glad to see you guys are back on air, I am a big fun of your podcasts so keep up the good work.
Excellent. Thank you, you two, I always enjoy these. I like hearing of the goings on of the development community.
Good luck with the bmesh. Onward to victory!
Good episode.
One thing that bothers me and it bothers me from my own blender.artist.org forum experience. You guys mentioned how hard it is to change something in Blender’s UI because every suggestion has dozen of enthusiasts and dozen of enemies. I realized that myself when I started my thread suggesting a few tweaks in Blender. The problem is - and I mentioned it before in other threads - that a lot of active Blender fans use it just for fun. Sometimes I check blogs/portfolios/finished works of these people and they really have not much to show except simple and not that interesting tests. Well I work as a 3D graphic in a pretty well known company Evermotion for 4 years now as a modeller and animator and I find this attitude extremely irritating. For example UI - yes, it’s perfect for those who model and texture cube and render it in Cycles to make it look awesome, but when it comes to some serious project it feels very claustrophobic.
I think Blender Foundation should create a sort of a brain storm for proffesional users; they should make their propositions and these should be discussed among developers (they can decide whether they are good or nonsense). You may say it’s cruel that less advanced Blender fans would not get there but you simply cannot listen to everybody’s opinion. It’s really blocking development of Blender (or at least improving Blender). I don’t mean making a list of new features but some small changes that would make Blender more friendly (UI is a perfect example; it has a lot of advantages when you compare it to 2.49b but it’s definitely space-consuming; it can be improved really easily).
Perhaps there is a place where I can post my small suggestions; I started a thread here but I guess no developer ever visited it. It’s quite frustrating because 95% of comments about new version of Blender are pure awesomness, there’s a lack of reasonable, solid criticism and suggestions how to make Blender even better software than it is now.
Developers do magic with Blender and society in general is very helpful (even this awesome-attitide is important and I believe it helped to switch from 2.49b to 2.6); all I want to say perhaps is that this relathionship between these two groups - developers and Blender users should be tighter. Bug fixing works great, features are always welcome but I miss improvement of the whole Blender structure.
I totaly agree with you !
Blender has to be easy to use for real artists.
Since 2.5 it did a huge step in this direction.
But sometimes I feel in Blenderforums are more code-developers or technic-freaks than real professional artists.
Blender could be a very good and serious alternative in the cg-industry.
BUT
The decisions which new features or improvements should be done in Blender has to be done by a group of real 3d-artist that work in the cg-industry. It would be good if we have one person specialized for character animation, one for architecture visualization, one for product visualisation and so on.
These group of people decide the priority of new feature/ improvements.
Sorry if I’m wrong, maybe the Ton Rosenthal does it already that way ?
Kind regards
Alain
Blender development troll free? Yeah I’d like to see that!
Well thats the reason why we have the Open Movie projects, to make sure Blender can be used to actually produce a short film / game. 
Well I think it’s not enough, it happens once a year and it’s quite hermetic, I shall say. Don’t get me wrong but we have a few developers here in our company and usually their point of view at some of the features they design (including e.g. UI for NOX) is completly different than those who actually have to use them.
But I won’t complain, you make a decision. I will use Blender no matter what Just don’t mind every comment about changes in Blender, some of them are necessary and they canno be stopped because somebody doesn’t like that. You cannot make everybody happy, besides - people will finally get used to new stuff.
So, in other words, all power users will be in total agreement of what things should be like? Highly doubtful!
Also, DingTo, I notice that you have been tweaking the UI a bit lately. One thing that is a bit off to me is that in the materials panel when you select the color the popup blocks about 2/3 of the preview window.
(jay) - who said that? I wrote that they opinion should matter, their proposals should be considered but the final decission should be made by developers.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe the way things are today is great. That’s just my opinion as a Blender user.
I think Blender Foundation should create a sort of a brain storm for proffesional users; they should make their propositions and these should be discussed among developers
It would end up being the same situation as any other UI discussion. Opinions do matter, the problem is that they are like… I probably can’t say that here. The problem is that everyone has a unique workflow, so ideas need to get sifted out that would be a general benefit to everyone, and coming to that consensus isn’t easy; then there is the issue of having it implemented after that- time, keeping consistent, etc.
One shouldn’t discredit the benefit of “fresh eyes,” in that a new user will be able to spot glaring issues that a seasoned user has become accustomed to- so what you have is a big goopy conglomeration of ideals that need to be somehow refined, but it’s not a cut and dry solution by any means.
As a Linux user, this subject is looming with all the new changes in GUIs, gnome3, unity, etc. The differences of opinions varies considerably of what a desktop should be like.
Lastly, shouting on this forum about things is no guarantee any dev will see your ideas, it’s not a direct link to their ears.
Hm, I would say: Final decissions should be made by the strong, professional usergroup (like I mention above) AND the developers 
Kind regards
Alain
You do realize that there’s a very sizeable contigent (I daresay a majority) of Blender developers whom are users themselves? Many of which got into development because there was some behavior in Blender that didn’t work the way that they wanted it to (or at all). It’s hard to get a tighter relationship between user and developer than having them in the same body!
Well perhaps I should not care that much. I feel like a troll already so I think I’ll stop asking for some improvements, if Blender survived so many years without my whining then probably people behind it doing a great job indeed.
No more complaints from me, I’ll just take things the way they are now.
I’m guessing every app needs lots of work: http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx?id=61920 haha, this made me chuckle a bit, I was almost expecting to see our avatars instead after a few pages
This podcast is awesome. Great show! Entertaining to listen to and informative.
I agree that global UI discussions go to nowhere.
But specific UI project can be discussed in forums. Drag and Drop parenting in outliner and GSOC threads are obvious examples.
There are still GSOCs to merge in trunk.
I think that when it would be done. It would be easier to discuss UI improvements.
I understand that devs want to make the best implementation at first time.
But it was not the process used for Tomato or Cycles.
Blender community is multiplied by 2 every year. Most part of blender users are always newbies.
Even if UI could be faster, 2.6X are stable. I think this serie can play an education role about blender abilities. Changing too much the UI would be counter-productive.
IMHO, per feature UI improvement can be done for this serie. But a UI team should not be created until trunk looks like Salad branch with Bmesh.
Maybe, a 2.7 UI branch could be created for a GSOC to implement things that everybody agrees like vertical header, toolbar, reducing empty space, wireframe color, etc…
oh Fweeb you are a silly bastard…
Thank you?
I would appreciate it, f this thread could become one about the podcast again.
And if you want to insult people JustinBarrett, go elsewhere! @JustinBarrett
lol, sorry there Thomas(es tut mir wirklich leid)…I was just being goofy, and no disrespect meant to Fweeb…of course having to explain all of this takes the fun out…
back on topic, I am guessing the next guest is going to be Brecht, am I correct, that would be neat.