Hi 2.49b the game engine of Blender is fairly reasonable. Definitely good enough to prove whether the idea works and to develop the core logic and game play.
You might want to look at Blender after 2.6 which due to the generosity of googles summer of code, will have advanced path finding tools by default and other useful AI related libraries which will make your life a lot easier.
Blender has a good path to some external engines particularly Unity which is now ported to all of the major platforms.
These days no one is interested in a concept though. They want a game basically developed to the point it appears ready to sell - at least one fully polished level that shows all of the things that a publishing house wants to see in a game. They also want a team ready to develop it a complete game.
Depending on the game type you might want to consider just doing smaller versions of it for a cheap to develop platform such as the iphone.
As with proprietary software and copyright, perfect enforcement of the law would be just as disastrous as not enforcing at all
Why would perfect enforcement be disastrous? Do you mean from the copyright/patent owners perspective or end users perspective? In both cases I'd prefer perfect enforcement and then making specific exceptions in the law where needed rather than having laws that are enforced haphazardly.
Hmm my initial impression was wrong. So far its sole purpose appears to be to waste time by engaging in activities a 10 year old might find fun, and to learn about 'how to be a social innovator' - no actual outlets for innovation, just 'post blogs and fill out forms to get spammed'. Hopefully it will actually provide something worthwhile in the future.
It's wonderful that Blender exists, and a lot of people work very hard on it. I'm sure the code is beautiful and elegant, and the algorithms are sublime, but the program itself is awful. Absolutely unusable. The interface is an act of violence.
Blenders interface has been totally redesigned to be far more usable, and recoded to be reconfigured however one likes including custom mouse and keybindings, custom menus, custom button layouts etc. A number of studios are switching to Blender, and a lot more will once 2.5 final is out.
First, engineering software is a very specialized beast in exactly the wrong way to exist as a FOSS project. For FOSS projects to exist you first need someone who is capable of doing the programing. Then they have to have a need that they want to fulfill. And they can't need it urgently enough that simply going out any buying a working package makes sense. None of this describes the type of people who are trying to design next-generation parts of anything.
That describes some, but not all FOSS tools. In CAD and FEA tools there are government and research facility sponsored tools.
It comes down to this: if you have the funding to actually make anything that you plan on designing you have the funding that paying for a high quality industry standard package is peanuts. And if you don't have the funding then it doesn't matter, does it?
It isn't to the same quality as Avatar or a typical Pixar film, however Blender was to a productive quality and production speed to get the job done.
It's the same reason that film and television production has always been happy to pick up FOSS solutions that already work but have never particularly cared about developing them. If you are operating at the professional level where you need these tools the cost of them is almost meaningless. It something that always confuses GIMP and Blender supporters who view it as personal software. For them shelling out $5000 a pop for software is such a big deal and they can never understand how the pros don't seem to care.
Actually the reason is more due to a established pipeline, the majority of the available workforce is already trained in the existing tools, and until recently the productivity of the tools was not competitive, among other issues. You should see a dramitic shift to Blender usage over the next 10 years, since it is becoming in widespread usage in universities.
[quote]However, beyond the FOSS issue what you are trying to do will not work. Period. These types of software packages are very specialized for specific types of work and beyond a basic level are no good beyond that. 3D modeling software such as Blender or AoI (or Maya or Lightwave or 3DS Max...) are not CAD software. They are not even remotely CAD software. Yes, they appear superficially similar but they are NOT. 3D modeling software is intended to fake the appearance of large numbers of real objects. CAD software is intended to do what is basically visual math. 3D modeling packages have margins of error built in. Many of them will auto-round any equations or numbers entered. As such they are not suitable for real-world design of any complexity.[/quote]
Precision is definitely an issue when comparing a 3D Animation package to CAD. That said, precision is actually a fairly solvable problem. And as long as the work is not done in drastically different scales in the same file adequate accuracy can be maintained.
That said it is far from clear from his description what they are trying to do. Ie I'd assume that they are not going to be outputting this to a 3D printer etc.
