Blender: Difference between revisions

Up until 2019, the Oni community's 3D program of choice was [[Mod Tool|XSI Mod Tool 7.5]], a free version of Autodesk Softimage from 2009. But Softimage was discontinued in 2014, so the community was using increasingly outdated software. XSI was the only free software that the community could make any sense of (although very limited), and it had no problems handling Oni's assets and animations, unlike other programs. Blender was overlooked because, despite its popularity, its user interface was notoriously bad. Also, attempts at importing Oni's assets to Blender ran into [[#Oni-specific_issues_with_Blender|a number of issues]] with unknown causes.

However, Blender's user interface received a total overhaul in version 2.80 which was universally praised. The program has become a serious free alternative to industry-standard 3D programs like Maya or 3ds Max. This, along with the considerations that Blender continues to be actively developed, is a light-weight program, supports Macs as well as Windows, and has an abundance of support from the Blender community, eventually made it clear that Oni modders needed to move on from XSI to Blender. The final nails in the coffin were XSI's lack of stability and a limited amount of resources and tutorials to work with.

From 2020 to 2022, a significant amount of work was done to allow modding Oni in Blender: the <tt>-blender</tt> tag was introduced to [[OniSplit]], and a new [[Using the Rigify animation rig|animation rig]] tailor-fit for making Oni animations was created, along with [[BlenderOni]] – a companion tool for said rig. With all of this done, the community can now create new content for Oni in a modern, free, well-supported 3D modeler.