OK, Zalamander made me go back and reread stuff. Apparently I missed something and I’ve been unfair because of that. But you guys might want to change some of your links or wording to make sure other people don’t miss the point like I did.
There’s a big “Buy Now” button on the video page, and a small mention that it’s available for free through Github buried down at the bottom of the page. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying anything about whether or not this should be free. I still maintain that asking for donations is great, and charging for a product is also great, but you shouldn’t muddy the waters between the two. Presenting it the way you are now makes it look like you’re selling a product rather than asking for donations, and that’s where all my objections came from. Not that you shouldn’t be selling a product, but this doesn’t look like a finished product yet.
Anyway, whatever. I’m belaboring what is obviously a fairly minor point and even less of a point than I thought it was in the first place. It’s free* and also worth donating toward. So I’m gonna go do that now. :o
*free-ish. Free enough. I won’t get bogged down in the semantics of GPL licensing when perception is the only real issue at stake.
My personal take is that this is an impressive tool as it stands. If I needed to do a retopo job I would pay for it right now. After all, if I am making money out of this, then it is reasonable that I pass on some of the money to the developer, in much the same way I do with the Blender foundation.
K Horseman: you, sir, are a whiner of the first order.
but this sounds like an update to the contour tool,I’m referring to the polystrip sketch proposal “The Poly Strip tool is being designed to allow easy layout of key topology regions”
basically (i know its early) i’m interested in the plans to handle more complex loops,as I wasn’t entirely clear of the ideas presented in the roadmap.To me it sounded like 3d-coats “user defined guides” ( I suppose you can youtube that if you haven’t heard of it) would that be a correct assumption?
I’ll definitely be contributing towards the development of this… Can I use a gift card (i.e. pre-paid card) to make the donation? I’ve asked before with regards to payments at CGCookie, so sorry JW if I’m being obnoxious with that, but that’s the only way I’m able to do things atm… Paypal is not an option for me.
The tool is definitelly a great addition.
Somebody in this thread noted that it is GPL and it might indeed become part of blender when it reaches a funding goal and completeness.
That is however a question that has never been answered properly. I would like to see a Q and A section making things clear to people who want to purchase it.
Back when bsurfaces was announced the author made it very clear what you would be paying for and what the long therm plans for development were. And he met them eventually.
Bsurfaces fulfilled some of my retopology needs and it made me glad that I was one of the people who supported it’s development by buying a copy. I bought a copy to support it, knowing that it will one day be a part of blender’s toolset for the long therm.
Today bsurfaces is an integral part of blender which to some does fill in the gaps that this tool is out to fill even better- more efficiently.
It made me feel as a buyer glad that I was able to contribute to blender’s development!
I want to spend my money in buying this tool, and even spend more in buying more tools that improve blender under the condition that it is made clear to me whether these tools will eventually become an integral part of blender’s release or will they forever be following a proprietary model. One day maybe you will introduce upgrade fees. Maybe future blender versions will stop supporting it and you will need to constantly play catch up.
Are you going to free it once it meets your original goals?
I just want the question answered. Even if you don’t I am sure that a lot of people will still buy it as it is offering enough for the price tag to compete with other existing software with a more complete feature set (topogun). The promised development is also aluring enough to keep it selling well- even if you have to spend more money for the other tools in the making.
A topogun license is 100$. If each tool is 30$ more it will come down to about the same final price for all of them. But saying that- having them inside a complete 3d package such as blender is a HUGE advantage!
Topogun devs will get nervous ehehe
I’m also in the confused camp. At this point, I’m pretty sure that this thing is totally free if you want to grab it from Github and compile it, and that paying is really only to support development, and not buying a product. (Though, I think it’ll be pre-compiled that way?) Or maybe I’m wrong and it doesn’t need compiling, and then there’s no real difference other than supporting them.
In the future, should Blender’s devs allow it, this might become part of Blender itself. Right?
I don’t mind paying for things, or even sponsoring future work, but I do like to know exactly what I’m bargaining for without using confusing words. Like “buy” and “GPL” and “on GitHub” all in the same sentence.
Just wanted to acknowledge this is an excellent post with many valid concerns and well articulated questions. We have a Q&A site in the works (it may be ready?). I’m at work until 6pm (EST) so I’m going to put off any quick replies until we have a thorough answer for you.
