Monday, July 15th 2019
Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2 million Epic MegaGrant
Epic Games, as part of the company's $100 million Epic MegaGrants program, is awarding the Blender Foundation $1.2 million in cash to further the success of Blender, the free and open source 3D creation suite that supports the full range of tools empowering artists to create 3D graphics, animation, special effects or games.
The Epic MegaGrants initiative is designed to assist game developers, enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, students, educators, and tool developers doing outstanding work with Unreal Engine or enhancing open-source capabilities for the 3D graphics community.
The Epic MegaGrant will be delivered incrementally over the next three years and will contribute to Blender's Professionalizing Blender Development Initiative.
"Having Epic Games on board is a major milestone for Blender," said Blender Foundation founder and chairman Ton Roosendaal. "Thanks to the grant we will make a significant investment in our project organization to improve on-boarding, coordination and best practices for code quality. As a result, we expect more contributors from the industry to join our projects."
"Open tools, libraries and platforms are critical to the future of the digital content ecosystem," said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games. "Blender is an enduring resource within the artistic community, and we aim to ensure its advancement to the benefit of all creators."
For more information about Epic MegaGrants, visit unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants.
About Blender Foundation
The Blender Foundation (2002) is an independent nonprofit public benefit corporation with the purpose to provide individual artists and small teams with a complete, free and open source 3D creation pipeline, managed by public projects on blender.org. Its spin-off Blender Institute hosts the foundation's offices and currently employs 15 people who work on the Blender software and creative projects to validate and stress Blender in production environments.
For more information, visit blender.org/foundation.
About Unreal Engine
Epic Games' Unreal Engine technology brings high-quality games to PC, console, mobile, AR and VR platforms. Creators also use Unreal for photorealistic visualization, interactive product design, film, virtual production, mixed reality TV broadcast and animated entertainment. Follow @UnrealEngine and download Unreal for free at unrealengine.com.
About Epic Games
Founded in 1991, Epic Games is the creator of Fortnite, Unreal, Gears of War, Shadow Complex, and the Infinity Blade series of games. Epic's Unreal Engine technology, which brings high-fidelity, interactive experiences to PC, console, mobile, AR, VR and the Web, is freely available at unrealengine.com. The Epic Games store offers a handpicked library of games, available at epicgames.com. Follow @EpicGames for updates.
The Epic MegaGrants initiative is designed to assist game developers, enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, students, educators, and tool developers doing outstanding work with Unreal Engine or enhancing open-source capabilities for the 3D graphics community.
"Having Epic Games on board is a major milestone for Blender," said Blender Foundation founder and chairman Ton Roosendaal. "Thanks to the grant we will make a significant investment in our project organization to improve on-boarding, coordination and best practices for code quality. As a result, we expect more contributors from the industry to join our projects."
"Open tools, libraries and platforms are critical to the future of the digital content ecosystem," said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games. "Blender is an enduring resource within the artistic community, and we aim to ensure its advancement to the benefit of all creators."
For more information about Epic MegaGrants, visit unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants.
About Blender Foundation
The Blender Foundation (2002) is an independent nonprofit public benefit corporation with the purpose to provide individual artists and small teams with a complete, free and open source 3D creation pipeline, managed by public projects on blender.org. Its spin-off Blender Institute hosts the foundation's offices and currently employs 15 people who work on the Blender software and creative projects to validate and stress Blender in production environments.
For more information, visit blender.org/foundation.
About Unreal Engine
Epic Games' Unreal Engine technology brings high-quality games to PC, console, mobile, AR and VR platforms. Creators also use Unreal for photorealistic visualization, interactive product design, film, virtual production, mixed reality TV broadcast and animated entertainment. Follow @UnrealEngine and download Unreal for free at unrealengine.com.
About Epic Games
Founded in 1991, Epic Games is the creator of Fortnite, Unreal, Gears of War, Shadow Complex, and the Infinity Blade series of games. Epic's Unreal Engine technology, which brings high-fidelity, interactive experiences to PC, console, mobile, AR, VR and the Web, is freely available at unrealengine.com. The Epic Games store offers a handpicked library of games, available at epicgames.com. Follow @EpicGames for updates.
23 Comments on Epic Games Supports Blender Foundation with $1.2 million Epic MegaGrant
These funds are well deserved and I can't wait to see what they do with it.
Epic likes to back Blender - cool. Thanks for the info....I guess.
I think the reason why Blender got money is because they're a corner stone for other indie games. The longer they keep it up, the healthier the indie ecosystem. Alternatives (especially 3DS Max) cost a fortune.
F/OSS and related nonprofit orgs are a plenty, mate.
There is a huge difference between Wikipedia, Mozilla and between Blender. While Both wiki and Mozilla are truely open source and are not used in commercial way and people can't use them to make something and get money of it but Blender is being used to create models, painting textures, rigging, animating and it even has a game engine built in it? Now all cheap labor in the world are using Blender and they really hurting the people working in the industry. A random guy on the internet now can do what youve being doing for years for 1/20th the price with Blender because he is paying nothing and has paid nothing in his whole life?
Anyway, I'm cherring up a lot more on the Blender side right now ...
I am kinda disappointed.
Yes, Blender and co. are lowering the entry bar for the industry, but guess what? The industry isn't objecting. Not with all the game jams, expos, educational and training materials being put online, etc, etc.
There's of course an assumption that 3D artists are on demand only in the video game industry, which is very off the mark. Movies, architecture, various engineering fields, advertisement, printed media, are all large sectors on their own with -varrying degrees of- demand for 3D artists. That's not even putting recreational/hobbyist use in the list.
Heck, there's another false assumption in there that you'll see large influxes of 3D artists just because you have a free modelling software, as if that was the only reason one would choose to become a gamedev. Just because land and oxygen are free doesn't mean everyone chooses to become an athelete.
A final note: Not everything is a zero sum game.
In that case, well done Epic!
I think it was 11 or 12 they first donated to blender to fund tools for ue3. That I know of, maybe they did before but I wasn't paying attention before then. Then again when ue4 came out around 14. I think they paid for the fbx exporter to be fixed twice since then too, when Autodesk changed it just to be arses.
Admittedly they are self serving, as it was just to add support for their product, but anybody who thinks this is just a knee jerk reaction to garner favour is far from the truth.