The furture of the Blender Model Repository

[noidtluom]

Hello, I'm the guy who hosted the second iteration of the BMR. My Christmas was interrupted by a few emails about viruses attacking people on the BMR. I have began an initiative to get rid of this as reported on the latest news on the site. Also contrary to appearance the BMR isn't a dead site, though the moderation queue makes it seem so.

However the fundamental problem is that the BMR is crap. Yes, only a fool would question it. It does have a few gems in its content (which is added once in a while) though I have to admit that the infrastructure behind is ... lacking.

I want to provide a much better resource specialised for Blender and its users. For this I ask for the help of the community. I want to completely revamp and recreate the BMR (porting over the old submissions + users of course) With it the upgrades will mean:

• Minimal advertising and definitely no spyware.
• A refreshed layout.
• Quality control over all previously submitted models and future models.
• Clearer information on licensing and terms of use of individual models.
• Easier and much more intuitive model submission proceedure.
• Better moderation - models get approved faster, no missing thumbnails, etc.
• A new name and URL.

I also propose a new way to approach the BMR - by the community, for the community. By this I mean that the code for the BMR will be open-sourced and people can contribute their own features and code to the website. I hope this to create a unique set of features which really appeal specifically to Blender artists. Such examples (off the top of my head) may be Blender integration through a plugin, perhaps even serverside rendering for thumbnails, tags, and better user profiles.

In order to keep this post short I now ask for:

• Your feelings! What do you think? Do you even use the BMR in the first place? If not, how can we create a service that really meets its potential?
• What amazing new ideas and features do you think the new BMR should have?
• Can you contribute? (webdesign, PHP, HTML, MySQL, Javascript/AJAX knowledge appreciated)

I hope to emphasize that I want what is best for the Blender community and I fully understand that the current state of the BMR has faults. I believe this is a start to drastically improve things. Looking forward to your 2 cents

edit: sorry for the typo in the thread title - not sure how to edit it.

[Commander Taco]

At one time there was a library script for blender to keep models,materials, and quite a few other goodies.

What would be really cool, is if there was a way to retrieve things from your site from inside the scrip.
And a "Donate" button to upload content to your site.

This might get more people uploading stuff to your site. And it would be a mecca for people looking for materials, models, rigs , lighting setups, or whatever.

[WiKKiDWidgets]

I have tried to contribute to the BMR in the past, but I none of the models I have uploaded ever show up. I would love to share some of the things I have created over the years with the Blender community.

[RickyBlender]

i did use some of the simpler models before

now here is my 2 cents

1 - licenses

a ) totaly free
b) not for commercial use

that would simplify things a lot i think


2 - models
a ) low ploy models
b ) medium poly model

here i doubt that peoples would upload very high poly model!
but may be one section or ID for these high poly models

3 - categories

i think you already add this classification before

hopefully with time the models qty will increase and it wil become a good reference site
for all kind of models


happy blendering

[mofx]

Hey guys, I've created Blendswap.com for all the reasons that noidtluom stated. I just got tired of trying to work with the site and it not working with me. I was also frustrated in looking through the forums at posts of people offering free models but all the links where dead. So I decided to create Blendswap.com to give the Blender Community a single point to upload models for the rest of the community. It's super easy to use and completely free. It just needs some publicity and some models uploaded to it. I hope you guys will give it a look and WiKKiDWidgets I would love to have your models on my site, and I promise they will be up within 24hrs of you uploading them to the site.

matthew
Blendswap.com

[Gustav Göransson]

Sound like a great idea! I have a lot of a couple of high quality models that I could share, but a refuse to upload them to a site that sucks.

For licensing I think it's better to use existing licenses (for example Creative Commons) and Public Domain...

[kbot]

You are right - the site needs some work, and it's just not that much user friendly. I downloaded "cat" from your site, and the site was "blocked" for some wonderful reason. Regarding some advice, you may wish to remove more advertising from there - they may the site busy and distracting. And no - I am not interested in meeting singles from my area thank you!
I have seen sites that are much more user friendly, and quite packed with free/non-commercial use/etc etc. In my opinion, at least one site creator is much more pro-active with his/her/their site, going out of their way to have as much range in their collection as possible, downright to obsessiveness, and that makes me want to go to their site often just to see what's out there.
My profile, if you are interested is, and obviously not reflected to others, and as per time of making this post is that I like to texture "free" meshes and put them for viewing and comments.

[Commander Taco]

Originally Posted by mofx Hey guys, I've created Blendswap.com for all the reasons that noidtluom stated. I just got tired of trying to work with the site and it not working with me. I was also frustrated in looking through the forums at posts of people offering free models but all the links where dead. So I decided to create Blendswap.com to give the Blender Community a single point to upload models for the rest of the community. It's super easy to use and completely free. It just needs some publicity and some models uploaded to it. I hope you guys will give it a look and WiKKiDWidgets I would love to have your models on my site, and I promise they will be up within 24hrs of you uploading them to the site. matthew Blendswap.com

Neat, talk to that material library script guy, and see if you can make a button to access your repositories too.
If we can access your sites from inside blender would be extremely useful.
Might even be a way to import the model,material or whatever, and the default browser pops up in the background with advertisements (if that is how your site makes money).

Shopping for free stuff from within blender would be a dream come true.

[paulfitz]

I'd be interested in contributing to the development of BMRv3. I've been a happy user of BMRv2, despite its problems, and before that the original BMR. I can get along in most web-related technologies.

It'd be great to see development for this project done on a public site like launchpad or github.

[mzungu]

Would there be room for a "for sale" category on the site for those that would like to make a bit on the side for their (better-than-average) models? (I'm not one of them, mind you... I just think its a good thing to encourage commerce around blender.) Or would this be "frowned-upon" by the open-source-spirit of blenderheads?

[Frederick D]

I suppose it would be nice to have both free, open content as well as commercial. Have a look at how turbosquid and such are set up. might involve a lot of setup and admin stuff, but there are many open tools and services for that.

I also like the idea of opening up the tools and site itself so to speak, i'd think some button in blender to upload to BMR would be neat and get it used more often.

You might also contact Ton if this get's rolling. He mentioned setting up some kind of system to get user submitted work into the open movie projects at the blender institute, starting with Durian. With the assets of those projects being open contant, these might be available on bmr too eh? just to give it some body.

Edit: eh... show's how much i visit the site, the open movie content is already there!

[superx10]

Something like the Google Sketchup 3D Warehouse, but for Blender, shouldn't be *too* incredibly difficult to build depending on what sort of features you'd want to add. I really want to do a project like this, but I don't have the time right now

[mandoragon]

why not create a dropbox to put blender models in and allow everyone who wants one access?

[paulfitz]

I love dropbox, but it wouldn't work unmodified as a public model repository - you really need moderation and solid metadata (licensing etc). If I were doing this, I'd do it with Google App Engine; a fair bit of the bandwidth/storage would be free, and a light dusting of ads would probably cover the cost of anything beyond that. There's a 50MB limit on upload file size though, which might be a concern for large models.

[mandoragon]

Originally Posted by paulfitz I love dropbox, but it wouldn't work unmodified as a public model repository - you really need moderation and solid metadata (licensing etc). If I were doing this, I'd do it with Google App Engine; a fair bit of the bandwidth/storage would be free, and a light dusting of ads would probably cover the cost of anything beyond that. There's a 50MB limit on upload file size though, which might be a concern for large models.

I think if we asked google for more space, as an open source community driven project they may be likely to give what we need.

A bit like how github and other subversion give free access to their services for open source development