[Bf-blender-npr] BEER: a possible action plan and request for comments/feedback.

[Roberto Maurizzi]

> When I look at the goals and the project's presentation style (we BEER
> versus rest), with that very narrow focus on doing what already has been
> decided apparently - it only allows me one advice: just add this to Blender
> as an independent rendering engine


Ton, I'm interested in using Blender because I like a lot of its features
and how it has been managed during the years.
I'm interested in NPR for "cartoons and anime" and I'd like to set up an
animation company and to use free software in it, because of the advantages
this will give me over the competition that can't understand or change or
fix the software they're using... but I'm mainly a programmer (it's what I
do to pay for food, at least).

Because of this when I heard about the BEER project (in July this year, if
I remember correctly) I offered to help and started to try to understand
what everything was about.
I didn't know very much about how and why everything was thought out or
communicated with you, the BF and the other developers... now it's clear
there were some serious communication problems.

A project to gradually improve Blender's render system with better NPR
> features is welcome too, but it's made clear to me that this is not of
> "BEER"s interest.
>

After I watched the conference's presentation (I live in Abu Dhabi, UAE,
and couldn't attend due to work-related complications) it's very clear that
you'd prefer to do that, so in my message I wanted to ask you how you'd
like to proceed to add easier and more flexible NPR features to Blender in
a way that doesn't break anything and is as useful as possible for other
users and their needs. I also presented a few ideas about how we could do
this and asked if this was ok for you or not. It's quite likely that
different and better solutions could be available and even easy to see for
someone that knows Blender's code and architecture very well.

Now, I don't like the idea of creating an external renderer for a number of
reasons, including having to find ways to manage data and have features
Blender already has, so I'd still prefer to have indications about how to
do what you stated in the line above: gradually improve Blender's render
system with better NPR (and not only NPR) features.

In other words this is an invitation to discuss how you and the BF and
other developers think is the best way to go to add render-algorithm level
features to Blender, in a way that doesn't force people to "undo" previous
rendering steps using nodes or other tricks, because today that's what
happens when you try to do things that aren't exactly what the internal
renderer do.

I think we all know that in Open Source sometimes there's a lot of
bickering due to different personalities and ways to present ideas,
sometimes due to cultural differences in communication.
You got the impression that in BEER "we" already decided everything, but
we're very far from it: there's an idea about what we'd like to have, but
still very few good ideas about how to actually go and code it (and I'm
speaking as a programmer here).

I believe that there is a way to understand what everyone wants and needs
and find a way to do it that's good for everyone.

Let me know if you or someone else can help me and the others to better
understand what is a good approach to this.


Roberto
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