Blender Fork Bforartists searches for volunteers

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61

Right here what I am seeing is someone with a bright idea who is looking for someone else to carry them.

It’s really funny how hard the part with my developer experience gets overread again and again ^^

No. I search for developers that wants to develop with me, not for me. I am looking for teamwork. A with each other. Not for somebody to fulfill my dreams for me. I will go on alone when there is no other way. It’s just that this time my forces are ways not big enough to do everything alone, as i am used to. This time i really need a team :slight_smile:

My advice would be to sit down, Put together a mock-up of your intuitive and graphical UI Then repitch your idea.

You mean something like a PDF maybe? Where every evolutionary step is explained in detail? http://www.bforartists.de/content/bforartists-ui-design-document

In case you miss too much details, and expect 600 pages instead of 60, well, my whole experience teached me not to make a too detailed mockup beforehand. Usually quite some parts of the mockup will be disproven by real life and prototyping. Define the corner cases. Describe the rough ideas and pitfalls. Do some planning in detail. But develop in a prototype. The prototype will show you the problem zones much faster than any beforehand planning, and you can then immediately fix the issues. And nothing will convince the people better than a working prototype.

I am a big fan of evolutionary prototyping. I work that way since many years. It’s a bullet proven concept. I will make the UI prototype in the future. It’s already mentioned a dozen times in the mockup. And a fixed part of further development. QT Designer seems to be really well suited for this.

But this prototype and the UI rewrite comes at a later development stage. It’s one of the long time goals. We have lots of short time goals and smallest and small tasks to fulfill first. I cannot start at the end, i have to start at the beginning. Please have a look at the roadmap again.

62

Blender does not need to be “forked,” least of all to rest in the hands of someone who is over-confident (to the point of arrogance) about his or her own abilities as a programmer.

Before you depart on this merry quest, why don’t you spend a year as a grunt on one of the many teams that are shepherded by the Blender Foundation to push-forward the main-branch of Blender that we already have. Subject yourself, willingly and humbly, to the grueling rigor of a professional-grade software development undertaking. Don’t preach to any of them about how good you are: if they tell you to grab a bucket and mop the floors, “shaddup and make the damn floor spotless.”

The Karate Kid was a really-bad movie, in some ways, with a really good lesson: [URL="http://[Karate Kid - Daniel’s Training “WAX ON WAX OFF”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg21M2zwG9Q).

Go watch that clip about a hundred times, until it really dawns on you what the rest of those “volunteers,” whose work you think so little of, are actually doing. Then, post again.

63

Pitching an idea is an art, If I have to dig though 2 pdf’s and ten tabs to find something, Then you don’t have it in the eyes of the person looking. It don’t belong hidden in a PDF, Put that damn ui concept, And as near as I can tell it is the center concept of what you are doing. But put the damn thing on your front page.
Can you show me graphically what an intuitive UI Looks like. I don’t want words, I don’t want a PDF. I want a Jpeg. Ether you CAN do it. Or you are trying to BULLSHIT it. You have had time to sit down and make a site, And respond to this thread many times. But can you spend time and put together a framework of what your end product will look like? Its not a too much time thing. We just want to know if you can do it once to begin with. Before we decide to support you for real.

Now, Here is where a troll will push the blame back on the person asking the question and saying they want proof of concept. And this is where a real dev who might get something done, Will say “Here it is”

Which are you?

<edit>
And I did read your presented resume, It mentioned that you did not know the needed language. So that normally translates to “Work for me” in this situation. But you also have skills enough posted on that resume to have no excuse when it comes to producing a jpeg of what an intuitive UI looks like.

64

I won’t comment on the technical issues because this is not my field but i’ll comment on the design

I gave a quick look at the pdf you put on your website(too much text too little images you are talking about UI show me images it’s not poetry!) to be honest you took everything I hate about CAD applications and put it in blender:
too many tabs everywhere,ugly icons and everything is done with the mouse.
why would you want to use only the mouse? we have 2 hands why you want to just use one? it slows the workflow tremendously and distracts the artist from it’s artwork (which is the worse thing you can do to an artist)

the nice thing about blender is the hotkey oriented design, it’s not intuitive for beginners(can be fixed in other ways) but for a more advanced user it’s a bless!
In blender the fingers learn where to go and it’s becomes like playing an instrument, It’s quick and keeps you in focus on your art.
It also makes everything feel a lot more natural - you click physical buttons with your fingers!
this is what actually makes blender so good for artists.

