[Bf-committers] Meeting minutes May 1 + todo for release
Matt Ebb
matt at mke3.net
Thu May 5 09:02:06 CEST 2005
Ton Roosendaal wrote:
>> Are the softbodies still considered WIP and open to proposals and
>> changes, or has it basically been locked off now?
>
> My suggestion would be that in time we might find ideas how to
> present such a system better for users.
Ok, to rephrase my question more specifically, if I can find the time to
write a review doc within the next week about this sort of thing, will
it be seriously considered? Or is this decided "finished" already?
The last thing I heard about the softbodies was "it's WIP, things are
still being added, we'll work on the interface later when it's all
there", but now with this talk of release, it seems like this side of
things is has been quite neglected. An attitude of "the feature is done
when the code compiles and has no bugs, regardless of how usable it is
for people" is not a healthy one, and it would be very disappointing if
this is the case here.
> The fact our competitors don't really do that at least tells me it's
> not an easy task... if you want to play with power, you'll have to
> become powerful yourself too. :)
I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I hear this phrase repeated -
it's such a cheap cop-out :) It's like saying "oh, it's complicated, so
we won't even try to make it better", and completely ignores the
importance of good UI design can make. Obviously if a certain amount of
'power' took a certain amount of 'UI frustration and confusion', then
all applications that performed the same tasks would be equally usable.
Of course this is not the case. It's in how you tackle these challenges
that makes the difference, and can set an application above the rest.
In any case, it's not about removing power or being powerful or
whatever, it's a matter of doing basic analysis to make it more
understandable about what it all means and how the settings interrelate,
and ordering things to better fit an artist's workflow. I wouldn't be so
quick to use Maya's "a MEL programmer needed for every artist" interface
as the benchmark for good design. Maybe it's not easy, but that doesn't
mean we can't spend a little time at least thinking about it and working
through *now* instead of 'in time' after it's released when it's much
harder, and in the history of Blender's open source development so far
usually means 'never' ;)
Cheers,
Matt
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