"3.2 Group toolbar items into tabs (call them the Office Ribbons if you want... the Office Ribbon is just a ripoff of Dreamweaver UI Tabs [webindexing.biz] anyway and I'm sure they borrowed the idea from someone else. Stealing good ideas is a good thing)."
Actually the Office Ribbon are probably more properly considered 'ripoffs' of the Blender Button panel - the tabs for Blender are icons instead of text but other than that the resemblance is quite strong.
LetterRip
Re:This is disturbing for cross-platform devs.
on
Intel Purchases Havok
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Perhaps they can look at Bullet - http://www.continuousphysics.com/Bullet/ a high performance cross platform physics library that is open source. I know it is optimized for XBox 360 and PS3 and I'm pretty sure it has been used for first tier games on both. Not sure though if it has been optimized for the Wii though.
This isn't supply and demand this is risk minimization and viral marketing - those who are willing to listen to it before it has an established reputation get it for free; those initial individuals can also turn an additional profit by recommending it if it is good (there is a rewards system for doing recommendations, but there is a reputation system so that recommending crap hurts you) - as the items popularity grows and it is a less risky purchase the price increases. The price is capped at.99 a song, or 10$ an album so the highest price you pay is the cost of a standard song or album on itunes. It is actually a pretty slick setup and appears good for both consumers and bands that have big potential for becoming popular (niche bands with a dedicated fan base this might not benefit much though).
Pardon me for asking, but where exactly does th Blender foundation get the funds from to just be able to say 'we'll make a movie and a game this year'?
Last time i checked, most (low-key) open source projects were dirt poor. How come this is different with Blender?
The Blender Foundation sells printed high quality versions of its documentation (and commissions new and up to date documentation - ie see the link to Essential Blender earlier); it presells DVD versions of the movie projects; and enough users use it commercially that they can afford and are willing to 'give back' to the foundation. Also the Blender Foundation has support from both commercial and government entities. All of those are possible through both the efforts of Ton (the project lead and chairman of the Blender Foundation); and through the work of volunteers.
Also a quick offtopic - 'Essential Blender' a new book to make it easy to learn Blender is being published by the Blender Foundation and ships tomorrow.
"It shouldn't be called an open source movie... more like a movie developed with open source tools...."
It is open in that it will all be released under a open license (Creative Commons attribution i think?) including all blend files etc. Of course it is also being made with open tools.
Will users be able to create content? If so what free tools (http://www.blender.org/ or http://www.artofillusion.org/ ?) and formats will be supported? Will we be able to export animations or create normal mapped items?
"If anyone from the Blender team reads this, how realistic would it be to incorporate this stuff into Blender? Or is the rigging functionality in Blender pretty much the same as this already?"
It is a rig, Ie it is a setup of bones, constraints, and drivers - so almost certainly something similar could be set up in Blender. I don't think it is even possible to 'copyright' a rig (it is pretty much purely functional it can't really be claimed to have expressive elements). They probably just don't understand copyright law and what its limits are.
"OK. For newbies, the Blender interface is difficult because you have to learn it all. There isn't much hand-holding. But, when you ask professional modelers, they scream hard at anyone who wants to touch the U.I. as its *PROFOUNDLY* much faster than (pick your professional $100,000/per 10 minute license 3D application here)."
You are overstating things I'd say. I'd suggest for modeling for instance Modo is possibly quite a bit faster and Silo likely has a speed advantage as well for many tasks.
"Blender is starting to rule over some other 3D applications (high end special effects), etc."
For high end special effects particularly smoke and flame most of the other high end apps (particularly Houdini) are still quite a bit better suited. That is one area I would still consider Blender to be 'weak' in.
"The code works perfectly for me (I use it almost every day) and the blender folks have access to it if they ever decide to take the time to sit down and review it but the whole process was pretty discouraging to me."
Got a link to it in the patch tracker? Usually a long delay for a patch or submitted script review means that you submitted around the time that we started a feature freeze. Thus no one reviews it since it can't be applied till after the feature freeze. Of course occasionally patches just do 'fall through the cracks' - hopefully with the change to using subversion that will happen less often.
"But I've also gained enough confidence in the basic design of that application (and learned many lessions from it, too) that I have a pretty good idea of what is possible."