The types of data that CAD and modeling software generate are also not particularly similar. If you try and just toss engineering blueprints into animation software your artists will not thank you are the end result will look like ass. CAD tends to have too much and the wrong type of detail where animation software is looking for simplification and tends to simplify areas that need detail to look proper
If they didn't care for previous versions of Blender, they might want to try Blender 2.50alpha or a more recent test build (next testing build within 2 months), it is much more similar to maya and 3DS Max in layout and can have bindings customized.
If I were to invest in game development, I would require the following:
1. Access to a weekly build. I want a full build of the current game status, not a reduced-functionality demo. This is necessary because if game development would stop, I would still have something. The extreme programming technique could be used to reduce the risk of loss in investment.
This was how the 'Yo Frankie' game was developed. SVN was openned up to the supporters fairly early in the game development cycle. http://www.yofrankie.org/
2. Ability to request changes. If I invest in a game, this should give me a certain degree of voting rights.
While I don't disagree, realize that 50$ for a game needing million dollar development means you have one vote out of 20,000. Given that a feature to develop and debug will take probably 10 hrs, and with each of those hours billed easily at 50-100$, you aren't supplying enough funding to support a single simple feature.
3. As long as money is invested in the game, development should continue. When a game developer wants to stop supporting a game, he should stop people from investing in it.
Doesn't sound particularly needed one way or another.
4. Online platform. Ongoing projects should be listed on a service like ebay.
huh?
In particular for game topics neglected by the big publishers, this would open up ways for newcoming game developers to implement ideas from and for communities with special interests. While I think this would be a welcome change, many people will prefer buying games without risking loss of investment. If trolls are kept in check, I think the game development process could work in a very open way.
Well this process already worked for the opensource project 'Yo Frankie'
Re:FOSS and Cross Platform Engines
on
The Best Game Engines
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Hi,
you've skipped one of the more powerful and flexible free game engines available - the Blender Game Engine.
Science writers who don't know what they are talking about annoy me,
There's an interesting irony to SiOnyx's business: a large chunk of the semiconductor industry's effort over the past 50 years has gone toward making silicon as pure as possible. But now SiOnyx and other companies are showing how useful--and perhaps profitable--it can be to craft silicon devices with impurities, defects, and unconventional structures.
A pure silicon crystal ingot and a doped silicon wafer are entirely different. You want a pure crystal to grow the ingot as large as possible. To make silicon useful you take the wafer sliced form the ingot, ant it has to be doped (ie add impurities) amongst many other steps.
My understanding is that the readjustment in the MBS (Mortgage backed securities) ratings resulted in a reduced bank holding valuation. Also Money Market Accounts (MMAs) whose value is based on that valuation experienced for the first time in their history a decrease in valuation. Owners of MMAs seeing this decrease, pulled their money out of their MMAs.
Unfortunately almost all 'short term paper' loans are backed by MMA deposits.
Given the deposit ratio requirements, banks suddenly had far more loans out than deposits to cover them.
They were required to borrow money to have the correct deposit ratios, however, since everyone was hit at the same time, there was no one to borrow from.
My proposal, allows banks to make 'short term paper' loans based on their regular deposits (FDIC insured) and allow a temporary increase in leverage ratios for their loans. (Say 20:1, the exact ratio should probably be picked based on total short term paper that was available prior to the MMA withdrawals plus some margin for increased liquidity needs) the ratio would be ratcheted down at say 1/4 pt per month till previous ratios are returned to.
Also greater ratios for MMAs would be allowed, the more MMA deposits acquired perhaps the faster the regular deposit ratios would ratchet down.
Part two - valuation of MBSes.
MBSes are currently valued as nearly worthless in the market, thus no one is willing to sell them since the are clearly worth more than the market is willing to pay, and no one is really willing to buy them at a 'reasonable' price, because there is no clear idea of what a 'reasonable price' is. There is however, an alternative to 'valuing to market' which can be used when the prices the market is giving for something 'doesn't make sense'.
