow css to passthrough without verification, the query param messing a cloudflare passthrough default, or something else?

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Scaevolus
22 hours ago
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They might be allowing global public caching of their /news/ blog posts (because WordPress is slow?), but not of the static /wp-content/ directory.
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lastdong
21 hours ago
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Fixed it for me, much better than having the top navigation element unstyled as a list. In any case, the CSS is pretty much innocuous, feels almost like reader mode (which is my go to). Thanks!
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blensor
23 hours ago
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+1 on that. Works for me after that
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ModernMech
21 hours ago
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Thanks it worked but... lol the style doesn't even add anything, it just makes it harder to read by lowering the contrast of the page.
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Archelaos
20 hours ago
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Another option is to use Firefox and press [F9].
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nashashmi
20 hours ago
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MS Edge does the same thing.
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lfaw
22 hours ago
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I'm quite interested in the academic research aspect, especially since our computational geometry group uses or plans on using Blender. However, I'm unclear about the details of this announcement. Is it related to funding opportunities or suggesting experimental features?
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Duanemclemore
22 hours ago
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Can I ask what group you're with? I'm an architecture professor who implements (and teaches undergrads to implement) geometry with computational tool and I'm always trying to keep tabs on who's out there doing interesting work.
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reactordev
22 hours ago
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Man, to just be a fly on the wall. This is all so interesting to me. I hope these lab projects are open. I’d love to learn more about implementing computational geometry for architecture but lack the ability.
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raxxorraxor
1 day ago
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I think there is some problem loading CSS for this site. Could be my current network though...

edit: you might need to auth yourself as human to cloudflare on blender.org for the site to display correctly.

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ethmarks
23 hours ago
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I had the same problem and authing on the main page fixed it.

If they're going to block unauthed stylesheet requests, surely they could at least make sure that the CF authenticator shows up on every page.

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LukaD
23 hours ago
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Yeah, it's indeed broken because of cloudflare... I directly navigated to the stylesheet that wouldn't load (https://www.blender.org/wp-content/themes/bthree/style.css?x...) and got the cloudflare captcha thing. Now all the assets are loading for me.
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simgt
23 hours ago
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If there are contributors to Blender from the industry, who are they? It's easy to understand how big tech can be contributing to Linux, data processing pipelines, web frameworks, compilers etc. but it's harder to see who has both the skills and incentives for design tools. Maybe some game studios have the necessary slack?
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Uehreka
22 hours ago
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I recall Apple contributing a Metal backend for Cycles back when the M1 Pro/Max came out. That was a big deal, made it actually possible to do renders on a Mac in non-insane amounts of time.
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dagmx
22 hours ago
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Apple, AMD , Intel, NVIDIA, ILM are companies who have contributed or continue to contribute to Blender development.
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jsheard
22 hours ago
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What did ILM work on? I'm looking but I can't find anything regarding them even using Blender at any point, nevermind contributing back to it.

Blender has seen more success than most open source art tools but it still seems to be relegated to individuals and small studios, while the ILMs of the world continue to be neck deep in commercial or bespoke tooling.

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dagmx
21 hours ago
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ILM contributed some changes to the color wheel. Frederico highlighted it during their SIGGRAPH sessions.
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phkahler
20 hours ago
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Pixar contributed OpenSubdiv and may have helped with integration?
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shrinks99
16 hours ago
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Pixar also ships Renderman support for Blender https://rmanwiki-26.pixar.com/space/RFB26
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xnx
19 hours ago
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https://www.blender.org/lab/ might be the better link (especially given the CSS ssues)
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hirako2000
22 hours ago
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What's the label "requires funding and stakeholders". I can't see any explanation of that in the announcement
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DonHopkins
22 hours ago
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This Blender Lab page "Beyond Mouse and Keyboard" page mentions the "wheel menu":

https://code.blender.org/2025/07/beyond-mouse-keyboard/

Here's an wonderful Blender extension, the Sculpt Wheel, that has concentric rings, and is deeply customizable (this video was posted 15 hours ago so it's fresh and current):

Blender 4.5 Sculpt Wheel - Glyph+

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhO-aU512NE&t=1s

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oktwtf
12 hours ago
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I wonder if any of the Rendering Light Transport work includes work towards a spectral renderer.
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potac
15 hours ago
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Not sure if I understood correctly. Can we as individuals contribute to any of these projects?
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Kye
21 hours ago
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It sounds like they're doing their own version of the experimental build thing that's long been popular in the Blender community. That's a good thing.
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