Pretty much every developer that has joined Blender has spent some time looking over the codebases of the other opensource 3D applications. Your claim of a month is absolutely ridiculous - even a year would be an insane time line. At a minimum you are looking at a requiring a similar sized developer base as Blender at least 3 years of full time development before any of the other 3D apps can even come close to Blenders functionality as of right now.
Here is a very brief list of what you need to approach the basic functionality that Blender has
Modeling tools - asside from Blender the only half reasonable polygon modeling tool available is Wings3D(which is written in Erlang). In addition to a strong core of standard polygon modeling tools Blender also has sculpt modeling, curve modeling, metaball modeling, NURBS, etc.
UV Unwrapping - wings has basic UV unwrapping - Blenders are considered one of the best implementations in the 3D industry. As far as I'm aware all of the apps you mention have at best very basic tools.
Texturing - Blender has full node based materials and texturing; Blender has 3D painting and texturing tools. To my knowledge none of the apps you propose have either of those features.
Basic animation - you need good rigging and skinning tools for character animation. You need cage deformation, hooks, a driver system etc. I think AOI has okay rigging but other than that?
Simulation - physics, particles, fluids, crowds, hair. Presumably some of the apps you list have very basic collision integrated? Some also might have very basic particles. The difference between where they are at, and where they would need to be to match Blenders current capabilities is tremendous.
Compositing - not crucial for a 3D application to have - but this is a powerful feature of Blender having an integrated compositor in its rendering pipeline.
Rendering - do any of the projects you list have multipass rendering even?
Scripting - Blenders API has been refactored a few times, this has caused some pain among scripters, but the API has been steadily maturing and is quite large and powerful.
Exporters and Importers - how many and how mature are exporters for any of your suggested programs? A fairly complete and mature exporter or importer can in itself represent numerous man years of effort.
Sequencer - again not crucial to meet the definition of a standard 3D animation suite - but again a powerful feature that is part of Blender.
Logic nodes and game engine - yet another feature that wouldn't be a strict requirement to become a reasonable competitor in the 3D animation suite space, but another tool that is an important part of Blender for part of our user base.
I get the impression that you have absolutely no idea how much time and effort it would take to become a serious competitor as a 3D animation suite. No disrespect but Moonlight 3D isn't even 1% of the way there, and yet in your estimation it would only take a month to 'catch up'.
"I have to respectfully disagree. Blender's learning curve is horrendous. I spent a fair amount of time (all of my free time+ over the course of about 3 weeks) and got no where when trying to create simple animations for my physics students. I spent a weekend with POV-Ray and completed the first of many such short animations."
Did you try using the documentation? After the end of the gingerbread man tutorial (ie the first chapter in the 'Official Blender Guide' - a tutorial designed to take a total of an hour - 3o minutes of modeling and texturing, and 30 minutes of animating, lighting and rendering ) you should have enough knowledge to do any basic animation inside of Blender.
"I know that Blender's capabilities blows POV-Ray's out of the water, but I couldn't do simply and easy stuff easily with Blender that I can with POV-Ray. Every so often I'll spend a weekend with Blender and make some incremental progress in my understanding of how it works for still scenes, but I haven't even gotten near the animation tools."
Are you sure you even used POV Ray for your animation? POV Ray is a renderer; to animate you would have either had to do it via programming/script or use some tool that uses POV Ray as its renderer.
"Actually working on 64-bit platforms is nice. Reference"
Blender worked on 64 bit platforms, but it wasn't recommended since the output of the files wasn't guaranteed to be portable between 32 and 64 bit versions of Blender. For 2.44 being 64 bit clean again (it was for the majority of its history) was one of the goals.
"Also, I think it's a personal problem, but I haven't been able to get Blender to even work on my system."
Sounds like a bad opengl driver, you can try upgrading or downgrading your driver; turning down hardware accelleration; and turning off antialiasing - those tend to fix 99% of the common issues.
" Blender is a design that was never intended to grow into what it is now. Remember that it was an inhouse developement of an animation studio so the whole application was designed to get the job done that was at hand."
Perhaps you should read about Blenders actual history?