This methodology, known as 'net present value' or 'discounted net present value', evaluates an asset based on its 'stream of future income'. Essentially it gives the discounted value (a discounted value is the value of getting something right now versus getting it at a future date) of that stream of future income.
This would be done for current MBSes, and because they were reasonably valuated would no longer be toxic and untradable.
It would be best to only evaluate a percentage of the MBSes and use statistics to project the value of the remainder of MBSes so that they do not all need to be individually valuated (obviously this would increase the risk premium to buy them.)
For the future I would require a random sample of all assets/securities, etc. to be valued by the NPV method. If there is a significant difference between the two (say 5-10%) then the entity selling the security would need to publish the NPV as well as the market value. This would signal investors that something is amiss with the valuation given by the market, and would likely help to prevent bubbles.
It would probably be necessary for these valuations to be done by an outside auditor or government agency that would do the NPV evaluation to prevent a conflict of interest.
Tom Musgrove LetterRip
Please forward this idea to your local congressman, senator, newspaper, if you think it worthwhile
It isn't mentioned in the article, but it is clear from the images that they used Blender for the demo items and screenshots, indeed the two images from the article are rather well known among Blender users, one is from 'man in man' a short by Sacha, and the other is Petunia by macuonu which was used for a collaborative animation for the Blender art festival. Also some of individuals involved in Shapeways are major Blenderheads.
I thought Shapeways was being supported by Phillips but was under the impression that it started externally and hence would not be a spinoff.
I want to see this team of academics write some code that will beat a human at *No-Limit* Hold'em. Or maybe *Pot-Limit* Omaha. NEVER going to happen.
I don't care how well such a program is coded... it will absolutely buckle under the pressure of a professional who constantly bets half his stack on nothing. The machine would turn into a professional folding station that only plays AA, KK, or AK. Guess what? That strategy isn't winning any games or any period of time in a no-limit or pot-limit world.
This team of academics has written poker bots that play no limit and pot limit poker, and the bots are fairly decent at it. Doing a half stack bet frequently will most likely end up with the professional being busted out.
The same techniques would work for pot limit omaha. The only difference being that pot limit omaha is a bit more combinatorially complex.
Part of their competitive edge is not having a sales tax, and frankly, they shouldn't have to pay one as someone else mentioned, as the services their distribution centers use should be covered by their property taxes.
Without roads it is really difficult to distribute products. Road maintenance is a major cost to states part of which is covered by state sales tax.
LetteRip
Re:Don't forget to support Blender
on
Blender 2.46 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Hmm for some reason the link to Big Buck Bunny, didn't show up. Also I should mention the blog that showed the development of Big Buck Bunny as it was being created.
Please consider picking up a copy of the Big Buck Bunny DVD it supported a lot of the development that was done for this release. You can see the trailer here.
Or consider preordering Apricot the game that is currently in development that is based on the Big Buck Bunny movie. You can see the development reports here.
Not making it a fscking mission to get your Blender work (sorry, "assets") into XNA's Content Pipeline? Give specifics on issues you are having - are you using the FBX exporter, the Direct X exporter, or the Collada exporter? (I'd recommend the FBX exporter since I've heard it works best currently).
email me details... LetterRip AT gmail DOT com and it is something that I'll see if Ton can email their representative about.
Actually.. Microsoft doesn't do anything that nearly competes with Blender. The should just add support for OpenNURBS (which is already free anyways). MS just purchased Caligari which makes Truespace, a (low end) competitor in the 3D market. So they do in fact compete with us directly.
Hm, could you explain a little more what is different between Blender under Windows and Blender under Linux? I was under the impression that its pretty much the same thing, since it has all its own GUI components and doesn't really make much if any use of OS specific features. They should be the same - but there might be performance differences based on your graphics card driver (they vary in bugginess across platform), how it was compiled (what optimizations were used), etc. One user recently reported double the general performance on Ubuntu 64 as compared to Windows XP on the same hardware, others have reported results that are the reverse. Our developer base uses a wide variety of OSes and hardware.
