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Blender Gets Audio Sequencing
Qbertino writes "The universal GPLd 3D tool
Blender that was
bought free by the Blender community not so long ago, has gotten
audio sequencing added to its feature set. This has
been missing ever since the integrated Video NL (Non-Linear)
Editor/Sequencer was introduced. The only other 3D package
known for its integrated Video NLE is the proprietary
Houdini, which also
runs under Linux but comes at something like $3000 for its small featureset. This finally gives
the OSS community a lightweight alternative to
this and eases syncing 3D animation and audio a great deal. Audio sequencing will be integrated in the upcoming 2.28 release of Blender. Early
adopters can
download here."
Make smoothies? I hope so! Mmmm, smoothies...
Blite my shiny metal ass!
Just like those all-in-one cell phones, or printers/copiers/scanners/faxes, I suspect that they will have to compromise on quality, lest they end up with some bloated software product.
I'd much rather have separate best-of-breed software packages, than an integrated one that does everything OK, but not great.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
Blender is definitely a great success story. Like Gimp is to Photoshop, Blender is to Maya. Though Photoshop is still the heavyweight tool for photo manipulation and though I'm an experienced Gimp user, I know that there are things that Photoshop can do that Gimp cannot do as easily. But the $500 price tag for Photoshop makes me a big, big Gimp fan. It does everything I need. Same for Blender. It is not in the same class as Maya but with a little work, can do many of the same things. In fact, it's at the point where it competes well against many of the lower end commercial packages costing hundreds of dollars.
Blender's primary target is to be able of making ready-to-publish video from scratch. Composing audio is a priority, unless you aim to recreating the beginnings of cinema.
Sorry for the nitpick, but for the sake of not propogating mis-information, Houdini has anything but a small feature set, modeling/rendering/compositing very powerfull scripting, CHOPS/SOPS very powerfull particle systems, its been around quite a bit longer then blender as well. More along the lines of Maya Unlimited and Softimage XSI featureset wise.
http://www.sidefx.com/
I'm totally impressed. I can't even figure out how to use blender much less resequence my audio (or whatever)!
Seriously... Anyone out there know how to use Blender? Wanna send me some links to documentation, particularly tutorials? Even better would be tutorials that are up-to-date!
Nosce te Ipsum
Good example of featuritis is the GIMP and their script-fu menus. Who else but a geek would write a library framework for plugins that often crash and take the program out with them.
The easier the interface, the less features, the better. All of the software I love to use (except Photoshop) fits this mould. Not that Photoshop is bad; it's the best. The problem with Photoshop is too many features to get to the work I need to do.
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
Blender may be crap, but at 2 megs it is hardly bloated.
Photos.
Maybe it's just me, but they seem to be rather confused between the "About Blender" pages, the Changelog, etc...2.2.7 specifically says cartoon shading doesn't work. "About Blender" says it does. Which is it, guys?
Then, note that a lot of file formats don't work on Linux- only Win + MacOS X. None of the plugins work in OS X yet...so on. It's beta quality stuff, like walking into a house and the owners keep telling you "no, don't open that door, it's not on the hinges!" or "watch your step" when you pass by the 3-foot hole in the floor. Oh, but look at the MARVELOUS sun porch they just finished!
See this all the time- developers working on the bright+shiny things, while leaving behind major, glaring problems. Guys, fix it up so existing stuff works, THEN add new toys. What good is a car that has a really sweet stereo setup, but only 3 wheels?
I get the distinct impression Blender developers have bitten off more than they can chew, but are back in the kitchen for dessert regardless...
Please help metamoderate.