Blender was a rewrite of the inhouse design tool of neo-geo. The design of the rewrite was very forward looking. There were a few design errors, one such design error due to Blender being used inhouse is that the input design wasn't made easily customizable. This error is one that we are going to correct with Blender 2.50.
"But when the program itself was commercialized it started to outgrow itself. This was never anticipated and Blender still suffers from that."
It had been anticipated that Blender was to be commercialized. The technological and design foundations of Blender are pretty impressive. Blender has had some issues (all but a small handful of which have been addressed), but not anticipating commercialization is not one of them.
"The other applications that I pointed out have a solid design which is able to grow. Commercial applications like Maya, Softimage and Houdini have demonstrated that. Comparing blender to all of those on a design level makes blender stand out as the toy."
I suspect that you have close to zero knowledge about the designs of XSI, Maya, or Houdini similar to your close to zero knowledge of Blenders design.
Blender has been able to sustain absolutely ridiculous growth rates in its code base and functionality. Professional 3D artists find the pace of development eye popping/jaw dropping.
"Keep in mind the mentors approve the person. This is the same as if you hired a consultant for 3 months."
Actually it isn't. A consultant interview allows a lot greater scope to explore the individuals background and experience. The SoC proposals it is really difficult to know in advance whether the individual has adequate skill or 'stick to it ness' to accomplish their goal.
"The results you get from the students are a direct result of the support the mentor and the community around the project provide."
While good mentoring and community support are valuable (indeed at Blender we have a strong system in place to help SoCers succeed) a lot of what will determine whether the student will succeed is what the student brings to the table in terms of their internal motivation and core coding abilities as well as their willingness to commit time to the project. Other factors are that the project scope was adequately narrow so that the inevitable unforeseen difficulties don't result in the project failing (a lot of projects that were successful on paper, but that haven't made it into the main tree are of this nature).
"Also a large influence is the students ability to take advantage of both the community and the mentor. But this is hopefully less an issue as the mentor gets to chose the student."
They get to choose the 'project', there often isn't much that the mentoring organization knows beyond the proposal quality. With 100s of proposals there are a number that are great on paper, but that the proposer doesn't have the capability to accomplish the goal.
"Are there any metrics showing the net benefit (or otherwise) to the projects and the relative cost in supervision & reworking code (ie, we got equivalent productivity of say 0.7 of the mentors normal productivity for the time spent mentoring) and how many of the students went on to continue contributing to that or another open source project?"
I can't speak for other projects but for Blender - we have had some extremely productive coders join through their summer of code projects and the benefit to Blender has been far in excess of the mentoring investment that was needed. Also SoC has allowed some of those who were already coding on Blender to take time that they would have required to do a different summer job, and instead spend it working on improving Blender.
3D Studio Max, XSI, Maya, Zbrush, Avid, Fusion, Nuke, Combustion and Photoshop.
Only one platform runs all of those: Windows. None of those programs are included in this "multimedia pack for professionals". So uhh yeah, my complaint is with the parent... this isn't a professional package at all."
You clearly haven't tried the latest version of Blender:) It is a reasonable replacement for many professional users and we do get people who are migrating from those various packages (although more are coming from Lightwave, Cinema 4D, Truespace, and other lower end packages) As a professional 3D artist you will find Blenders mesh modeling tools fairly comparable for SubD modeling; sculpting tools fairly comparable to zbrush (although with tradeoffs and limitations - we have native retopology currently but lack masking capabilites so you can only hide mesh); uv unwrapping that is superior to all of those listed; node based texturing is fairly comparable - it lacks certain shaders specifically a SSS shader. But given the list of software it sounds more like it will tend to be work that Blenders internal renderer is suited for (really it depends on a case by case basis). Its node based compositing and non linear editing (sequencing) are quite good - but not likely to knock any of the top end software out currently. While I don't expect current users of other major 3D packages to migrate to Blender as a replacement for their existing software (why go elsewhere when they already have a pipeline that meets their needs). Blender is already quite well suited for many professionals needs and is already in heavy usage by a number of small and mid sized studios for commercial 3D work (print and video advertising, architectural rendering, scientific visualization, feature animations, etc). It also is being used in some major studios unfortunately most are requiring NDAs about software used in their pipeline although we are seeking permission to do interviews with some artists on major projects that it has been revealed that Blender was used for.
