So...Blender anyone?

[Xillra]

So.. I have been using blender for the last month, and I am truly amazed.
But I run it downstairs, on an old, sticky keyboard, gum filled Tower.
What would be awesome IF...wait for it.............COULD RUN BLENDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would really like to know, (even though it probably wont work) if it will work.
The reason I can't expand my dear, dear, brain around the tech specs,
....I need someone who's like, awesome, to do it for me ^.^
Thanks. (xillra)

[Jessie]

I don't see any builds for ARM, but the source is avalible so it is quite possible you could compile it for the R-Pi. Provided that there are no x86 specific optimazations in the code.

I would like to point out though that 3D rendering software loves lots of ram and high speed and paralel processors. Which the R-Pi has none of.

[SeanD]

Quote from Jessie on December 15, 2011, 21:28
I would like to point out though that 3D rendering software loves lots of ram and high speed and paralel processors. Which the R-Pi has none of.

I agree, it might be a bit of a stretch for workstation use. However with enough RPis you could create a very cheap render farm.

[Chris Tyler]

Haven't run it, but it's been built on ARM...
http://arm.koji.fedoraproject......kageID=725

[UnderSampled]

While I would love to be able to run Blender on an Raspberry Pi, Blender is heavily based on OpenGL constructs that are unsupported in OpenGL ES. There has been ports to GL ES before (see BlenderPocket) but they used wrappers around the OpenGL code, and were only for ES version 1.0. The raspi uses version 2.0, which requires that all cod uses shaders instead of the fixed-function pipeline. I can imagine that a port may be made as an Google Summer of Code project, but I feel for anyone who would attempt it. As I mentioned, there is a lot of code that would have to be re-written to work in OpenGL ES-- for instance, I count 417 instances of glBegin();, each of which would need to be thought about and re-made.

But man, It'd be awesome to use Blender on a Raspberry Pi!

[xernobyl]

Just use Wings 3D. It's much easier to use and learn, also lighter, than Blender. That if you just want it for 3D modeling.

[xernobyl]

Just realized that Wings is even more connected to legacy OpenGL stuff... Anyway it supports shaders so it can't be too hard to port.

[Neon22]

Wings3D is an excellent modeller - Because it keeps topological correctness its also ideal for making models for 3D printing.
I.e. no leaks or poorly connected edges.

It would be ideal if it would run...

[E]

I think Blender would be overkill for modelling purposes, and with the new cycles unbiased render engine being GPU based I can't see it would port well to the Pi anyway. I'd really like to see a nice lightweight CAD program for Linux though. Something like an open source Sketchup.

[Xillra]

Possibly, if the "graphics" are not strong enough, add a usb, turn it into add on ram, (tutorials on youtube) and figure out how to to use a virtual graphics card. Any thoughts?
and any thoughts on how I can possibly port CAD "blenderish" to be able to run on an ARM?
I dont know much about coding, but if I put my heart to it, I can learn alot within a few days.
(or alot about this stuff >.>)

[psergiu]

Quote from Xillra on December 19, 2011, 00:43
Possibly, if the "graphics" are not strong enough, add a usb, turn it into add on ram, (tutorials on youtube) and figure out how to to use a virtual graphics card. Any thoughts?

Yes.
There is no such thing.
You can use a USB stick as swap, not as RAM. And only for a limited time as the flash will "burn out" from too many writes.
A "virtual" graphics card will be as slow or slower than just using MesaGL (software OpenGL rendering) on the R-Pi.

Question: if R-Pi has only OpenGL ES support - is the Quake3 demo a OpenGL ES version ?

[DavidS]

Yes it is possible, so long as they can be ported to the ARM. I have an old P3 500MHz with 128MB RAM that I use for graphics stuff, there is no Swap partition or Swapfile, and the graphics card has 64MB and barely supports shaders (I forget the chip off the top of my head). This system has no trouble with Blender3D, Wings, or POVRay.

[E]

Quote from DavidS on December 21, 2011, 16:47
Yes it is possible, so long as they can be ported to the ARM. I have an old P3 500MHz with 128MB RAM that I use for graphics stuff, there is no Swap partition or Swapfile, and the graphics card has 64MB and barely supports shaders (I forget the chip off the top of my head). This system has no trouble with Blender3D, Wings, or POVRay.
I tried Blender on a netbook and agree that it does indeed run surprisingly well on lower spec machines. I think the problem with porting it to the Pi is the bulk of it's capabilities would be greatly hamstrung by the Pi's hardware, which is why I'd favour a leaner single function modeling app.

[nvoid82]

Porting just the blender GE would be wonderful.

[pepedog]

I just tried blender 1:2.57b on archlinuxarm OS. Don't know why it complained libopenjpeg.so.2 (1.4 latest) was missing, but symlink cured that.
Next it wanted alsa and pulse, anyone got RPI sound drivers? Or is that part of my alpha dead?
Also while on the subject of drivers, anyone got new dwc_otg drivers that work without flood?