Glad to see people making videos about this stuff. I hope they continue in that direction and dabble in sharing on a peer tube instance or something similar. Creation is one aspect, but distribution also matters. Talking about breaking free of corporate control loses some credibility when it’s content for- and can only be accessed on- YouTube.
I respectfully disagree. While true that Houdini was one of the first visual effects softwares offering an indie license, it was by no means the only one. Substance comes to mind, before the Adobe acquisition.
The timeline is also unconvincing: a considerable number of years elapsed after Houdini entered the market and Autodesk/Maya offered an indie license. However, is does coincide with better blender documentation and rise in YT content that rapidly grew the blender community.
Houdini can do more than FX, sure, and I’ve consistently heard nothing but good things, but its professional use remains relatively [edit: departmentally] niche. So, it may seem to someone in the niche of FX that Maya is losing ground to Houdini, but on a macro level Blender has the features and price point to threaten a larger portion of Autodesk/Maya’s market share. In lieu of better data, I’ll refer to google trends of the three softwares in which Houdini is a flat line at the bottom. I will gladly consider data to the contrary if you have it.
Either way, my main point was that competition is good, and who is responsible for how much doesn’t change that.
I use youtube less and less because it’s not as information dense as other sources. When I do brave YT, I have a simple css override via stylus to hide thumbnails. It has helped reduce that sad feeling about the human spirit YT leaves me with.
The stylus snippet:
ytd-thumbnail {
background-color: #000000 !important;
display: none;
}
I’m confident Autodesk wouldn’t have introduced indie pricing if it weren’t for Blender’s rise in popularity. Competition is good for everyone (except a company like Autodesk trying to get the highest returns for the least effort).
Autodesk Maya. Autodesk being the company, Maya the software. I disagree with the framing that Blender needs to develop (more) new tools [for the purpose of] competing. Maya is industry standard in animation mostly due to monopolistic practices (EG: purchasing competitors), not innovation or development. Blender needs more money to develop more tools. Full stop. Many professionals have been disappointed with Autodesk’s offerings and development, and look to Blender for innovation.
I’m using xkb and modified the custom layout so RAlt is Altgr and layer 3 places arrow keys under my right hand and various brackets under my left when I hold right alt modifier. Sorry I can’t give more info at the moment. Feel free to message me if you pursue this and hit a wall. I can provide more details this weekend.
[Edit: just saw the wayland info, apologies if that means xkb is out. Honestly don’t know the implications offhand. leaving this comment in case there’s anything useful]
I like easy tidying as a wind down activity. Mostly putting things back in their place. For bed, I have an ereader with warm lighting that’s been great. If I’m without it, something that calms my mental zoomies is practicing the alphabet backwards. I start forward with chunks, “abc - cba,” “abc, def - fed, cba,” etc. It keeps my mind active till I get bored and want to fall asleep.
In my experience, and from speaking with others, taking a break from cannabis can mean remembering dreams more vividly. It might be worth leaning into that: write dreams down when you wake and think about them when you go to bed. I find if I try to think through a dream and build on it, it puts me in that dream-state and I drift off.
Oh, and one last tip. Lights work better than alarms for some. So if you put a lamp on a timer, it may help normalize your wake-up time, if that’s an issue.
Good luck!