Of course Blender isn't suited for all 3D animation tasks currently - I'd recommend against it for photoreal rendering involving animation of people; and against if for special effects work involving smoke and flame (ie volumetric rendering) and certain complex particle effects.
However that is a subset of all animation work - and those can and ofter are handled with specially dedicated software.
Just because a set of software that meets your professional needs isn't provided, doesn't mean that the professional requirements of others aren't being met.
LetterRip
Re:Mentioning that you were involved with VRML...
on
Collada
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
"People much much more involved in the 3D industry will avoid this format on the simple grounds that it is a generic solution to a problem best solved by specific art pipelines."
Collada is rapidly being adopted because it works great as an open exchange format between 3D content creation tools. Maya, 3DS Max, XSI, Lightwave, Houdini, Blender, all have Collada support - indeed good Collada support is a major selling point of the latest release of XSI.
Since Collada is the native format supported for Sony on the PS3 everyone is also motivated to support it well.
"As an ex professional games developer, I think that the open source guys clamouring to get their paws on Ryzom are in for a shock, if they think it's going to be easy to adopt, adapt and improve it. In my experience, successful games development means running the project with a fist of iron, and ruthlessly preventing developers from falling noff into fugue states where they get obessed with their own little area of navel lint. It will be very interesting to see how Ryzom develops (if at all) after it's open sourced."
First this is purchasing the game content and code, the code is probably the least interesting part of the package. Most open source games lack quality game content - that tends to be 'why they suck' - so a way to get a large number of models and textures and then be able to repurpose them for any game will be of huge value to opensource gaming. Also Blender with its new digital sculpting tools; retopology tools; fast 3D painting; game creation specific tools such as light map baking, multi uv sets, etc. is now to the point where it can much more easily be used for a complete game asset creation (previously it could be used for such, but in a more limited fashion and requiring more effort). This will make it much easier for even novice users to repurpose the content to their needs.
Also the people organizing the purchase are some of the developers of the software - as seen with Blender it is the love of the previous users and developers which form the strong base community with which a previously closed source project can succeed.
Tabs for UI panels containing new buttons has been available for a very long time for 3D applications - Blender 3D has had it from about its inception. Look at the bottom of our screenshot at the wiki here. How does calling it 'ribbons' make it innovative? I'll be kinda peeved if they tried to take a patent on it.
"I don't believe the successes of Google or Microsoft are down to luck. Neither do I think that Warren Buffett is a lucky investor. Being opportunistic and taking a calculated risk sounds more like it."
I think you are confusing luck being the only factor, with luck being a contributing factor. Bill Gates has done a superb job of taking advantage of the opportunities that he has been presented with. However many of his opportunities would not have existed without luck (being born into a wealthy family - that resulted in him among other things attending a private school that had access to a computer - which is why he was able to learn about them and become interested in them and eventually gaint the skills needed to write MS Basic); his being born on the critical time period for the personal computer to arrive (Ie the technology had advanced enough that it was feasible); the commercialization of software - instead of the academic model of software taking off; his mother being friends with one of the honchos at IBM (which resulted in him getting the interview with IBM which in all probability he would not have got on his own); his lying to IBM about having an operating system (they were able to buy it after the fact - if the author had turned them down they would have been sunk); IBM not having strong contractual terms (which allowed gates to license the OS and compiler to other manufacturers); the violating of copyright and not getting caught till long after they had become established (the bios code, and a few other key factors that they lacked).
Luck is the difference between his being worth multiple billions and being worth a few million. Similarly for Sergey and Brin.
I'd rather fund something like another Blender Foundation film project. With Elephants Dream we got massive improvements to Blender, a large amount of high quality textures that could be used in our own works, production files that could be learned from, as well an 'advertisement' demonstrating that Blender and other open source tools (GIMP, Subversion) were capable of generating production quality work. With "A Swarm of Angels" I don't see it as likely to drive improvements for any creative tools, nor does it appear that it would provide any resources useful for either learning nor as an input of content to other work.
Is there something I'm missing about "A Swarm of Angels" that would make it a 'good idea'?
Slashdot Mirror
"3.2 Group toolbar items into tabs (call them the Office Ribbons if you want... the Office Ribbon is just a ripoff of Dreamweaver UI Tabs [webindexing.biz] anyway and I'm sure they borrowed the idea from someone else. Stealing good ideas is a good thing)."
