OpenBlender...

526

Sep 24, 2002 at 1:31 AM

By now I expect that most of you are aware that the intellectual property comprising the 3d modeling, animation and rendering package Blender has been purchased by the Blender Foundation. They intend to release the source code to the web on October 13, 2002 making it available under the GNU General Public License (a somewhat less than ideal choice, imo, for reasons I shall elaborate upon shortly). Do any of you plan to use it? Do any of you plan to contribute to the source code/user community, perhaps requesting for crucial or cool features? What are your thoughts in general? To me, the idea of a powerful albeit somewhat unwieldly package like Blender being made Open Source is a tremendous boon. I do plan to start hacking on the Blender sources as soon as I can get my hands on them, and contribute in whatever ways possible. My major focus will be user interface refinements and additional modeling tools (I hope to develop an anatomical modeler plugin for Blender), followed by a set of C++ libraries for manipulating .blend files (only necessary because I intend to license them under more closed-source friendly terms). The downside is that, being under the GPL, Blender presents unique complications for commercial applications that may benefit from the gameBlender sub-product. In fact, this issue is being hashed out on the Blender Foundation forums hosted by elYsiun.com. All comments welcome. Disclaimer: I am not an opponent of the GPL. I do however prefer licensing terms that do not mandate that unrelated products developed using public domain code be also placed in the public domain (eg the LGPL).

Sep 24, 2002 at 1:00 PM

I personally love Blender, unfortunately I wouldn''t know what to do with the source code. I am looking forward to new plugins and such for it. Right now it''s hell trying to remember all the commands, etc. And I would like to see something for generating people or animals. Blender has the power I think it just needs to be focused.

yspotua

Sep 24, 2002 at 1:59 PM

I too am glad that Blender did not die. I am also looking forward to the many improvements that will be forthcoming.

To Techno: I remeber there being a head generating script. It allowed you to modify the basic head by moving sliders and such.

I don''t have it anymore, but you could ask over at the plugin forums and www.elysiun.com

Sep 25, 2002 at 1:08 AM

Yes, I''m very excited about Blender''s continued life.
I have that head script around here somewhere. If you want it, just give the word and I''ll email it as soon as I can find it.

Also, check out Tree Generator
for a tree generator. I''ve just recently discovered it, so I can''t really say how good it is, just thought I''d toss it out there.

Sep 25, 2002 at 12:48 PM

Sweet, thx for the heads up yspotua and Wolfmanyoda. Hey Wolf, if you don''t mind taking a moment to send it my way I''d really appreciate it.

Sep 25, 2002 at 2:14 PM

Sure man, I''ll dig it up tonight and send it your way.

Author

526

Sep 25, 2002 at 11:59 PM

quote:
Original post by TechnoHydra
And I would like to see something for generating people or animals.

That''s exactly what the anatomical modeler plugin would be for. It would allow a developer to define an "anatomy" as well as which values were adjustable, then release this specification and have users turn out all sorts of variations on the basic "skeleton". I hope to prototype this system shortly (for a project I''m working on, actually, but it will serve as the seed for the Blender plugin).

crakinshot

Sep 26, 2002 at 11:28 AM

never used it... taken a look at the gallery... the work their has either been down in MAX then rendered in blender, or made in Blender and Rendered in Max.

I would use it if it had the same tools as max for model creation... I.e: boolean... meshsmooth.

Sep 26, 2002 at 12:45 PM

Am I mistaken or is the meshsmooth ofMax similar to the subdivide smooth in Blender?

Sep 26, 2002 at 11:41 PM

TechnoHydra-
did you change email? I tried to send, but the email address wasn''t legit.

OrangyTang

335

OrangyTang

Sep 27, 2002 at 5:28 AM

"somewhat unwieldly"

This pretty much sums up Blenders interface, its distinctly non-standard - a Bad Thing(tm) - and lacks even a half decent help file. I could go on listing the HCI problems that Blender has for quite some time, but I won''t bore you, if you''ve used it you probably already know.

Unfortunatly, from looking at the forums, theres a huge elitist attitude of ''its intuative once you take the time to learn all the keyboard commands'' which is just plain silly.

I''m going to stick with QuArK and probably fork out for Milkshape, but i''ll be keeping an eye on Blenders progress...

Captain Insanity

Sep 27, 2002 at 10:42 AM

It may not be intuitive, but once you''ve learned to use the controls it''s very, very EFFICIENT.

Personally, I''m waiting until it all becomes free so I can get hold of some proper documentation about the game engine at last.

I don''t know even a fraction of the code needed to make my FPS, and all my attempts to create an online team collapsed, so I''m going to look into making the whole thing using the Blender engine.

"If you go into enough detail, everything becomes circular reasoning." - Captain Insanity

Sep 27, 2002 at 12:48 PM

Email didn''t work eh? That''s odd. lilchineseguy@hotmail.com is the addy. How big is the script?

On the topic of Blender being unwieldy, I''ve found the most all of the keys I use frequently are conviniently grouped on the left side of my keyboard. So I can be manipulating the mouse and typing commands at the same time. Very efficient, it may not be the best but I''ve gotten comfortable with it.

Sep 27, 2002 at 8:46 PM

Re-sending now, keep your fingers crossed

Author

526

Sep 30, 2002 at 12:27 AM

quote:
Original post by OrangyTang
Unfortunatly, from looking at the forums, theres a huge elitist attitude of ''its intuative once you take the time to learn all the keyboard commands'' which is just plain silly.

The beauty of source code access. Screw the elitists; implement what the populists want!

Landsknecht

Sep 30, 2002 at 2:12 AM

What I am looking forward to the most is maybe getting a full-blown Python interpreter. That half-assed version that is built into Blender is so much trouble. Not to mention that they completely changed the Blender library in one of the recent versions making most of the tutes for scripting useless...

And getting bolleans that don''t freeze up the system would be nice.