Proposal for Integrated Game Development Features in Blender
Dear Blender Development Team,
I hope this message finds you well. First and foremost, I want to express my admiration for the amazing work you continue to deliver with Blender, empowering creators worldwide with an open-source tool that truly stands out.
I would like to propose a feature idea that I believe could greatly enhance Blender's ecosystem: integrating game development capabilities directly into Blender, similar to what Unity and Godot offer. One of the biggest challenges for game developers who rely heavily on Blender for asset creation is the tedious process of exporting assets to game engines and then painstakingly trying to match the lighting and other settings to achieve the same visual quality seen within Blender.
Currently, the workflow requires significant time to ensure that the exported assets, especially lighting setups, match between Blender and other game engines, which often leads to a lot of trial and error. Having built-in game development tools in Blender could streamline this process, making it a one-stop solution for both asset creation and game development.
An integrated game engine within Blender would not only eliminate this extra step of adjusting settings in external engines but would also save countless hours for developers and hobbyists alike. It could bring Blender to an entirely new level of functionality, allowing users to create, test, and finalize their games all in one platform.
I believe this addition could significantly boost Blender’s appeal to game developers and reduce friction in game development workflows. Thank you for taking the time to consider this suggestion, and I would be more than happy to elaborate further if needed.
Best regards,
Youssef Echafiai
4 Comments
Blender used to have integrated game dev features, but not many used those features, and game features are now removed. I personally like the direction they took some 5 years ago or so, they cut away extraneous stuff, and started to do less but do it better. And saying "less" when talking about Blender is a kind of understatement, as Blender does a LOT and thus being even more "jack of all trades" would make Blender even more "master of none".
Plus there are game-engine made as forks of Blender, like UPBGE. If anyone needs to make games "with Blender", it's already possible.
I feel you. But don't agree.
Blender tried so hard to know everything, but this prevented it for long from excelling at anything. Nowadays it is mentioned in the same breath as C4D or Maya, and is increasingly used for professional purposes. It was a good decision taking out the game dev branch and IMHO the movie editor is another unnecessary part, which takes resources from the 3D branches. Because Blender is a 3D software, isn't it.
What Blender needs is better optimizations for file export. It would be a good start to have standard export presets on the FBX, alembic or OBJ export tabs for Unreal Engine, Unity or other engines. (I had recently a hard time exporting a camera animation as an alembic file from Blender to After Effects)
Think about the fact that neither Maya or 3DsMax nor C4D has gamedev features and they are nevertheless industry standars for creating 3D assets. Gamedev is a whole other world, not just a small feature that can be easily implemented.
Cheers,
Imre
I don't believe a game engine will or should be added to Blender. This was removed some time ago as ezez mentioned and I agree with what they've said on the topic.
Blender already fits nicely into game pipelines for the most part. No specifics are really being provided in this proposal so it's difficult to determine what you feel is missing in Blender's game pipeline capabilities. Providing smaller proposals for single features that work towards this goal would help a lot and be more actionable for interested developers.