Actually the Office Ribbon are probably more properly considered 'ripoffs' of the Blender Button panel - the tabs for Blender are icons instead of text but other than that the resemblance is quite strong.
LetterRip
Perhaps they can look at Bullet - http://www.continuousphysics.com/Bullet/ a high performance cross platform physics library that is open source. I know it is optimized for XBox 360 and PS3 and I'm pretty sure it has been used for first tier games on both. Not sure though if it has been optimized for the Wii though.
LetterRip
This isn't supply and demand this is risk minimization and viral marketing - those who are willing to listen to it before it has an established reputation get it for free; those initial individuals can also turn an additional profit by recommending it if it is good (there is a rewards system for doing recommendations, but there is a reputation system so that recommending crap hurts you) - as the items popularity grows and it is a less risky purchase the price increases. The price is capped at .99 a song, or 10$ an album so the highest price you pay is the cost of a standard song or album on itunes. It is actually a pretty slick setup and appears good for both consumers and bands that have big potential for becoming popular (niche bands with a dedicated fan base this might not benefit much though).
LetterRip
The Blender Foundation sells printed high quality versions of its documentation (and commissions new and up to date documentation - ie see the link to Essential Blender earlier); it presells DVD versions of the movie projects; and enough users use it commercially that they can afford and are willing to 'give back' to the foundation. Also the Blender Foundation has support from both commercial and government entities. All of those are possible through both the efforts of Ton (the project lead and chairman of the Blender Foundation); and through the work of volunteers.
LetterRip
LetterRip
"It shouldn't be called an open source movie ... more like a movie developed with open source tools...."
It is open in that it will all be released under a open license (Creative Commons attribution i think?) including all blend files etc. Of course it is also being made with open tools.
LetterRip
"Could the plot also be open source? I have a few scripts handy. Except they're not movie scripts. :("
Nope the script and concept art are already close to completion.
LetterRip
Will users be able to create content? If so what free tools (http://www.blender.org/ or http://www.artofillusion.org/ ?) and formats will be supported? Will we be able to export animations or create normal mapped items?
LetterRip
Hi,
"If anyone from the Blender team reads this, how realistic would it be to incorporate this stuff into Blender? Or is the rigging functionality in Blender pretty much the same as this already?"
It is a rig, Ie it is a setup of bones, constraints, and drivers - so almost certainly something similar could be set up in Blender. I don't think it is even possible to 'copyright' a rig (it is pretty much purely functional it can't really be claimed to have expressive elements). They probably just don't understand copyright law and what its limits are.
LetterRip
"OK. For newbies, the Blender interface is difficult because you have to learn it all. There isn't much hand-holding. But, when you ask professional modelers, they scream hard at anyone who wants to touch the U.I. as its *PROFOUNDLY* much faster than (pick your professional $100,000/per 10 minute license 3D application here)."
You are overstating things I'd say. I'd suggest for modeling for instance Modo is possibly quite a bit faster and Silo likely has a speed advantage as well for many tasks.
"Blender is starting to rule over some other 3D applications (high end special effects), etc."
For high end special effects particularly smoke and flame most of the other high end apps (particularly Houdini) are still quite a bit better suited. That is one area I would still consider Blender to be 'weak' in.
LetterRip
"The code works perfectly for me (I use it almost every day) and the blender folks have access to it if they ever decide to take the time to sit down and review it but the whole process was pretty discouraging to me."
Got a link to it in the patch tracker? Usually a long delay for a patch or submitted script review means that you submitted around the time that we started a feature freeze. Thus no one reviews it since it can't be applied till after the feature freeze. Of course occasionally patches just do 'fall through the cracks' - hopefully with the change to using subversion that will happen less often.
LetterRip
"But I've also gained enough confidence in the basic design of that application (and learned many lessions from it, too) that I have a pretty good idea of what is possible."
Pretty much every developer that has joined Blender has spent some time looking over the codebases of the other opensource 3D applications. Your claim of a month is absolutely ridiculous - even a year would be an insane time line. At a minimum you are looking at a requiring a similar sized developer base as Blender at least 3 years of full time development before any of the other 3D apps can even come close to Blenders functionality as of right now.
