I am glad to see that the post starts to get traction, and is not pure trolling anymore. Thanks folks
Let’s see if i can answer the questions that has be risen so far.
So basically, what I’ve read is that you want to make a fork with a heavy emphasis on a mouse-driven UI and lower standards for patch inclusion.
Those two points are part of the agenda, yes. But it’s just a fraction of the whole bundle.
However, if you start accepting hacks …
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.
A hack is by the way not necessarily evil. In Gimp we have a fine example what happens when developers finds code too hacky. Cinepaint, a Gimp fork, had 32 bit per colour channel. That was in 2001. The gimp developers decided not to use this “hacky” code, but to write it from scratch. We have 2015, the Gimp development is more or less dead, and we still wait for more than 8 bit per channel.
A fork? Without any current C/C++ programmers? Oh dear lord…
You mean i cannot code with Basic here? DAMN! This kills my whole plans! :'3
Joke asides. I know what is waiting for me. When you want to make sure that everything works as intended, then join and help. This is your chance to plug in the FBX SDK without the BI putting stones in your way
Coding game logic and coding a 3d toolset are two entirely different things
True. But i want to develop a new UI, not to change the core. That’s a job for the cracks.
have you talked directly to Blender itself about trying to work with them rather than forking blender?
I try to convince the developers that a hotkey centered UI is not good since 2009. Without any luck. At the mailing lists i get ignored. So i don’t even post there anymore. Feedback pages like Blenderstorm gets ignored by the devs. I also watch the whole development from outside since a long time. And you might have noticed the incident around Andrew Price and his proposal a while ago. Which has produced lots of bad blood at the time. And showed that there is not just the hotkey jockey fraction around. There is meanwhile this much stuff censored away from me at this board that i finally gave up at it. I had more than one unfriendly clinch because of UI and usability discussions here.
Of course i tried to go around the issues by plugins. Already the first standard feature that exists in most other 3D packages, a simple reset view, gots declined because the module owner did not even see the value in the feature. Which showed me that i can plain forget about any workflow improvements in Blender, since the developers doesn’t even understand the most basic UI / UX issues.
I cannot even blame them. They are coders. Not UI UX designers. And there are so many different opinions yelling at them that they have a hard time to find out what is right and what is wrong. And they still have my full respect for the rest of Blender.
Point is, i already tried everything but a fork. I know exactly where the developers wants to go, and where not. And it’s in many areas the exact opposite of where i want to go. It’s not done with a compromise here. I have already tried everything. And the success was zero. So i had no other choice than to leave, like so many before me, or to start my own baby. Which i did now.
I love the idea of taking Blender to another level. But I always assumed it would take more resources not less.
Well. It is already more by one person. Now it is Blender plus Tiles. And i hope to activate a few of the disappointed people to help me with the project
And starting off a project with a negative premise of “blender is the hardest tool to learn”
The first step to fix a problem is to accept that the problem exists. I don’t only move around in the Blender bubble. I have seen generations of 3D beginners fail at the Blender UI. And being super fine with other 3D apps then.
When you hear people moan about Blender then it’s always about the UI. To quote a unknown user at CGTalk: “The day Blender starts to consider the UI as a serious issue is the day where Autodesk has to start to fear Blender.”
How will you gain the support away from the community of Blender Foundation over to another project?
I don’t want to at all. I want to catch the disappointed users and developers. Somebody who thinks that everything is fine with Blender is at the wrong place. And at a later point i will catch the beginners with a much easier to use software.
From what I can see the answers to these important questions have not been provided.
It’s of course your right to think so
For future reference, the better way to do something like this is to discuss your ideas openly to see if anyone was interested beforehand.
The one says it’s too early. I first have to develop everything by myself to convince the volunteers. But then i don’t need the volunteers anymore. The other says it’s much too late. The ideas needs to be discussed first.
I say it’s the right moment. The infrastructure is done. Means the work at the smallest issues can immediately start. The UI is a issue that comes much later. There’s a ton of stuff that comes first. And so there is enough time left to discuss about it in detail.
Then make it attractive visually, the current logo and website are just not inviting. From the marketing point of view, you should think of this first. Have a viable product that you can show, and then make it look AWESOME. There’s no other way around it.
You are welcome to create a new logo and to help with making it all look nicer
The name stays though. I have already owned the domain name. It’s by the way Be for Artists. Not Blender for Artists. The name is a reminder to myself to develop for the users, not so much for the developers.
And you can toy around with the name in various ways. Shorten it to BforA for example, or even B4a. Or connect it to Bee for Artists. The little helper. A sticking name is indeed important