Yeah the page is currently loading very quickly and is very easy to read due to an issue with Cloudflare.
Edit: If I'm honest, I find this specific css fairly innocuous. I have a more general grudge that raw HTML is easy, free and accessible but we collectively insisted that it's not OK to use it.
All art is a combination of objective and subjective aspects.
The objective improvements from css here include: shorter lines are easier to read (per multiple legibility studies), the styling distinguishes navigation and secondary site elements from the main content (without css you get a half screen of navigation links), and the visual importance of in-page anchor links is reduced.
It is way more readable with CSS, I don't know what you're all on about.
The font is bigger, the lines are shorter, the navigation doesn't take half the page. The only thing worse would be the contrast but it's not that bad.
I tested repeatedly, always clearing the cache, and there was essentially no speed difference in loading with or without the CSS. In one instance, loading with CSS was even faster.
Normally I like CSS naked websites. But some of them have multiple SVG icons right at the top that take up the entire width of the page. And that hurts.
Devs: please practice observing your site without css
So what's the issue here (I know what the issue is in terms of the subresource not loading, a bit like an oauth redirect not executing properly if a user needs to log back in.)
Is it because of a misconfiguration on blender's end that should allow css to passthrough without verification, the query param messing a cloudflare passthrough default, or something else?
Fixed it for me, much better than having the top navigation element unstyled as a list. In any case, the CSS is pretty much innocuous, feels almost like reader mode (which is my go to). Thanks!
I'm quite interested in the academic research aspect, especially since our computational geometry group uses or plans on using Blender. However, I'm unclear about the details of this announcement. Is it related to funding opportunities or suggesting experimental features?
Can I ask what group you're with? I'm an architecture professor who implements (and teaches undergrads to implement) geometry with computational tool and I'm always trying to keep tabs on who's out there doing interesting work.
Man, to just be a fly on the wall. This is all so interesting to me. I hope these lab projects are open. I’d love to learn more about implementing computational geometry for architecture but lack the ability.
If there are contributors to Blender from the industry, who are they? It's easy to understand how big tech can be contributing to Linux, data processing pipelines, web frameworks, compilers etc. but it's harder to see who has both the skills and incentives for design tools. Maybe some game studios have the necessary slack?
I recall Apple contributing a Metal backend for Cycles back when the M1 Pro/Max came out. That was a big deal, made it actually possible to do renders on a Mac in non-insane amounts of time.
What did ILM work on? I'm looking but I can't find anything regarding them even using Blender at any point, nevermind contributing back to it.
Blender has seen more success than most open source art tools but it still seems to be relegated to individuals and small studios, while the ILMs of the world continue to be neck deep in commercial or bespoke tooling.
Here's an wonderful Blender extension, the Sculpt Wheel, that has concentric rings, and is deeply customizable (this video was posted 15 hours ago so it's fresh and current):
If anyone else is having trouble loading the CSS for the page, go to https://www.blender.org/wp-content/themes/bthree/style.css?x... to be Captcha'd by Cloudflare - it should load fine after that.
Yeah the page is currently loading very quickly and is very easy to read due to an issue with Cloudflare.
Edit: If I'm honest, I find this specific css fairly innocuous. I have a more general grudge that raw HTML is easy, free and accessible but we collectively insisted that it's not OK to use it.
It's actually funny, the lack of styling actually makes consuming the info alot easier.
The page is objectively and substantially better in every aspect of legibility with CSS loaded.
Hey, take it easy! It's not nice to pick on those poor developers who can only read text that has been piped into their preferred TUI.
Yea, "Minimalism is better!" is like a reflex for some people
> objectively
I do not think that word means what you think it means
All art is a combination of objective and subjective aspects.
The objective improvements from css here include: shorter lines are easier to read (per multiple legibility studies), the styling distinguishes navigation and secondary site elements from the main content (without css you get a half screen of navigation links), and the visual importance of in-page anchor links is reduced.
It is way more readable with CSS, I don't know what you're all on about.
The font is bigger, the lines are shorter, the navigation doesn't take half the page. The only thing worse would be the contrast but it's not that bad.
