So here is the question then, How do we as users present ideas and concepts to the dev team for their evaluation?
If well thought out, and clearly presented, its much easier for Ton et al to either approve or reject any submissions. Ultimately, I think most of us serious users want to be seen as a supportive resource. Rather than how we are seen now.
@Storrboy, ah that explains it. I only occassionly have time to read the forums over the past couple years and currently just since gooseberry, so looks like I missed some nasty stuff.
Although I’m not sure funding full time developers and over $300k for gooseberry and the other short films and funding the initial cost to open source blender counts as selfish.
The developer user relationship has to be simbiotic or it will not work. Trying to control or herd such a large community of users all interested in different parts of blender will be tough. But a worthwhile goal!
Agreed and thanks. At least someone is recognising that it is a two-way street here. The Blender Foundation is paying for the developers and that money is coming from donations from the Blender community. The concept of the pure, selfless developer being pounded upon mercilessly for his charitable efforts is a nice one… but doesn’t apply so well here.
Not to say that I think we need to rip shreds off of the Blender Foundation coders (cos we shouldn’t), but it does get a little tiresome having one’s comments constantly compared to the kicking of puppies and Ayn Rand level selfishness.
I think the forums grows, the programs grow, the userbase grows,
With growing comes growing pains.
Some people look at things from a “my feature is most important to me”
I actually request features by paying for them, and have done so by listining to many threads about the best feature that could be added to the bge.
I wanted a 6dof joint actuator, but I chose render batching, as it would help many more then me. This was 100% of wrectifieds income thusfar, but there will be more.
We are raising money, using a game, and applying the funds to features we want.
In the developer meeting, I saw some definite discord.
This was on a devboard, not ba.
Some people will not ever agree, but what is best for blender is a democracy that evolves.
In the dev meeting I brought up other peoples problems, as well as bullet 3.
Bullet 3 will be good for all of blender, from particles to punch out.
What we need is teams, working on projects that donate to blender development.
yes! blender developing must be controlled by the amateurs!
XD
Sometimes I wonder the people on BA that stand 99% behind BI/BF, that I tend to think of having an apologetic attitude, I wonder how long they’ve been doing CG. How many apps they have used in production (read more in-depth use). And how many other developments they have witnessed in close sight. Do they pay bills doing CG on a daily basis. The things I hear just don’t make much pragmatic/realistic sense, I wonder what type of experience it’s based on, what’s the gauge.
I’ve witnessed the tail end of Sculptris development by Tomas Pettersson. That app was developed by one person in a span of 6 months! In my opinion, he started a revolution in sculpting. But ‘Dynamic Localized Tessellation’ as is if not implemented right would not have meant much. Once he had the main tessellation algorithms down he utilized a group of enthusiastic beta-testers to fine tune everything. From the UI to brushes, to dynamic behavior. Taron played a major role there. The ammount of feedback between Tomas and the beta team was amazing. Astonishing. There was a closed beta forum that was isolated from the general Sculptris forum. That was a pleasure to witness. Now even though Tomas does sculpt, (I assume) he realized that the artists he admires who started using his tool are an invaluable resource to fine tune everything.
Developers spend the bulk of their time coding the tool, users spend all of their time using the tool. Power users have actual deadlines while using the tool on a daily basis.
I’m a big fan of Silo (for all those who are gonna bash it, consider that the app has not been in development more than 4 years!, at that time you couldn’t set custom hotkeys in blender), Nevercenter had a closed beta team who’s brain they were picking the whole time. Some great artists on that team. I eventually got on the beta, but was not able to be a part of the discussion as the development has stopped at that time. I did have the chance to read through some of the closed beta forum and get a sense of the interaction between the devs and the beta team.
UV Layout, was on the beta for that. pretty much same thing.
Sunit Parekh’s Pelt Tools plugin for Maya. Same thing.
I’ve never had a sense that my voice is welcome in blender development. Which is totally fine. Except, that I have a feeling that not much of anyone’s voice is that much welcome unless you just agree with what is.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I think BI/BF are doing pretty good. I mean, I use their tool. But at the same time I think that it could be way better if they utilized honest feedback from some of their most talented users. And it’s not me, I don’t really care to have a voice as long as top artists have a voice, because I’m pretty sure (as it was proven before) what they want is what I want.
Where is the beta team for Blender? BI/BF doubling as beta?
What other CG app has no beta team?
Hey have you seen my game bub?
My protagonist is walking ragdoll, you can assemble rigid bodies in game, and tbey are 3d logic nodes,
I deform the stride angle, height and speed of.my animation, I animate using physics…
My player is 3rd person and can walk up and down stairs, look that up. Its not a pretty problem to tackle.
Dead cyborg is wonderfully detailed but could code it in my sleep.
Do you know what static mesh batching is?
Development should move forward, resolving problems and adding features in a manor that helps users.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I think BI/BF are doing pretty good. I mean, I use their tool. But at the same time I think that it could be way better if they utilized honest feedback from some of their most talented users. And it’s not me, I don’t really care to have a voice as long as top artists have a voice, because I’m pretty sure (as it was proven before) what they want is what I want.
