At Purism, we do all our videos and other promotional material internally, with Librem hardware and free software only. This is part of our policy and I think it’s important, when I believe in something, to act in accordance with it.
A few days after releasing the video of the Librem 5 hardware design, I was asked by a few people to publish an article describing the process of making this video.
Read more here:
I think that’s called “eating your own dog food” (dogfooding). Eww. 
It’s also just a good, real-world illustration of what is possible, as well as providing additional testing.
The ultimate test of convergence will be when you can make the Librem 5 video on the Librem 5 itself, albeit more slowly than on a good laptop.
First off, thanks @Kyle_Rankin for the article, and all of the other articles. I really like the abundance of content from Purism lately.
I fully respect someone standing behind their principles. I think seeing a company do that is a breath of fresh air.
However, as with most things FOSS the elephant in the room isn’t that no one thought you COULDN’T do it without FOSS software, the elephant, and the one you need to convince the public at large of, is why would you struggle to do it like that to begin with? Most professionals aren’t looking at a problem and saying to themselves, hmm I’d really like to do this the hard way. They choose the best tool for the job, and why shouldn’t they?
This throwing the baby out with the bath water is a regression and not a step forward. This is just a commonsense notion as well. It is the elephant and the barrier to true adoption by the masses for FOSS software.
So thank you again for making hardware that respects my right to use it, and for allowing me to side step the unnecessary burden of using only FOSS software.
The video is really well done, thanks for the behind-the-scenes!
with the render engine EVEE from Blender it is possible to render FASTER than with the Cycles render-engine … some accuracy is sacrificed in the process and other limitations apply but it’s possible … the ONLY problem on the L5 remains how to dissipate the heat effectively because 3d rendering is about as hard on the CPU/GPU (or both) as it gets (close to 100% resource utilization with high process priority) … it can crash if you don’t reserve one processor thread (at least) for the OS.
i think the point was more to demonstrate that HARD-SURFACE-MODELING AND 3D RENDERING is NOW a THING with free-software ONLY and Blender 2.83 and newer …
organic modeling is usually more taxing on the GPU and scene complexity can be an added factor that can make or break the DESIGN experience … however for this CONTEXT it’s perfectly fine to use free-software only
@francois-techene if you don’t mind could you post how many frames (3d viewport fps) you got while modeling with full shading (materials + texture) ON ? possibly in EVEE as well …
My comments were NOT an attack on the article or on what was accomplished. It is a ridiculing of the idea that all software needs to be FOSS. Anyone else who did not have the agenda of demonstrating the utility of FOSS software, would not look at FOSS software first and foremost to accomplish the task. This is my point.
The answer can’t be to give up all of the software and advances we have made there, and use FOSS.
That is the baby and the bath water.
I don’t personally want to start back at the stone age because of a flawed and extreme ideology. Especially if privacy and security can be maintained in other ways. And whether Linux users want to admit it or not, Linux is in many ways back to the stone age.
and most people would agree with YOU here but maybe that’s what will happen REGARDLESS of how we feel about it … these are some next level ideas illustrated in > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell
nobody can predict the future and exactly what will happen but so far at least SOME things have proven to be accurate …
this is like asking if you would accept a cyber-brain implant in order to have a competitive advantage over the other 3d artists that do NOT use such a thing. i wouldn’t and i probably would NOT want others to use them in order to gain a competitive advantage over ANYTHING i do thanks to an artificial implant that only MONEY can buy (even if it WAS free-software ONLY)
Forget 3D, adopt a hologram projector! (Like the first Star Wars.)
if you don’t mind could you post how many frames (3d viewport fps) you got while modeling with full shading (materials + texture) ON ? possibly in EVEE as well …
It all depends of the complexity of the scene and materials. For this particular scene, if I disable the viewport overlays, I can play the 24fps EEVEE live preview animation without any lag on my Librem 13 v2 (with a core i5).
Actually, I plan to try Blender on the Librem 5 as well. I agree with the fact that rendering a scene on the Librem 5 would not be ideal but doing modeling and animations may work pretty well with the OpengGL engine, which is my favorite for modeling anyway. I’ll keep you updated on that.
nice. please do so. i merely speculated on the L5 compatibility. you might need to check with Blender’s OpenGL minimum version requirements … if the latest version won’t work at least you’ll be able to hunt down a previous version that meets those requirements. i won’t hold my breath to doing anything too serious on the L5 but LEARNING 3D modeling on the L5 is something to look out for sure … possibly rigging and scripting too. exciting times …
Err… I do all my modelling in Blender. Many others do too, even for a living. Movies like Next Gen have been made in Blender. Of all the free software out there, Blender is by far some of the most competitive, arguably even better than a lot of much more expensive propreitary counterparts.
That’s awesome! Does this mean the 3D models might be released any time soon? I have been wanting to be able to use a realistic Librem 5 in 3D scenes for quite a while, and sent an email about it a bit over a year ago, when the models were not yet ready.
I’m happy for you. I use Blender too, it is great. I’ve used 3ds as well.
Just because Blender is gaining popularity doesn’t mean it is popular or that it is an industry standard. Also Blender is an exception rather than a rule.
While I still stand by what I said, I’m happy to admit that it seems Linux software is catching up faster than in the past.