Here is a very brief list of what you need to approach the basic functionality that Blender has
Modeling tools - asside from Blender the only half reasonable polygon modeling tool available is Wings3D(which is written in Erlang). In addition to a strong core of standard polygon modeling tools Blender also has sculpt modeling, curve modeling, metaball modeling, NURBS, etc.
UV Unwrapping - wings has basic UV unwrapping - Blenders are considered one of the best implementations in the 3D industry. As far as I'm aware all of the apps you mention have at best very basic tools.
Texturing - Blender has full node based materials and texturing; Blender has 3D painting and texturing tools. To my knowledge none of the apps you propose have either of those features.
Basic animation - you need good rigging and skinning tools for character animation. You need cage deformation, hooks, a driver system etc. I think AOI has okay rigging but other than that?
Simulation - physics, particles, fluids, crowds, hair. Presumably some of the apps you list have very basic collision integrated? Some also might have very basic particles. The difference between where they are at, and where they would need to be to match Blenders current capabilities is tremendous.
Compositing - not crucial for a 3D application to have - but this is a powerful feature of Blender having an integrated compositor in its rendering pipeline.
Rendering - do any of the projects you list have multipass rendering even?
Scripting - Blenders API has been refactored a few times, this has caused some pain among scripters, but the API has been steadily maturing and is quite large and powerful.
Exporters and Importers - how many and how mature are exporters for any of your suggested programs? A fairly complete and mature exporter or importer can in itself represent numerous man years of effort.
Sequencer - again not crucial to meet the definition of a standard 3D animation suite - but again a powerful feature that is part of Blender.
Logic nodes and game engine - yet another feature that wouldn't be a strict requirement to become a reasonable competitor in the 3D animation suite space, but another tool that is an important part of Blender for part of our user base.
I get the impression that you have absolutely no idea how much time and effort it would take to become a serious competitor as a 3D animation suite. No disrespect but Moonlight 3D isn't even 1% of the way there, and yet in your estimation it would only take a month to 'catch up'.
LetterRip
Dr Mic,
"I have to respectfully disagree. Blender's learning curve is horrendous. I spent a fair amount of time (all of my free time+ over the course of about 3 weeks) and got no where when trying to create simple animations for my physics students. I spent a weekend with POV-Ray and completed the first of many such short animations."
Did you try using the documentation? After the end of the gingerbread man tutorial (ie the first chapter in the 'Official Blender Guide' - a tutorial designed to take a total of an hour - 3o minutes of modeling and texturing, and 30 minutes of animating, lighting and rendering ) you should have enough knowledge to do any basic animation inside of Blender.
"I know that Blender's capabilities blows POV-Ray's out of the water, but I couldn't do simply and easy stuff easily with Blender that I can with POV-Ray. Every so often I'll spend a weekend with Blender and make some incremental progress in my understanding of how it works for still scenes, but I haven't even gotten near the animation tools."
Are you sure you even used POV Ray for your animation? POV Ray is a renderer; to animate you would have either had to do it via programming/script or use some tool that uses POV Ray as its renderer.
LetterRip
No he is not a Blender developer, anyone who signs up in the forums gets a gforge user account...
LetterRip
"Actually working on 64-bit platforms is nice. Reference"
Blender worked on 64 bit platforms, but it wasn't recommended since the output of the files wasn't guaranteed to be portable between 32 and 64 bit versions of Blender. For 2.44 being 64 bit clean again (it was for the majority of its history) was one of the goals.
"Also, I think it's a personal problem, but I haven't been able to get Blender to even work on my system."
Sounds like a bad opengl driver, you can try upgrading or downgrading your driver; turning down hardware accelleration; and turning off antialiasing - those tend to fix 99% of the common issues.
LetterRip
gmueckl,
i on/history/
I'm sorry sir but you seriously mistaken,
"
Blender is a design that was never intended to grow into what it is now. Remember that it was an inhouse developement of an animation studio so the whole application was designed to get the job done that was at hand."
Perhaps you should read about Blenders actual history?
http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-foundat
Blender was a rewrite of the inhouse design tool of neo-geo. The design of the rewrite was very forward looking. There were a few design errors, one such design error due to Blender being used inhouse is that the input design wasn't made easily customizable. This error is one that we are going to correct with Blender 2.50.