The ratio of developers to users will always be quite small (and by quite small I mean less than 1 significant developer per 100,000 downloads, or 1 significant developer per 10,000 users) except for
1) Where it is at the core of a business process for a highly technical audience (ie the linux kernel, php, python)
or
2) It is replacing software that has as its primary competitors software in the thousands or tens of thousands per seat (Blender, mysql)
or
3) It is sexy or fun to work on (Ogre3D, Blender, Firefox)
The vast majority of software does not have any of those qualities and thus is unlikely to attract much programming talent.
Spoken as someone who doesn't know how to operate it, I think.
Personally, I wish I could use it as a word processor. I already use it for flowcharts. You can use it as a word processor:) Also Ton uses it for doing powerpoint style presentations; and Intrr uses if for page layout (see the Instinctive Blender fork).
Looking at the tutorial, it seems like you CAN use Blender to edit and compose videos, but it seems like choosing a Leatherman to do surgery because it has a scalpel and tweezers and a screwdriver all in one tool. You are looking at this from the wrong perspective - if you are using Blender for Compositing/3D animation/Visual FX/Color Grading etc. Then you can jump into video editing with similar tools and workflow. Plumiferos ended up using Blender for video editing after considering commercial packages and other open source packages because of it being easier to keep the consistent work flow.
After 2.50 a skin that allows Blender to be used by individuals familar with other video editing packages without having to learn a new owrkflow might be a possible consideration, but as is it is already very useful to a number of users and their workflows.
The pulldown that Eugenia mentions in the tutorial is a rather convoluted method of changing preferences - far easier is just change the main 3D window to a preference window.
'The Essential Blender' is a pretty good book for learning the basics of Blender - after that use the Blender Wiki and other sources for deeper information.
If you are looking for a fun project to apply to - there are currently only 20 Blender applicants - so a good proposal has pretty good odds of getting selected. Also working on 3D is lots of fun.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi 2.49b the game engine of Blender is fairly reasonable. Definitely good enough to prove whether the idea works and to develop the core logic and game play.
You might want to look at Blender after 2.6 which due to the generosity of googles summer of code, will have advanced path finding tools by default and other useful AI related libraries which will make your life a lot easier.
Blender has a good path to some external engines particularly Unity which is now ported to all of the major platforms.
These days no one is interested in a concept though. They want a game basically developed to the point it appears ready to sell - at least one fully polished level that shows all of the things that a publishing house wants to see in a game. They also want a team ready to develop it a complete game.
Depending on the game type you might want to consider just doing smaller versions of it for a cheap to develop platform such as the iphone.
As with proprietary software and copyright, perfect enforcement of the law would be just as disastrous as not enforcing at all
Why would perfect enforcement be disastrous? Do you mean from the copyright/patent owners perspective or end users perspective? In both cases I'd prefer perfect enforcement and then making specific exceptions in the law where needed rather than having laws that are enforced haphazardly.
Hmm my initial impression was wrong. So far its sole purpose appears to be to waste time by engaging in activities a 10 year old might find fun, and to learn about 'how to be a social innovator' - no actual outlets for innovation, just 'post blogs and fill out forms to get spammed'. Hopefully it will actually provide something worthwhile in the future.
LetterRip
It's wonderful that Blender exists, and a lot of people work very hard on it. I'm sure the code is beautiful and elegant, and the algorithms are sublime, but the program itself is awful. Absolutely unusable. The interface is an act of violence.
Blenders interface has been totally redesigned to be far more usable, and recoded to be reconfigured however one likes including custom mouse and keybindings, custom menus, custom button layouts etc. A number of studios are switching to Blender, and a lot more will once 2.5 final is out.
LetterRip
If they didn't care for previous versions of Blender, they might want to try Blender 2.50alpha or a more recent test build (next testing build within 2 months), it is much more similar to maya and 3DS Max in layout and can have bindings customized.
