OpenSubdiv

While wrapping parts of OpenSubdiv for Rust [1] I noticed the C++ API was littered with uses of int for indexing/lengths (both are always positive) of geometry buffers. So I opened a ticket with Pixar [2]. Some of the same strange arguments were brought forward (incl. the Google style guide BS). I wrote a longish reply [3] that mentions two comments [4,5] from an ill-guided article promoting use of signed in C++. I closed the ticket in the end because I felt that if people really believe there are good reasons for signed in the cases at hand they haven't grokked the problem sufficiently – trying to convince them otherwise would not be a good use of my time. [1] https://crates.io/crates/opensubdiv-petite [2] https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenSubdiv/issues/1... [3] https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenSubdiv/issues/1...

In addition to Blender there is MakeHuman: http://www.makehuman.org/ Pixar also open sourced OpenSubDiv: https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenSubdiv They also offer a commercial and non-commercial versions of RenderMan: https://renderman.pixar.com/view/renderman For the purely commercial side, Maya from Autodesk works wonderfully on Linux: http://www.autodesk.com/products/maya/overview There is also Katana (commercial license only) from The Foundry: https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/katana/ For 3D CAD modeling rather than the artistic style modeling, there is OpenSCAD: http://www.openscad.org/ For 2D animation (cartoons and anime) there is OpenToonz, from Studio Ghibli: https://github.com/opentoonz/opentoonz (The main OpenToonz website lists it for Windows and Mac only, but the Github repo has Linux build instructions.)

As someone who works in the industry developing software, it's because for the high-end VFX studios, software like Blender and Natron just don't cut it in terms of efficiency, power and flexibility. Artist time costs more money than software licenses do, and as the open source software isn't generally good enough for their needs, using better off-the-shelf software that have fairly decent and flexible plugin APIs is good enough for them. A lot of the code VFX studios have is proprietary (as in unique to the individual studio who wrote it) plugins for host apps like Maya, Katana and Nuke, and shaders/integrators for renderers like PRMan and Arnold. There are open source projects that are used for glue in the VFX industry: https://github.com/alembic/alembic https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenSubdiv https://github.com/imageworks/Op

Here's direct link to github repo: https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenSubdiv