Unleash the power of 3D
Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #14398 Likes: 0
    Draise
    Participant
       
       

      In the work of pushing Bforaritsts into Facebook, and talking to some people who have talked to me in return – they are curious about the software, but don’t see much workflow pro’s/con’s videos or showcases (and want real world applied cases) – I have read arguements that there is no “art” projects attributed to Bforartists, minus what is in the gallery. There is me (and what I do in BFA is under NDA.. bleh), Davis, whoever I’m training in my studio, and the others in the gallery.. which I post around on Facebook, they have their artstations, posts in other forums.. and that is about as far as we get. Tutorials online, but no artistic products, images online, but no artistic productions. 

      It got me thinking. Blender does have artistic projects around different areas to improve workflow and the software. And some of their projects are opensource too.

      I know I don’t have a lot of time on my hands to work on things, between real life animation work and so on, but what if.. just what if…. we started a project that sponsored the development and testing of Bforartists? A project, an animation, a story, something artistic – that also showcases this software – to get more developers, artistic interest and testers. It also might stick out the project in the artistic community knowing that Blender is popular, but this is something designed specifically for making 3D more fun and “artistic” using the source. What if what I dedicate most of my time to could be an open project that isn’t signed under NDA, propriety to a business of foundation that sponsors Bforartists and helps develop it openly? Maybe through said system, they can hire developers and help with milestones in here, not directly for profit for BFA, other than development help, but as a symbiotic relationship where they win with the project, openly showcase, develop and test BFA with it’s vision and milestones, and BFA has a project tied to them, something truely artistic and opensource – adding strength to the name? 

      Is that allowed? Could some kind of business or project or team do this? Do you think it would be a good idea?  Is it worth a concept making a self sustainable project, opensource it, and use it to fund itself to be a strong third party that directly promotes, develops and helps Bforartists and it’s cause? 

      I am thinking out loud – and some of the ideas are not new.. as I have pojects slowly developing in a creation stage that I do plan to have opensource and self sustainable, personally – and of which I plan to invest years into over time, hiring talent and making a business model from it – and I haven’t decided how to produce it or in which software yet. But I am at an early enough stage to think about it… about maybe I could use the project and business model to include and directly sponsor Bforartist development either through using that model to promote BFA publicity indirectly, or by hiring staff to aid in developing milestones as a third party, similar to the Blender short film projects or other creative stunts Nvidia, Pixar, Dreamwork, MPC or AMD do to push their own development for inhouse or public software/hardware. 

      The reason being, is that I am finding it hard to make time to develop this as much as I’d like to, for a cause of which I like – a software I’m proud and happy to use of which actually has some leeway to develop with others to make life easier and some ability to keep alive long past economical interests, unlike my past software crushes (trueSpace and Softimage). BUT, if I mix my worklife into the development of this as a thirdparty artistic project/production house – then my work time and the way I earn a living would directly go into this.

      It is just an idea, but it has been churning into my head quite a bit.

      What do you think? Am I being absurd? Idealistic? Or too generous? Or is the idea just ridiculous?

      To be honest, the only issues I see it is just being clear with the license, having clear milestones and relationship between thirdparty developers and the system here, maybe even a sponsorship contract or something with some definitions defining how BFA relates to the project, what the third party is responsible for and what they aren’t, and defining clear boundaries or items to respect, etc. But it could be something. Something artistic complimentarily tied to this project. And ultimately I could get developers and artists permanately working on/in BFA through that business model.

      Would this community be closed to the idea? Would you be Reiner? Or do you like the idea? Does it sound like a bad idea? Good? Should I keep maturing an idea before proposing something more concrete? What would you think?

       

       

      :dance:

      #18902 Likes: 0
      Reiner
      Participant

        Draise, you are not under NDA.This project is open source. You can say what you want. That’s just not an official statement then. That said, inofficial statements are a tough thing sometimes, which can easily bring both sides into trouble. The project should act with one voice. So it would be better in such a case when you could check back so that we can synchronize our voices.

        What you describe here is the kind of workflow project that i wanted to do when the development of Bforartists comes to the workflow issues. That’s where you will stumble across the naggers then. Well, you could count the splash screens as mini projects to show the posibilities. But yes, we haven’t made a full movie or really big project with it yet.