If you think i’m wrong try rhino or actually any CAD application they all work the same and all of them are heavily built on the mouse
and the keyboard is for numbers, enter and escape you’ll see what i’m talking about.

so your UI proposal is not something I would like to see in blender, it’s actually taking everything that’s good in blender out.

as for the website and the aesthetics of the proposal you are far from a well designed website(or proposal)
again, you are talking about UI - aesthetics is a part of it!
I had issues with blender at first because it was ugly and didn’t make me feel like I want to use it(we are artists/designers we create aesthetics!!), it’s still ugly but a lot less.
learn about design, about how graphics work, about how people use software not just beginners but more advanced users the beginners are beginners just at the beginning…
you actually lost me on the website design but I wanted to see what you actually did (hard to find) so I searched for that PDF

blender’s UI is not perfect(it’s really good!) but this is for sure not going to make it better to be honest it’s going to make it a very badly designed program…

65

That’s exactly what I’ve mentioned in my previous post. Come up with your own version of a Blender UI. If you can’t do it, then I don’t think you’ll get a lot of interest in it. Words mean nothing, none, nada, zero. People want images, lots of it. Like the song goes, “a picture paints a thousand words…”

Don’t even know why you spent all that time without a single whole UI image.

66

Don’t even know why you spent all that time without a single whole UI image.

Because it is not only about the UI. But lots of other things too. Why does everybody try to reduce the fork to just the UI changes? The UI redesign is just one part of the whole concept. And comes much later.

The image of the modified UI is in the UI mockup. But as told in the foreword of the mockup, the pure image itself will tell you not this much about the concepts behind it.

But when you want the image without to read the mockup, here we go. But please don’t expect further explanations here. The explanations happens in the Mockup.

Attachments

step 9 final.png1928×1168 297 KB

67

We really have to come away from the black and white thinking that so many of you uses here. There is so many grey in between. Nobody talks about accepting hacks. Lowering the entry barrer does not mean to accept every utter garbage from now on. It’s about lowering the standards. Not about completely removing the standards.

Too high standards can lead to the situation that needed features doesn’t make it at all into a software. See wireframe colours.

As far as I know, the code for wireframe colors met the standards. The issue is that Ton sees it as an outdated concept (dating back to when OpenGL was in its infancy) and would like to instead see a system that is more modern and innovative.

Also, from what I’ve seen, the standards are at different levels depending on the complexity of the patch and depending on how many areas it touches. For very large patches, you need to have very high standards because otherwise it might lead to a large number of bugs that suck away development time (which could’ve been prevented). The inclusion of large patches also states that the developer will continue to be on hand to maintain it and fix issue that come up, it’s not fun for the core team if the writers just dump the responsibility on them when they already have a long list of todo items (and this was something that actually happened during the 2.4x days).

For small patches, this isn’t near as much of an issue since the amount of code it touches is minimal, so maintenance needs from the writer are almost zero.

68

@Tiles
Reminds me of Modo 301…
Unfortunately for me that means, i’m not going to use this,

But for a lot of other people, They are going to love this.

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Hi there. Sorry I just wanted to reply a little to this… " I guess you have long forgotten how it is to be a newbie at a 3D software when you have spent years and years in so many 3D packages. "

I don’t want to be getting into any arguments so I’ll try to make this my last post here.

I also spent several years teaching CGI and traditional animation at an art collage in central London as a visiting tutor. Many of my students back then were absolute beginners.
Another thing is that working in a large studio you frequently work closely alongside people of a wide range of different experience
and levels. Sometimes if it might be an internship situation. That person may really be just be starting out and you will often need to sit with them and go through some of the fundamentals once again.
It’s hard not to be constantly reminded how hard all this stuff is to get to grips with.
Not to mention that it’s always a constant learning game for everyone and you always are moving, learning new things. The work gets more complex the more you move on and to be honest it never gets easy. But then people don’t do it because it’s easy.

Surely most of the beginner problems and questions you see posted up here are universal beginners questions when starting out in
CGI and animation. Regardless of the software they have chosen. At least that’s what I’m seeing. Although I’ve not posted much I’ve been frequenting this forum for almost two years.
Learning 3D is difficult. Also learning animation and to be a good artist is always going to be very challenging. It’s always been a complex multi disciplined and very demanding thing to get into.

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I can’t wait to see it!

But I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m going to have to wait. A very long time.

But seriously, what is up with the cock and balls wallpaper? Is that how they decorate nurseries in Germany?

71

Just buy MODO…

72

Artwork of this grade should be the 2.76 splash. Where can we nominate? :wink:

73

@Srecko

I despise modos ui, it literally causes headaches for me…

I personally think that there’s nothing wrong with the blender UI, it just has a slight bump in the learning curve

@Tarn
Lol yeah :smiley:

74

Ok, That UI has some pretty to it.

Now in 4 sentences and no more then ten can you outline what-else you are doing? If you can put it on the front page of your site.