"But when the program itself was commercialized it started to outgrow itself. This was never anticipated and Blender still suffers from that."
It had been anticipated that Blender was to be commercialized. The technological and design foundations of Blender are pretty impressive. Blender has had some issues (all but a small handful of which have been addressed), but not anticipating commercialization is not one of them.
"The other applications that I pointed out have a solid design which is able to grow. Commercial applications like Maya, Softimage and Houdini have demonstrated that. Comparing blender to all of those on a design level makes blender stand out as the toy."
I suspect that you have close to zero knowledge about the designs of XSI, Maya, or Houdini similar to your close to zero knowledge of Blenders design.
Blender has been able to sustain absolutely ridiculous growth rates in its code base and functionality. Professional 3D artists find the pace of development eye popping/jaw dropping.
LetterRip
"Keep in mind the mentors approve the person.
This is the same as if you hired a consultant for 3 months."
Actually it isn't. A consultant interview allows a lot greater scope to explore the individuals background and experience. The SoC proposals it is really difficult to know in advance whether the individual has adequate skill or 'stick to it ness' to accomplish their goal.
"The results you get from the students are a direct result of the support the mentor and the community around the project provide."
While good mentoring and community support are valuable (indeed at Blender we have a strong system in place to help SoCers succeed) a lot of what will determine whether the student will succeed is what the student brings to the table in terms of their internal motivation and core coding abilities as well as their willingness to commit time to the project. Other factors are that the project scope was adequately narrow so that the inevitable unforeseen difficulties don't result in the project failing (a lot of projects that were successful on paper, but that haven't made it into the main tree are of this nature).
"Also a large influence is the students ability to take advantage of both the community and the mentor. But this is hopefully less an issue as the mentor gets to chose the student."
They get to choose the 'project', there often isn't much that the mentoring organization knows beyond the proposal quality. With 100s of proposals there are a number that are great on paper, but that the proposer doesn't have the capability to accomplish the goal.
LetterRip
"Are there any metrics showing the net benefit (or otherwise) to the projects and the relative cost in supervision & reworking code (ie, we got equivalent productivity of say 0.7 of the mentors normal productivity for the time spent mentoring) and how many of the students went on to continue contributing to that or another open source project?"
I can't speak for other projects but for Blender - we have had some extremely productive coders join through their summer of code projects and the benefit to Blender has been far in excess of the mentoring investment that was needed. Also SoC has allowed some of those who were already coding on Blender to take time that they would have required to do a different summer job, and instead spend it working on improving Blender.
LetterRip
"Let's see I'm a pro and I use:
:) It is a reasonable replacement for many professional users and we do get people who are migrating from those various packages (although more are coming from Lightwave, Cinema 4D, Truespace, and other lower end packages) As a professional 3D artist you will find Blenders mesh modeling tools fairly comparable for SubD modeling; sculpting tools fairly comparable to zbrush (although with tradeoffs and limitations - we have native retopology currently but lack masking capabilites so you can only hide mesh); uv unwrapping that is superior to all of those listed; node based texturing is fairly comparable - it lacks certain shaders specifically a SSS shader. But given the list of software it sounds more like it will tend to be work that Blenders internal renderer is suited for (really it depends on a case by case basis). Its node based compositing and non linear editing (sequencing) are quite good - but not likely to knock any of the top end software out currently. While I don't expect current users of other major 3D packages to migrate to Blender as a replacement for their existing software (why go elsewhere when they already have a pipeline that meets their needs). Blender is already quite well suited for many professionals needs and is already in heavy usage by a number of small and mid sized studios for commercial 3D work (print and video advertising, architectural rendering, scientific visualization, feature animations, etc). It also is being used in some major studios unfortunately most are requiring NDAs about software used in their pipeline although we are seeking permission to do interviews with some artists on major projects that it has been revealed that Blender was used for.
3D Studio Max, XSI, Maya, Zbrush, Avid, Fusion, Nuke, Combustion and Photoshop.
Only one platform runs all of those: Windows.
None of those programs are included in this "multimedia pack for professionals". So uhh yeah, my complaint is with the parent... this isn't a professional package at all."
