Ephestos is a customized WINDOWS ONLY commercial 3D Graphics application based on Blender source code (https://www.blender.org/) focusing on boosting creativity. Its offered through a yearly subscription that gives you direct access to Ephestos and a year of important updates. Ephestos respects Blender by being released under the same license (GPL 3) and being 100% open source forever. Ephestos also is 100% compatible with Blender.
You can find how Ephestos may be useful for you , watching the video summary bellow
full presentation can be watched here
Because Ephestos is GPL licensed there is no limitation to your freedoms , other than the ones imposed by GPL , so you can use the application and the source code after the end of your subscription however you may wish.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have an issue
EPHESTOS SYSTEMS
1) Aura (The Plugin System) [Released in v0.1]
Aura is a plugin architecture for Ephestos, completely coded in C , for top performance, it takes advantage of deep internal features of Blender not available to users or Python developers and exposes extra functionality to Python through the Ephestos Python API and adds functionality through C DLLs acting as addons (load , unload , rebuild during the execution of Blender) , called Aura Component Libraries
2) Hecate ( The GUI System) [Released in v0.1]
Hecate is a GUI system , it is made up of a) an ACL that provides high performanc UI drawing functionality build on top of low level Blender UI features b) A python library Hecate Python API , part of Ephestos Python API for python coders and addon developers c) A Layout Engine for easy customisation and generation of flexibles UIs through user friendly JSON configuration files , aka layout map files d) An extensive icon menu for fast access to Blender features without the need for relying on shortcuts while at the same time providing excellent cooperation with existing blender shortcuts
The obvious problem being that you can’t legally publish a commercial product that is based on “Blender source-code.” Hope you and your lawyers have lawyered-up on the license agreements!
GPL allows for commercial use, including redistribution, provided the source code is made available along with the binaries and it is all redistributed under the same GPL license.
The one thing that could really hurt this fork’s reception is that currently, it turns a multi-platform application into a Windows only solution. A lot of people here see Windows 10 like the plague and are not willing to let Microsoft telemetry and forced updates onto their machine just for this, that is unless it runs well on WINE.
The Blender community in general has a higher proportion of Linux fans than many others, just to note.
Nah me and Blender are very oooolddd friends , a relationship that had its ups and downs but passionate none the less
anyway GPL license allows not only to sell software but it even encourages it even in case where its mere distribution you can find more about it from the mouth of the horse the people that created the license
exactly , excellent link for summarizing the GPL license.
No Problemo
Ephestos code has nothing that ties it to Windows platform
Why Windows only then you ask ?
Simple , it is a pain to maintain multiple platforms when you are a solo developer like me. I wanted for this to be an addon but alas Python proven too slow for it. Especially now with the uncertain future of Blender on MacOS and the nightmarish experience I had with Linux and driver support, I rather avoid taking time away from working on features to work on maintain multiple platforms. But of course if there is demand, sure, will take me a day or two but I will provide Mac and Linux builds.
Are you considering it to be VR/holo, tablet, touch & gesture oriented or at least very friendly (especially for navigation, creation, inserting & setting values w/o the need for a mouse+keyboard combo)?
Easily customized icons, tabs with addon & tool organization (drag&drop alike C4D)? Less convoluted Theme customization?
PS
I really wish for the KB+mouse combo era to end ASAP…
Sorry to interrupt as a newbie, but I don’t get it.
Let aside the license stuff, I couldn’t see any additional functionality
in your presentation?
Ok, a C interface for add-ons, great but it comes with a price.
It’s much easier to run into stability problems with such an interface
and sloppy coded add-ons.
Another User interface?
Well, there is already a right click menu in Blender?
Beside that I can’t see much improvments?
Now we could just debate if some icons are easier to comprehend
than a written description of what one is clicking at.
And if one loves icons that much, there is also the Bforartist branch for free.
So sorry again, I don’t want to sound harsh, but as you offer this software for
a price, I have to ask: what would I get for my money?
yes Morpheas which is the next step for Ephestos and will be coming out the next few months will be a GUI designer that will allow you with very easy mouse actions to customise the menus and eventually to even create your own ones from scratch without any technical knowledge. I will also be removing any keyboard requirement whatsoever and make this completely mouse driven , although I am also considering adding the ability to use shortcuts because I know that shortcuts can be very handy too. So I plan to keep both kind of users happy. Unfortunately on VR front I cannot promise anything, I do not have a VR set but VR is definitely something that interest in the long run
The interface I am offering is python not C, Hecate Python API is part of the Ephestos Python API. The C side that is handled by Aura this is something for me and very advanced coders, the ones that mess with Blender source so it is not for public consumption. Even the Python API is currently a moving target.
I would argue that icons are more difficult to comprehend , obviously using a tooltip is more tedious than using a label. But my goal is not comprehension because I know a user very easily can build muscle memory , my goal was speed and flexibility. Icons allow me to compress the UI while still keeping it very easy to navigate once the user becomes familiar with what each icon does. So basically I increase the learning curve to boost productivity.
Bfoartists commits one major sin that Aura , this is the main architecture of Ephestos that any other project has to obey, the 3rd rule states that “No tool or feature is allowed that break compatibility with Blender or tries to redesign Blender in any way”.
That means that Ephestos IS NOT a Blender fork but a Blender extension and Hecate IS NOT a replacement for Blender GUI but a secondary GUI.
Bfoartists also goes against Hecate’s first principle which is GUI centralization , that means the GUI must ALWAYS be next to the mouse. Hecate is actually far more closely related to pie menus , which indeed I used as inspiration as I am a fan of them since day 1. Final but not least Hecate is shortcut friendly , I did a lot of work to add the ability to use the shortcuts even when the mouse is over the top of the menu which Blender did not allow me to do. But in the end Hecate is completely mouse driven. It is easy to fall in the trap to believe that because both Bfoartists and Ephestos come their own keymaps that both are the same in this way but that is simply not the case, Hecate needs only one thing from Blender keymap , the right click and that is it. While Bfoartists redesigns the Blender keymap.
So does Bfoartists suck and Ephestos rocks ?
Far from it
Bfoartists is a far more mature, far better developed and far more attractive solution than Ephestos is. I have nothing but respect and admiration to the hard work the devs put in and it is obvious it taught some very good lessons to Blender. As a GUI dev myself I am fully aware of how much work goes to make something that appears so simple to the user.
Ephestos is far less mature, this is why is version 0.1 (Bfoartists is version 2.0) and far from the development state of Bfoartists. However it is also a fundamentally different project that does not try to fix or improve Blender, when I said its a 3d application built on top of Blender I meant it. I do not want to go into technical details about Aura and how it even allows me to move Ephestos to something else like Unreal in a matter of weeks but suffice to say the scope of both projects is vastly different and Ephestos long term goal goes way beyond UI features as well.
If you are not convinced but you want to be convinced , unfortunately you will have to wait. Ephestos is a 3 year project and I need at least a year to make it apparent what I am aiming for. But monthly updates are incoming hot and fresh out of the oven. So definitely stay tuned.
Bare with me, what you have seen is only the tip of the tip of the iceberg.