When I see remarks about a disgruntle community as a justifier for doing something, Its not a selling point. Blender all things considered is doing a good job with the resources it has at its disposal. Yes the people who are hands on have to make judgement calls based not only on the needs of the community, But their own skill sets, Future plans and availability of resources. And their own ability to maintain the changes they do make. That is a thing that is going to make some people butthurt no matter what they decide to do.

I’m not saying don’t make a fork. But I am asking this. Can you sum up your project in clear concise bullet points with no more then ten entries? And quite frankly there is only so many coders in the CG community, And they know it. Pretend you have two paragraphs to make your pitch. Convince that coder that they want to help you rather then taking a lotto ticket on the next startup indie game company they find. After all I’m sure there is many coders who would love to be on the ground floor of the next minecraft. And when you make your pitch, Convince them to turn down that lotto ticket and be part of something greater.

Its not about being right or ego masturbation, Its not about hurting people or making a statement. If those are your goals you are going to fail. If it is about business or something more altruistic then you might have a chance if you find people to help. No one wants to work for someone with ever changing amorphous goals who is a sensitive person with personalty enhancements and a grudge. They want to work with a leader. They want to work with someone who they can be proud of. And as I suspect they won’t be paid. They want to not dread having free time ether to work on these projects.

Remember, You are Asking for help Or you are venting on the community. You can’t do both.

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But seriously, what is up with the cock and balls wallpaper? Is that how they decorate nurseries in Germany?

You don’t like my boys wallpaper? :'3

I found just blue so boring :slight_smile:

But I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m going to have to wait. A very long time.

I hope not :slight_smile:

There’s two little important naggers missing for the initial commit. The bforartists.exe still searches for a blender-app.exe. And the title bar still shows the word Blender. I hope to get the issues solved within the next few days. Depends of some other tasks. And then it’s a matter of tackling the issues at the roadmap one by one.

But yes, the UI project is something that will need lots of work. I fear i have to calculate with manyears here. Especially when i look at all the other issues at the roadmap. Guess why i search for help :slight_smile:

And quite frankly there is only so many coders in the CG community, And they know it.

Yes, i start to find this one out at the moment. I had some hopes to attract at least a few helping hands ^^

Well, the fork is there now, i will continue at it. And everybody who wants to help is still very welcome. Maybe the first releases will convince a few more people :slight_smile:

Now in 4 sentences and no more then ten can you outline what-else you are doing?

What else? The UX part, the usability.

That was in two sentences, yay :slight_smile:

In detail i want to change quite a few standard settings right at the beginning, like changing the RMB select to LMB select in one of the first releases for example. I want to add links to learning videos to the splash. Means i need a few learning videos too. A tip of the day plugin is also at the agenda. All those small Usability things …

Also part of UX is the all in one concept, having Manual and Tutorials and the community right besides the downloads.

The roadmap contains a few more sentences than 10, but describes pretty well the direction.

Artwork of this grade should be the 2.76 splash. Where can we nominate? :wink:

It’s already part of the Bforartists splash. But without the cocks :wink:

Attachments

bforartistssplash.jpg625×567 73.2 KB

76

Even though devs are doing excellent job and know what’s best, it seems that there’s strong desire to have blender developed in certain ways. Perhaps instead of creating a fork that might take forever someone should create ADSK AREA like maintained feature request section that can be voted and crowdfunded. Hopefully in a way that generates extra revenue for developers as well as freelancers. It needs to be realistic though because if people want new Game Engine… we’d be in trouble.

Alternatively developers could predefine potential features and have users who are on Cloud membership have a right to cast a vote? That could be strong incentive for users to become members also increasing funding.

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Simply using a tool like grep with the query “blender-app.exe” on the codebase would’ve led you to line 27 in creator_launch_win.c:


#define BLENDER_BINARY L"blender-app.exe"

If you further read the code, it should become obvious that this constant is indeed used in the command for launching the (real) blender process.

Having solved this very important milestone for you, I hope to be featured prominently in the credits.

78

I’m as sceptical about this fork as the next guy, but why don’t we just let the guy go for it. Who knows what will come of it. What the worse thing that can happen? Before, some people are yelling “Blender needs a fork” every now and then. Now, they will yell “Blender has a fork and it is awesome”. I am pretty sure the fork will get stuck in development hell, but who knows? They might surprise us.

In any case, I think everybody has shared their doubts now and if Tiles still wants to pursue this, let him. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and limit our responsive to constructive advice.

79

We don’t need a fork yet.

you need a staging board, and a system to collect revenue,

if a goal is met, hire a programmer,

if a feature is made, submit to be trunked,

if it is not trunked…

then you fork.

80

I this case, one of the biggest changes he is proposing is moving to Qt, which will never be trunked. So he doesn’t need to try that. Also, he is a programmer, so he doesn’t need to hire one. And lastly, he will not be able to set up revenue collection without first showing that he has something!