You clearly haven't tried the latest version of Blender
Of course Blender isn't suited for all 3D animation tasks currently - I'd recommend against it for photoreal rendering involving animation of people; and against if for special effects work involving smoke and flame (ie volumetric rendering) and certain complex particle effects.
However that is a subset of all animation work - and those can and ofter are handled with specially dedicated software.
Just because a set of software that meets your professional needs isn't provided, doesn't mean that the professional requirements of others aren't being met.
LetterRip
"People much much more involved in the 3D industry will avoid this format on the simple grounds that it is a generic solution to a problem best solved by specific art pipelines."
Collada is rapidly being adopted because it works great as an open exchange format between 3D content creation tools. Maya, 3DS Max, XSI, Lightwave, Houdini, Blender, all have Collada support - indeed good Collada support is a major selling point of the latest release of XSI.
Since Collada is the native format supported for Sony on the PS3 everyone is also motivated to support it well.
LetterRip
"As an ex professional games developer, I think that the open source guys clamouring to get their paws on Ryzom are in for a shock, if they think it's going to be easy to adopt, adapt and improve it. In my experience, successful games development means running the project with a fist of iron, and ruthlessly preventing developers from falling noff into fugue states where they get obessed with their own little area of navel lint. It will be very interesting to see how Ryzom develops (if at all) after it's open sourced."
First this is purchasing the game content and code, the code is probably the least interesting part of the package. Most open source games lack quality game content - that tends to be 'why they suck' - so a way to get a large number of models and textures and then be able to repurpose them for any game will be of huge value to opensource gaming. Also Blender with its new digital sculpting tools; retopology tools; fast 3D painting; game creation specific tools such as light map baking, multi uv sets, etc. is now to the point where it can much more easily be used for a complete game asset creation (previously it could be used for such, but in a more limited fashion and requiring more effort). This will make it much easier for even novice users to repurpose the content to their needs.
Also the people organizing the purchase are some of the developers of the software - as seen with Blender it is the love of the previous users and developers which form the strong base community with which a previously closed source project can succeed.
LetterRip
Tabs for UI panels containing new buttons has been available for a very long time for 3D applications - Blender 3D has had it from about its inception. Look at the bottom of our screenshot at the wiki here. How does calling it 'ribbons' make it innovative? I'll be kinda peeved if they tried to take a patent on it.
c reen_242a.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Blender_node_s
LetterRip
"I don't believe the successes of Google or Microsoft are down to luck. Neither do I think that Warren Buffett is a lucky investor.
Being opportunistic and taking a calculated risk sounds more like it."
I think you are confusing luck being the only factor, with luck being a contributing factor. Bill Gates has done a superb job of taking advantage of the opportunities that he has been presented with. However many of his opportunities would not have existed without luck (being born into a wealthy family - that resulted in him among other things attending a private school that had access to a computer - which is why he was able to learn about them and become interested in them and eventually gaint the skills needed to write MS Basic); his being born on the critical time period for the personal computer to arrive (Ie the technology had advanced enough that it was feasible); the commercialization of software - instead of the academic model of software taking off; his mother being friends with one of the honchos at IBM (which resulted in him getting the interview with IBM which in all probability he would not have got on his own); his lying to IBM about having an operating system (they were able to buy it after the fact - if the author had turned them down they would have been sunk); IBM not having strong contractual terms (which allowed gates to license the OS and compiler to other manufacturers); the violating of copyright and not getting caught till long after they had become established (the bios code, and a few other key factors that they lacked).
Luck is the difference between his being worth multiple billions and being worth a few million. Similarly for Sergey and Brin.
LetterRip
It's dark, eaten by a Grue.
LetterRip
I'd rather fund something like another Blender Foundation film project. With Elephants Dream we got massive improvements to Blender, a large amount of high quality textures that could be used in our own works, production files that could be learned from, as well an 'advertisement' demonstrating that Blender and other open source tools (GIMP, Subversion) were capable of generating production quality work. With "A Swarm of Angels" I don't see it as likely to drive improvements for any creative tools, nor does it appear that it would provide any resources useful for either learning nor as an input of content to other work.
Is there something I'm missing about "A Swarm of Angels" that would make it a 'good idea'?
LetterRip (A dedicated Blenderhead )