Thank you for answering all the questions. I am going to buy a copy and recommend it to everyone!
Really cool development funding model. I hope it does well.
After seeing some different approaches to development funding, this one looks like the start of something new and exciting.
In the years of using linux, I have seen projects such as pencil animation completely lose their devs - those guys have a life and need a job to sustain it.
It seems to be a common scenario where some open source projects have managed to accumulate a large user base, but have lost their developer’s base - or they have grown so much that there is a huge demand for more features from the many existing users and only one developer to optionally implement the ones that he is most interested in. Users might be interested to pay to get the feature in, but there are no developers to get it in for them around.
Meanwhile we also see that open source software today has a BIG potential for crowdsource funding. Kdenlive and Openshot recently made some very good headway that way. Using indiegogo or kickstarter there are other examples of that - a developer would promise features and the money will buy him the time to implement them- usually 6 months to a year.
Blender has historically made it’s profits by selling learning materials and directly from people using it. You have had some great contribution to it’s development that way. And you are making an evolution to that- with a market where users can fund features that they want to see more of. So you can hire somebody to get it done quickly.
I am very excited to see more projects being done that way! It will hopefully attract more developers to blender! More ways for the users to vote with their wallet for features they need sooner.
Now when bsurfaces came out it had two versions. The gpl one and the temporarily proprietary one. That model had disadvantages. There was no way to debug the full version as all glitches would spill nothing but binary code. He eventually open sourced the proprietary one after making enough sales- I think it became more stable. I am guessing that more developers were able to contribute to debugging it.
What you are doing is similar in a way, but it has some advantages.
Normal users who would not know how to compile, would buy it. There will be the cynical users who will try to cheat even if they can afford to contribute, but then eventually they will know that they are working against something they want to see completed.
Developers who know how to use the source code will be able to contribute. You even have debugging capabilities built into it as an option. This is a much much better foundation. It’s impressive.
Creativecrash is a marketplace website for free and proprietary mel scripts for maya (among other things). A lot of the scripts are incompatible and no longer supported for the latest version of the software. Autodesk has historically bought very few of the proprietary plugins making a profit over maya’s lack of feature X or Y. Recently they bought NEX tools and made it a part of maya 2014 to fill in missing modelling features. They are sort of adapting add-ons selectively when too lazy to write them themselves.
One of blender’s advantages has been the open source model. This tool looks like much better integrated with blender’s design. The nex toolbox even after being bought by autodesk, still looks like an add on. A toolbox that is on the right side of the screen- where the channel box and attributes are- it just seems out of place.
is this the newest retopo method in the cg industry? so we can happy with it or we must wait for the new retopo feature that is exist in other softwares?
Thanks so much for the support! I’m personally very excited to see how well the model works out. So far it’s looking very promising and I think it may open a lot of doors for Blender development that were previously hard to reach.
This isn’t about making money, it’s about finding ways to build better tools for Blender that everyone can benefit, while also allowing artists and developers to eat.
I think it’s important for people to understand that when they buy a copy. It is a selling point in my opinion and does need to be promoted as a model.
The negative comments at blenderartist are just by a minority of very vocal users. I am not even sure if it’s users or just a single user.
If you already own a license for modo,zbrush, etc with a similar tool- then don’t buy it. Stop whining. If you have used more than one package you will know that features are being cloned - everyone is playing a catch up game. Maybe if you give this tool a chance, it will outdo the others somehow one day.
If your copy of zbrush or modo is illegal, then even worse- it’s like you are complaining for getting this functionality made more available in a free package- including to yourself. It’s honestly hard to understand why someone would do that :ba:
I’ve said this on Twitter already (and I also might be a little biased considering I was lucky enough to test it before launch) but I personally find this whole concept really great - not to mention smart. There are so many open-source programs/tools/add-ons that I’ve come across so far that have either been sitting dead in the water for several years or don’t evolve fast enough to stay relevant/compatible with latest OS/application versions or libraries. It’s a really sad thing to see, especially as someone who’s pro-opensource.
So if a strategy like this can help Blender and/or some of its tools avoid taking residence in that figurative graveyard, I’m all for it. Not to mention (as others have also said) open-source is generally free, but developers’ time isn’t.
In any case, I know I’ll be purchasing this in the very near future, it’s a really great tool to have Otsukaresama* to both Patrick and Jonathan!