LetterRip
If I were to invest in game development, I would require the following:
1. Access to a weekly build. I want a full build of the current game status, not a reduced-functionality demo. This is necessary because if game development would stop, I would still have something. The extreme programming technique could be used to reduce the risk of loss in investment.
This was how the 'Yo Frankie' game was developed. SVN was openned up to the supporters fairly early in the game development cycle. http://www.yofrankie.org/
2. Ability to request changes. If I invest in a game, this should give me a certain degree of voting rights.
While I don't disagree, realize that 50$ for a game needing million dollar development means you have one vote out of 20,000. Given that a feature to develop and debug will take probably 10 hrs, and with each of those hours billed easily at 50-100$, you aren't supplying enough funding to support a single simple feature.
3. As long as money is invested in the game, development should continue. When a game developer wants to stop supporting a game, he should stop people from investing in it.
Doesn't sound particularly needed one way or another.
4. Online platform. Ongoing projects should be listed on a service like ebay.
huh?
In particular for game topics neglected by the big publishers, this would open up ways for newcoming game developers to implement ideas from and for communities with special interests. While I think this would be a welcome change, many people will prefer buying games without risking loss of investment. If trolls are kept in check, I think the game development process could work in a very open way.
Well this process already worked for the opensource project 'Yo Frankie'
Hi,
you've skipped one of the more powerful and flexible free game engines available - the Blender Game Engine.
See an example of its usage here - http://www.yofrankie.org/
LetterRip
Science writers who don't know what they are talking about annoy me,
There's an interesting irony to SiOnyx's business: a large chunk of the semiconductor industry's effort over the past 50 years has gone toward making silicon as pure as possible. But now SiOnyx and other companies are showing how useful--and perhaps profitable--it can be to craft silicon devices with impurities, defects, and unconventional structures.
A pure silicon crystal ingot and a doped silicon wafer are entirely different. You want a pure crystal to grow the ingot as large as possible. To make silicon useful you take the wafer sliced form the ingot, ant it has to be doped (ie add impurities) amongst many other steps.
LetterRip
My understanding is that the readjustment in the MBS (Mortgage backed securities) ratings resulted in a reduced bank holding valuation. Also Money Market Accounts (MMAs) whose value is based on that valuation experienced for the first time in their history a decrease in valuation. Owners of MMAs seeing this decrease, pulled their money out of their MMAs.
Unfortunately almost all 'short term paper' loans are backed by MMA deposits.
Given the deposit ratio requirements, banks suddenly had far more loans out than deposits to cover them.
They were required to borrow money to have the correct deposit ratios, however, since everyone was hit at the same time, there was no one to borrow from.
My proposal, allows banks to make 'short term paper' loans based on their regular deposits (FDIC insured) and allow a temporary increase in leverage ratios for their loans. (Say 20:1, the exact ratio should probably be picked based on total short term paper that was available prior to the MMA withdrawals plus some margin for increased liquidity needs) the ratio would be ratcheted down at say 1/4 pt per month till previous ratios are returned to.
Also greater ratios for MMAs would be allowed, the more MMA deposits acquired perhaps the faster the regular deposit ratios would ratchet down.
Part two - valuation of MBSes.
MBSes are currently valued as nearly worthless in the market, thus no one is willing to sell them since the are clearly worth more than the market is willing to pay, and no one is really willing to buy them at a 'reasonable' price, because there is no clear idea of what a 'reasonable price' is. There is however, an alternative to 'valuing to market' which can be used when the prices the market is giving for something 'doesn't make sense'.
This methodology, known as 'net present value' or 'discounted net present value', evaluates an asset based on its 'stream of future income'. Essentially it gives the discounted value (a discounted value is the value of getting something right now versus getting it at a future date) of that stream of future income.
This would be done for current MBSes, and because they were reasonably valuated would no longer be toxic and untradable.
It would be best to only evaluate a percentage of the MBSes and use statistics to project the value of the remainder of MBSes so that they do not all need to be individually valuated (obviously this would increase the risk premium to buy them.)