On mobile it's actually super readable and lines are a perfect length, and having to scroll past the top navigation doesn't affect readability much
The top navigation definitely put me off, I immediately came back without even scrolling down.
Funny if not tragic. I was impressed at how good the styling of the page was until I realized the css did not load.
Except I like to have some margin. And since I have a wide screen, the number of words per line is too large.
That is a weird take. Having a wide screen doesn't force you to maximize the window.
I tested repeatedly, always clearing the cache, and there was essentially no speed difference in loading with or without the CSS. In one instance, loading with CSS was even faster.
Normally I like CSS naked websites. But some of them have multiple SVG icons right at the top that take up the entire width of the page. And that hurts.
Devs: please practice observing your site without css
So what's the issue here (I know what the issue is in terms of the subresource not loading, a bit like an oauth redirect not executing properly if a user needs to log back in.)
Is it because of a misconfiguration on blender's end that should allow css to passthrough without verification, the query param messing a cloudflare passthrough default, or something else?
They might be allowing global public caching of their /news/ blog posts (because WordPress is slow?), but not of the static /wp-content/ directory.
Fixed it for me, much better than having the top navigation element unstyled as a list. In any case, the CSS is pretty much innocuous, feels almost like reader mode (which is my go to). Thanks!
+1 on that. Works for me after that
Thanks it worked but... lol the style doesn't even add anything, it just makes it harder to read by lowering the contrast of the page.
Another option is to use Firefox and press [F9].
MS Edge does the same thing.
I'm quite interested in the academic research aspect, especially since our computational geometry group uses or plans on using Blender. However, I'm unclear about the details of this announcement. Is it related to funding opportunities or suggesting experimental features?
Can I ask what group you're with? I'm an architecture professor who implements (and teaches undergrads to implement) geometry with computational tool and I'm always trying to keep tabs on who's out there doing interesting work.
Man, to just be a fly on the wall. This is all so interesting to me. I hope these lab projects are open. I’d love to learn more about implementing computational geometry for architecture but lack the ability.
I think there is some problem loading CSS for this site. Could be my current network though...
edit: you might need to auth yourself as human to cloudflare on blender.org for the site to display correctly.
I had the same problem and authing on the main page fixed it.
If they're going to block unauthed stylesheet requests, surely they could at least make sure that the CF authenticator shows up on every page.
Yeah, it's indeed broken because of cloudflare... I directly navigated to the stylesheet that wouldn't load (https://www.blender.org/wp-content/themes/bthree/style.css?x...) and got the cloudflare captcha thing. Now all the assets are loading for me.
https://www.blender.org/lab/ might be the better link (especially given the CSS ssues)
What's the label "requires funding and stakeholders". I can't see any explanation of that in the announcement
If there are contributors to Blender from the industry, who are they? It's easy to understand how big tech can be contributing to Linux, data processing pipelines, web frameworks, compilers etc. but it's harder to see who has both the skills and incentives for design tools. Maybe some game studios have the necessary slack?
I recall Apple contributing a Metal backend for Cycles back when the M1 Pro/Max came out. That was a big deal, made it actually possible to do renders on a Mac in non-insane amounts of time.
Apple, AMD , Intel, NVIDIA, ILM are companies who have contributed or continue to contribute to Blender development.
What did ILM work on? I'm looking but I can't find anything regarding them even using Blender at any point, nevermind contributing back to it.
Blender has seen more success than most open source art tools but it still seems to be relegated to individuals and small studios, while the ILMs of the world continue to be neck deep in commercial or bespoke tooling.
ILM contributed some changes to the color wheel. Frederico highlighted it during their SIGGRAPH sessions.
Pixar contributed OpenSubdiv and may have helped with integration?
This Blender Lab page "Beyond Mouse and Keyboard" page mentions the "wheel menu":
https://code.blender.org/2025/07/beyond-mouse-keyboard/
Here's an wonderful Blender extension, the Sculpt Wheel, that has concentric rings, and is deeply customizable (this video was posted 15 hours ago so it's fresh and current):
Blender 4.5 Sculpt Wheel - Glyph+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhO-aU512NE&t=1s
It sounds like they're doing their own version of the experimental build thing that's long been popular in the Blender community. That's a good thing.