        I personally wanted to be through with the biggest issues before i start such a workflow project. Since such a project puts you under pressure to really fix what is reported. Which i can’t do when i still work at the fundament. It’s still all in development, and there is still some mess to fix left. Full keymap, pie menus. The Movie Clip Editor has lots of open issues, and needs the same cleanup than the 3D view. The important hotkey addon needs to be in other editors too. And lots more. I keep my fingers crossed that we make it to the workflow issues this year. But then there is 2.8 coming too *sigh*.

        On the other hand, every time is a good time to start such a project i guess. There will always be something that needs a fix. My main problem here is the needed time, as usual. At the moment i could not participate. I am still at fixing the fundament. So when you want to start such a project, feel free to do so :)

        Third party development, and even paid, hm. Bforartists itself is completely non commercial. We don’t have bills to pay, and are completely independant. And i want to remain it that way. Everything that just involves a single cent should and must happen outside of the Bforartists bounds. I don’t want to fund a institute and to pay taxes when you know what i mean.

        But nobody stops you to organize such a commercial project outside of Bforartists. It just can’t be an official project from Bforarists then. But very well an official project for Bforartists.

        #18903 Likes: 0
        Draise
        Participant
           
           

          Ah, sorry bout the confusion! I have clients who have projects that I produce with BFA under NDA. Not anything I do for/with Bforartists personally! I just can’t use those projects and the hundreds of hours I put into them in the gallery or as publicity for BFA or video tutorials/showcases or anything.

          Also to clarify, checking back and having clear communication in an open sourced kind of way.. is what I like about this so all good. wink

          You have great points and I like your thinking. I personally still need to finish up some preproduction before pitching the idea, and getting things going as an entity and production house, of which has started – also figure out logistics and a platform to do it, registere here where I am, get a  website, make a plan, or with some other system. I love the idea of being an official project for Bforarist – but yes. There does need some preliminary work to be done before stress testing the project.

          At the moment to pitch the project I am short on time, and still early in the stage to do anything, but the timeframe of making it go public within a year to work with your version 1.0.0! might be a thing. But I’m glad to hear you like the idea.

          “Official project for Bforartists”… I like the ring to that. So great. I’ll… think around that and plan around that to see what I can make happen for the end of this year. 

           

          :dance:

          #18904 Likes: 0
          Reiner
          Participant

            Ah, i see. So all is well :)

            #18905 Likes: 0
            davis
            Participant

              This might be a good idea, but seems to be a lot of effort and time to get it started and take it to a successful finish. – I can see why a lot of potential users have reservations, since there is not much work created with (or labeled) Bforartists out there. – Although a true community project, like a short movie, interactive website or minigame would definitely draw more users to the app; I believe the simplest way to get people to engage, create content and give BforArtists a try would be an art competition of some sort. – There should be some “price” to be won, that might mean getting something sponsored, like hardware, addons, a subscription to a course or the like. Or maybe just the “fame” of having created the next bforartists splash screen is already enough? – By making it a public vote for the winning entry even more engagement would be created, if only registered users, or members of a certain facebook group are allowed to vote.

              Aside from the buzz of the competition itself, this would potentially also create a lot of high quality content that can be used for further promotion of BfA.

              This might be an easy first step before jumping straight into a year long community project.

              #18906 Likes: 0
              Reiner
              Participant

                Have i told that i am lousy at marketing ? ^^

                #18907 Likes: 0
                Draise
                Participant

                  Also good ideas. Guess l am the one running the facebook thing.  We could run competitions. For this year Ill keep the current campaign and add more group cross pollination  posts, and think about competitions.

                   

                  :dance:

                  #18908 Likes: 0
                  Draise
                  Participant

                    As a team l’m sure we can figure something out.

                     

                    :dance:

                    #19949 Likes: 0
                    Gavinmc42
                    Participant

                      Some input from a newbie?

                      I am learning OpenGLES and OpenGL coding on Raspberry Pi’s.
                      Rotating cubes get boring very quickly so I went looking for a 3D modeler.
                      It kept coming back to Blender, which for years I try and run screaming away from.
                      Lucky I discovered b4a, love at first use.

