It should come to BM very soon, like this-week-soon. Thanks for your support, much appreciated.
I can’t speak for you, but I can’t imagine you’re getting hurt or losing advertising on your hard work because of “popular vs free”
It’s not clear what the cause is, but I’m sure it plays a role. Unfortunately sales have been very significantly pulling back over the past months, after being pretty stable for 2 years. I think BF donations have been going down too? I read something like this recently. Sb correct me if I’m wrong. Maybe I have reached market saturation. Maybe it’s the recession. Maybe the popularity of AI tools is making fewer people come to Blender. Whatever the reason, it’s a concerning development, but at least I’m lucky, in that i have a new product coming out soon.
Side note: I honestly wish contributors like yourself made significant contributions from these add-ons into official Blender features. But no need to explain, it pays the bills, and (hopefully) gives you the liberty to not have to work for a company.
I understand, that this would be more convenient for everybody, but yes: I have to pay my bills. People have to be realistic. I’m not funded by donations unlike the BF. I also have nothing to contribute in terms of native Blender code, and no desire or interest to learn another language.
I make tools out of necessity to improve my own design workflow. Having people buy them allows me to do this at a much higher level with more sophistication and polish, and tackling more complex problems, than I would be able to do just on my own. So it’s a win-win, but it relies on your support, and is impossible to do for free or based on a donation basis. It does not work like that.
HyperCursor has been in development for 3 years now, taking up probably 70% of my time. This is a massive investment and commitment for me in terms of time and finances (as I don’t earn anything from HC yet (if you exclude patreon)). This was only possible by having 2 relatively successful products that I had built previously (and continue to build) and which I’m selling.
I also do prefer to work for myself, which allows me to be in full control and work on the things I think are important. None of the things I have built, would exist had I worked for some company, including the BF.