For the future I would require a random sample of all assets/securities, etc. to be valued by the NPV method. If there is a significant difference between the two (say 5-10%) then the entity selling the security would need to publish the NPV as well as the market value. This would signal investors that something is amiss with the valuation given by the market, and would likely help to prevent bubbles.
It would probably be necessary for these valuations to be done by an outside auditor or government agency that would do the NPV evaluation to prevent a conflict of interest.
Tom Musgrove
LetterRip
Please forward this idea to your local congressman, senator, newspaper, if you think it worthwhile
It isn't mentioned in the article, but it is clear from the images that they used Blender for the demo items and screenshots, indeed the two images from the article are rather well known among Blender users, one is from 'man in man' a short by Sacha, and the other is Petunia by macuonu which was used for a collaborative animation for the Blender art festival. Also some of individuals involved in Shapeways are major Blenderheads.
I thought Shapeways was being supported by Phillips but was under the impression that it started externally and hence would not be a spinoff.
LetterRip
I want to see this team of academics write some code that will beat a human at *No-Limit* Hold'em. Or maybe *Pot-Limit* Omaha. NEVER going to happen.
I don't care how well such a program is coded... it will absolutely buckle under the pressure of a professional who constantly bets half his stack on nothing. The machine would turn into a professional folding station that only plays AA, KK, or AK. Guess what? That strategy isn't winning any games or any period of time in a no-limit or pot-limit world.
This team of academics has written poker bots that play no limit and pot limit poker, and the bots are fairly decent at it. Doing a half stack bet frequently will most likely end up with the professional being busted out.
The same techniques would work for pot limit omaha. The only difference being that pot limit omaha is a bit more combinatorially complex.
LetterRip
Part of their competitive edge is not having a sales tax, and frankly, they shouldn't have to pay one as someone else mentioned, as the services their distribution centers use should be covered by their property taxes.
Without roads it is really difficult to distribute products. Road maintenance is a major cost to states part of which is covered by state sales tax.
LetteRip
Hmm for some reason the link to Big Buck Bunny, didn't show up. Also I should mention the blog that showed the development of Big Buck Bunny as it was being created.
Please consider picking up a copy of the Big Buck Bunny DVD it supported a lot of the development that was done for this release. You can see the trailer here.
Or consider preordering Apricot the game that is currently in development that is based on the Big Buck Bunny movie. You can see the development reports here.
Or you can donate here.
Thanks for your support and we hope you enjoy the latest release,
LetterRip
email me details... LetterRip AT gmail DOT com and it is something that I'll see if Ton can email their representative about.
LetterRip
LetterRip
LetterRip
The ratio of developers to users will always be quite small (and by quite small I mean less than 1 significant developer per 100,000 downloads, or 1 significant developer per 10,000 users) except for
1) Where it is at the core of a business process for a highly technical audience (ie the linux kernel, php, python)
or
2) It is replacing software that has as its primary competitors software in the thousands or tens of thousands per seat (Blender, mysql)
or
3) It is sexy or fun to work on (Ogre3D, Blender, Firefox)
The vast majority of software does not have any of those qualities and thus is unlikely to attract much programming talent.
LetterRip
Personally, I wish I could use it as a word processor. I already use it for flowcharts. You can use it as a word processor
LetterRip
After 2.50 a skin that allows Blender to be used by individuals familar with other video editing packages without having to learn a new owrkflow might be a possible consideration, but as is it is already very useful to a number of users and their workflows.
LetterRip
The pulldown that Eugenia mentions in the tutorial is a rather convoluted method of changing preferences - far easier is just change the main 3D window to a preference window.
'The Essential Blender' is a pretty good book for learning the basics of Blender - after that use the Blender Wiki and other sources for deeper information.
If you are looking for a fun project to apply to - there are currently only 20 Blender applicants - so a good proposal has pretty good odds of getting selected. Also working on 3D is lots of fun.
LetterRip
Thank you for taking the time to answer the questions honestly and forth-rightly.
:)
You seem willing to adopt good ideas - what is the best way to send you new ones
LetterRip