The Blender project is a major milestone in the progression of open source software. For the first time, a closed project was brought into the open by the users. Compared to others, they have been remarkably fast at bringing a working product to market. They have also been extremely responsible in respect for copyright, and are currently helping to bring more closed work into the open. This project is one class act, and I hope that their model is extremely successful.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
It's interesting reading the posts bewailing software bloat, I wonder how many of these posts are submitted by media creation professionals? Have you taken a look at Newtek's VideoToaster lately? Or how about Final Cut Pro? Granted, both are more NLE video editors (Although VideoToaster comes with Aura and Lightwave) but both of these products are chock full of "bloat" and causing the industry leaders like Avid take notice. I'd much rather have a production suite with some "bloat" in order to curtail some of the endless Render -> Export -> Import/convert -> re-sync -> export -> encode -> master -> blah -> blah -> blah process..... I for one can't wait to try out the new blender features, nice work and full steam ahead!
1400x1250 in a 640x480 world...
Adding useful features is such a waste of time!
Now, rewriting it in Java, That would be a REALLY good use of development time!!
Just because some of the newest features aren't fully fleshed out yet (quicktime support, multilingual interface, this new audio stuff, etc) doesn't mean things are broken.
Every single blender developer (of which there are many now, thanks to Ton's hard work and the fundraiser resulting in the code being opened) shouldn't have to concentrate on one new feature at a time. So naturally there will be several things being added at a time, at various stages of completion.
By the way, toon shading does work, we've had lots of releases since 2.2.7.
Blender just keeps getting better and better. I personally didn't/don't use the game engine features much, but plenty of people do and I think it's great that they're getting rebuilt now without the proprietary code that had to be removed for 2.2.16 (first release under the GPL). I DO think I'll be using these new audio tools, and I'm glad the people who have been working on them do not share your view that all existing features should be polished before anything new is added.
The GIMP, KDE, GNOME, the Linux kernel itself, are all huge projects with many facets which would never be as sophisticated as they are today without many developers plunging in and doing new stuff. Does the technique make for some rough edges? You bet. But it also results in full-featured and useful software.
I've tried several 3d modelling packages. Most of them have innovative and different user interfaces. I've found blender's ui to be hard to get to grips with. It's incredibly cluttered and the shortcut keys aren't standardized. You're also presented with a myriad of buttons and switches that easily confuse.
Simply because fixing bugs is boring and often tedious. Not many people get their kicks bug fixing. Writing new features is much more appealing since it is a) new and b) makes Open Source Project X that much more comparable to Closed Source Project Y
So new features are added first because they are fun and increase product visibility. Bugs often take a back seat due to the drudgery associated with them.
Damn.. That link should be www.elysiun.com not elyiun.
How's about someone get to work on a fully featured audio sequencer for linux?
I'm super happy that we can now sync music to animation in blender. It's just too damned bad we don't have an app to actually make that music in linux.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
There is a version of Maya for linux as well..... (pixar is using it that way)
Okay, and UNDO is going to be implemented when? Seriously, I can't take a graphics package without an UNDO feature seriously.
TODO: Something witty here...
Personally I have been using Hash Animation Master for about 3-4 years now. Has all the power of the big boys, but its only $300 and has a community which is very open and helpful. Patches come out all the time, and most bugs are found by the community.
If you want a 3d package but do not have $3000, but want something easy to use than any other, check out www.hash.com.
why o why are closed sourcecompanies obsessed with features ? why cant you fkin fix bugs instead of the current obsession with adding more and more features that add more bugs making it even more unstable, is it boredom or pride ?
do yourselves a favour and make the original application perfect ie: bug free , before adding more features/bloat?
MS word gets more and more features every release, and most users don't even use a lot of those features. photoshop gets more and more features every release, while most non-professionals and home users don't even need everything photoshop can do.
*sigh*
Now back to reality. Why do you blame OSS? Closed source is no different. If anything, it's *closed source products* that add more and more features without looking back. Compare the latest version of Opera with Opera 3. On the other hand, compare GNOME 2 with GNOME 1: they actually cleaned up the GUI and *removed* a lot of config options and replaced them with sane defaults and autodetection, sped up Nautilus many times, and fixed numberous of bugs.
As for your Mozilla comment: Mozilla is meant to turn out this way. The Mozilla browser suite as we know it is just a "technical demo": it was never meant to be the final product. Mozilla was destined to split off in seperate products that use the same browser engine.