…Which they do, there’s artists in the module teams. They discuss things on the mailing lists: http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-modeling/ for example.
Sure it’s not a ton, but I guess that’s because it’s not obvious how to apply for it.
How does that owning work in a open source project? Who decides who can code something and then keep that feature unchanged forever?
Threads turn to noise as soon as ‘hard core’ Blender users start bashing any suggestion made by any users with ‘less seniority’ on any topic. Then everybody takes to his/hers camp and battle it out. There are hordes of newbie users on SideFX forums making suggestions and participating in the wishlist threads for years and no flame wars. Why is that? It seems senior Blender users identify themselves with the software too much, not accepting any kind of change, while Houdini users seem much more open minded. Or just too many kids with too much time on their hands on BA?
And then there are the developers, everyone with his agenda (with Ton as top authority) , fearing of getting tied up in anything not on their radar, of course rightfully so (as the development model is currently).
I can only chip in with the following I wrote to Ton that day in March, when he (Ton) started the ‘Why project Gooseberry matters’ thread :
If you think BA is all noise then I suggest you stop spending all your time in Blender and CG Discussions and explore the other parts of this forum.
How does that owning work in a open source project? Who decides who can code something and then keep that feature unchanged forever?[/QUOTE]
A more interesting question to ponder is how one can expect the “fresh view” on user interface that was supposed to come out of the Andrew Price UI Debate when the same person that made (and defends) the old view & decisions is still the “owner” who gets to approve or disapprove of changes?
Case in point, Ton hasn’t like coloured wireframes for at least a decade and, clearly, it is a matter of interface ideology rather than the quality of implementation (after all, Campbell is not known for sloppy coding 
). As far as I can tell, this is one of the first tests of the new & improved approach to user interface decisions.
Ton is the one that thinks we’re noise… and colour me skeptical as to whether he’s reading this
“However, refusing to allow the change for over ten years in preference for a hypothetical feature that has been nine years in the waiting is a good indication that he isn’t concerned about the same things we are.”
@BTolputt, if you would what are the two features being referred to here? And, for comment by anyone wasn’t there a survey several years ago asking the Blender community what features they used most. Modeling, animation, Game Engine, etc.?
Coloured wireframes where the user can set the object colour. This is the feature recently implemented by Campbell (though others have implemented in the past), the rejection of which inspired this thread.
It was not approved of by Ton who prefers a “rule based system” of colouring objects in the viewport. I can’t give you an example of that because, whilst it was the feature preferred to the coloured wireframes patch nine years ago, it’s still not implemented.
Is that coming from what he said in the Gooseberry thread? Come-on that is just something he said in frustration because the fundraiser wasn’t going too well and there was nothing but a hail storm of criticism against the project. That much flak would drive anyone to defcon 1 levels of defensiveness.
But I can understand how some of the dev team could think this place is nothing but noise, it has about the highest concentration of GUI and software development experts in the known universe.
Thank you. I will now use this to describe BA to the rest of the world.
Yes, the very same thread where he stated that he won’t accept such negative criticism of his projects and that he would be getting the moderators to address the issue. Given the moderators did indeed change the rules in response and he hasn’t been seen around here adding his view, it would appear there was more than a little truth to that frustrated outburst.
Well, with all due deference to their coding skills, there appears to be just as much “expertise” in the development team. People have been complaining for two decades about RMB-to-select and it hasn’t gotten any more intuitive over that time. I could list more, but that trump card is still valid.
Edit to your edit:
And when people are frustrated, they tend to have less filters on what they say. At that point, Ton was looking at a campaign that was clearly failing… and the blame got levelled at the forum that pointed out why. It’s elements like this, in addition to his labelling us “noise”, that add weight to the impression he considers the users of the single most popular online gathering of Blender users a distraction.
When you talk about users and devs relationship, you guys also need to understand that people like Ton also have the plan and forsee how Blender develops. That’s why some features don’t make it because their code might bug with something inside the main Blender code.
I would make the point that most of us users have 0 idea about the code infrastructure and only provide feedback formulated in single mini ideas.
Being a developer myself, I do understand this possibility. However, given the length of time certain features have remained unapproved by one said developer, it would be incredibly naive to believe this is a matter of code incompatibility. The code has changed far more dramatically for other features that have made the grade and been acceptable even though other features would touch the same area of development.
Remember also that it is Campbell who implemented the last rejected feature and that is being tasked with implementing the new feature potentially touching the same area of code as the last patch. Ton trusts him to understand & implement code on his own without micromanagement for other features, so it beggars belief that is what is happening here. He’s not some babe in the woods in the Blender codebase.
I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but I can find my way around the code this last feature (coloured wireframes) patched. It was not a major rearrangement of the code and relatively easy to work around or with implementing another condition for colouring wireframes. I examined the patch to ensure it would work fine with the codebase I’m working with. If it’s not hard for me to understand and work around/with if needed, it’s child’s play for Campbell, Ton, & company.