[Bf-committers] SOC Project Ideas?

[Matt Ebb]

On 18/04/2006, at 08:02 AM, Chris Want wrote:

> Tom M wrote:
>>> Was Nils? What about Marc?  I would think that would be a more
>>> recommended than a requirement.
>
> The reason why I chose Marc over the 15 other applicants
> that worked on booleans was because he was a current
> user, and also he taught courses on Blender.
>
> I do not think we should give grants to people who
> haven't used the software before. Period.

I agree, at least to the extent that people with prior Blender  
experience should definitely be preferred unless there's a pretty  
darn compelling reason (as was the case with Nils' work). Especially  
with some of the potential projects on that list which are highly  
ambitious and perhaps difficult for even an experienced Blender coder  
to accomplish in that time, it would be a great burden on both the  
mentor and student to cover all the ground in getting up to speed.

The other reason is that it should be necessary that applicants  
understand Blender, it's concepts and workflow in order to make tools  
that Blender users will be able to use well, and actually enjoy  
using. Especially if you're talking tools with a high level of  
interaction - for these sorts of things, coming up with code and then  
trying to integrate it with Blender as a last minute thing (a la  
sketch based modelling) might look nice as some feature bullet point  
somewhere, but it's not the right way to get tools that are useful or  
optimal for artists doing real work.

Matt