K3d?

General Forums Off-topic Chat
1

Following on from another thread about another 3d app, I was just thinking of gauging opinions about this app (http://www.k-3d.org/).

I’ve known about it for ages, and it seems to have been around for ages (maybe as long as Blender). However, it has a very small feature set, and development seems to take ages. I stumbled across it several years ago, while looking for an 3d-app that could export to renderman. It claims to be a superior app, being ‘robust, designed to scale, designed from the ground up to generate motion picture quality animation’. Its main attraction/feature they say, is that it has a well defined plugin system. It also featured an interactive tutorial mode (something lacking in Blender).

Yesterday, feeling a bit adventurous, I downloaded a recent version. Past versions I have tried, have been incredibly buggy (one version randomly crashed and caused blue-screens of death; another failed to start at all; another would crash every time it got to making aqsis render). So I was pleasantly surprised that it seemed relatively bug/crash-free (so far). I’m only a bit disappointed that in this latest version, they’ve removed their grass making plugin (can’t remember whether it was experimental, but I never got it to work - it was in the version that failed to render). I also noticed a few weird drawing errors, notably with their teapot primative (from the Aqsis menu), which drew with lines sweeping off in some direction as if there was extra geometry (but it rendered fine).

Maybe this is due to their recent UI cleanup/rewrite which lead to the app going from a GIMP-style multiple floating window app, to a single window app (good call). However, being used to the Blender interface, it just doesn’t compare when it comes to usability: It forces you to use transformation manipulators to move vertices; requires moving the mouse from one corner of the screen to the other, back and forth clicking buttons, just to do simple things; features/functions are grouped in big long menus with submenus (better than in the past, when every single object able to be added and every operator/modifier were listed in the same long list, but still not perfect). Its workflow seems to be much slower/clunky, and I wouldn’t use it for modelling (but maybe somebody around here might). It seems that it does have the architecture to support complex models, but just doesn’t have a way to make them in itself (all complex models I’ve seen were all modeled in something else, then imported via *.obj files).

They have a section on their faq labelled ‘How does K-3D compare to Blender’. In this, they say that

It is accepted by many (including the senior Blender coders that we’ve spoken with) that the Blender sources need a complete redesign and rewrite.
then go on to say that their app is well/better designed, and blablabla… Well, as far as I’ve seen, the amount of work that has been made with K-3D is easily countable.

Also, even though it claims to have been designed to ‘generate motion picture quality animation’, there has been little evidence of any animations generated with k3d. They even attempted to start up an open movie project like Orange, except that it would be done through online collaboration. That folded in early 2005 (while Orange has completed and released a short), as it seemed to lack momentum, and also, I suspect they realised that k3d was not yet up to the task.

At that point, and still today, their animation system is virtually non-existant. There does seem to be a way to make things move in cycles, but without any clear interface as to how it’s accomplished (or maybe that’s because I haven’t dug far enough yet). Their timeline thing reminds me of those timelines that just sit there and do absolutely nothing. There is currently no views in which the movements of the objects can be shown (i.e. non IPO curve window or similar). On their developer wiki pages, they have plans for an animation system with the full works (comparable to Blender, including armatures, driven keys, etc.), but these have yet to be seen coming to fruitation (maybe next decade… ;)) However, from what I’ve seen, I wonder how on earth they would integrate it.

Is it only me, or are all free 3d-apps that natively export to renderman formats, in many ways retarded?

Aligorith
(MODS: I hope I haven’t crossed the line with some of my comments here…)

2

Is it only me, or are all free 3d-apps that natively export to renderman formats, in many ways retarded?

While you can see on other examples, such in Linux, Gnome 1.x sucked really hard. And the progress going on to version2.x don’t really come in short amount of time. I think that’s because blender has history even back to the 90’s. To this day blender fan base kept growing, and to my point of view, how successful the community growing is really what makes a FOSS successful. Also being based under a solid core, blender is already loaded and stable, even before changes its state into opensource. You can say blender has stole the start signal than other OSS.

Thought I’ll share my experience too, back then when first time i recognizes linux and its idea, I tested many free 3D animation programs. K-3D was one of them. One outstanding feature K-3D have is scripted interactive tutorial, similar to those in Zbrush. But I never dig deeper than that, since I was looking for a complete package and back then K-3D don’t have any (or I may not noticed) good bone system. The tutorial only cover the basics, and nothing much else found.

Other software, moonlight 3D impressed me with its very user friendly installation under linux, unlike others, which some require manual file placements to make them work. The interface also impressed me, so clean and user friendly, similar to Lightwave. But then this is nowhere to be found again.

OpenFX, seems promising, looks quite ambitious with all movie production facilities like video tools and stuffs thrown in, but the interface didn’t really impressed me, yeah i know, don’t judge by its cover, but another reason is OpenFX isn’t available on linux. And so I never dig deeper on OpenFX. But I was kinda surprised when opening its page and there, 1.5 is already released, since the website looks like don’t have any activity in such long time.

Loq airou seems more to a “just for fun” app. The interface is way too over cool. It’s fun really, combined with verse it’s like playing multiplayer game. But for production?

Equinox looks promising, but need bigger community. But at least this one is consistent. I’ll keep my eyes on this one, let see how 1.0 would turn out.

Art of illusion is based on Java. So I don’t think it would be fast. But the gallery looks promising.

Alot of my mates also reccomend anim8or, but this one is only available on windows. And also, looks really can make difference, the website don’t look so professional. This would make a bad impression on any people got interest to this software. I know it does to me.

This made Blender the strongest candidate for 3D application FOSS. But nevertheless, what I wouldn’t want to see is that blender become THE only 3D FOSS available. Wouldn’t want to see blender got cocky aswell, thus the development become crippled, or in other side, too excited throwing all the facilities available and becoming a bloatware.

Things like those really happens. Like when IE and Netscape war, remember about the channel thingy? Both sides excited and bloating their softwares, and eventually users get sick of it then both calms down and back to the basic, just being a humble browsers enough to surf the net.

But we can’t really guess what lies ahead, perhaps one day some insignificant software pop up from nowhere, underestimated for some times then suddenly it dominates the others. That happens in blender and linux is it? So what makes it impossible that won’t happen TO blender and linux?

3

Anim8or was the first 3d app I used. However, I don’t use it anymore as its animation+rigging methods are just hard to use.

Aligorith