                      I got 1.0.0 to compile on my Linux Mint box, wow, that was easy.
                      Even got it to compile the lite version on Gentoo64(ARMv8-aarch64) on a Raspberry Pi 3B+.
                      Small issue of no icon images:(
                      It also compiled lite on Raspbian but it works a bit slower and has some other issues.
                      OpenGL is new on Pi’s, still a work in progress, Blender is a very good stress tester.

                      But b4a is easy to use, target the new users, kids, perhaps talk to the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
                      There is no decent 3D modeler for Pi’s apart from online things like tinkercad.
                      But bf4 is more than just a 3D modeler and there are 20 Million Pi’s out there now.

                      The production guys will use Blender even with that demented UI.
                      Target the next generation:)
                      More kids are learning Pi’s right now than there are Blender users?

                      There was a Pocket Blender Edition years ago based on OpenGLES.
                      OpenGLES runs on Android, I have no idea how to do that, but Pi’s are native OpenGLES too.

                      Lots of SBC(Single Board Computers) are popping up and being embedded.
                      They are all mostly ARM based with OpenGLES GPU’s too.
                      Lots of these are quad or even 8 cores, quite capable mini PC’s.

                      Apparently a big user for Pi’s is Commercial Display Signage, not something I do or know much about.

                      Anyway, this is what inspired me to try it on Pi’s.
                      https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=214695
                      And yes that 3D obj model imported fine into b4a:)
                      And that demo even runs on a 1GHz single core Pi Zero.

                      #19950 Likes: 0
                      NigeC
                      Participant

                        there’s a quite old but still nice game engine called Cafu that will run on the PI, I believe it also plays nice with Blender models

                        I managed to build Cafu on Linux Mint and Windows so it can’t be that hard, also there is some topics about building Cafu on the PI

                        https://www.cafu.de/

                        I remember seeing a render farm in a suitcase built with PI’s and external GPU’s, quite impressive

                         

                        #19951 Likes: 0
                        Gavinmc42
                        Participant

                          That was done on a Pi2?
                          Thanks for the link, been looking for game engines, did not come across that one before.
                          The Pi 3B+ is even better, it can be used as a Desktop.(if a bit slowly)
                          Arm based SBC’s are getting quite good, the Pi3B+ is not even even a fast one now.

                          Some dependencies still have issues for non x86, but it is getting better even in the last year.

                          #19952 Likes: 0
                          NigeC
                          Participant

                            there is the Blender game engine which does work with BFA.. I’ve only scratched the surface so I can’t say whether its 100% usable, just bare in mind BGE is removed frome 2.80

                              

                            #20684 Likes: 0
                            Gavinmc42
                            Participant

                              The Raspberry Pi4 is so much better than the Pi3B+.

                              But it is only OpenGL 2.1 and OpenGLES 3.2, currently at ES3.0/ES3.1.

                              This means only BforArtists 1.0.0 will work on Pi’s. 

                              On a Pi4 with 4GB of ram the B4A 1.0.0 source can be compiled once the dependancies are installed.

                              Some dependancies that are probamatic in Linux must be skipped, oiio, openexr, ocio etc.

                              A” make lite” will then build BforArtists.

                              Interestingly, B4A 2/Blender 2.8.2 will compile but does not run and pops up a warning – OpenGL3.3 is not detected.

                              Could B4A 2 be forced to compile for OpenGLES 3.2?

                               

                               

                               

                               

                              #20685 Likes: 0
                              Reiner
                              Participant

                                I fear not. We just offer what Blender offers. Everything else is impossible for our small team. We concentrate at the UI. And when Blender doesn’t work under some circumstances, then Bforartists won’t work under that circumstances neither.

                                The problem for us is, we don’t even have a maintainer for mac and linux anymore. Let alone somebody for a raspberry.

                                Kind regards

                                Reiner

                                #20694 Likes: 0
                                slippy
                                Participant

                                  IMHO  Blender and Bforartists are the same beast, you can create the same things in both apps.  So my feeling is  B4 (as I call it), helps expedite the path of creation from A->Z.  This is critical to me because I’m more interested in the scene I’m creating than the process by which it is made.  My opinion is B4 should be promoted and continually improved upon in that area. 

                                  And my sincere thanks to the B4 team for making my transition from apps I’ve spent serious $$$ on to Blender.  You folks deserve way more testaments than you’re getting.

                                  Again this is all IMHO so please do not be offended.

                                Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)
                                • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.