[Bf-committers] Steam-powered Blender

[metalliandy]

I think using Steam as a distribution platform would be a big win for 
Blender. Virtually all game artists have steam installed and I know that 
many would love this as it would enable auto updating from version to 
version etc. Users on Polycount have been asking for this for a while 
now, so I think we would gain some more love from that direction too.

There are still a few things that Blender needs to add in order to 
become a more robust solution for game artists such as projection cages, 
AA for baking & correct smoothing group support when exporting obj 
(Campbell is working on this atm) but we are getting there. :)

Cheers,

-Andy

On 13/08/2013 14:21, Ton Roosendaal wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> To put this in perspective - I've been in contact with JP and others from Valve (they added a donation system, to mark a percentage of sales going to Blender Foundation).
>
> Valve was very interested to find other ways to support Blender, and I suggested them to more activily involve users of their platform in a stakeholder role. That could be by adding forums there, maintaining todo or issue lists, inviting people to contribute to Blender (C or with add-ons).
>
> Game modding is a popular 3d activity online, and Blender for sure has a big following there. Their requirements probably won't differ much from game artists in studios either - it's all about getting the tools well defined and functional, and ensure I/O is as smooth as possible.
>
> JP's suggestion for platform integration I cannot judge really... nor how much it would be a priority or how it can be delivered license-compitable. I'll leave that to the experts here.
>
> -Ton-
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
> Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute
> Entrepotdok 57A  -  1018AD Amsterdam  -  The Netherlands
>
>
>
> On 13 Aug, 2013, at 10:25, Jan-Peter Ewert wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>> I work for Valve (http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/). We would like to make our digital distribution platform Steam (www.steampowered.com<http://www.steampowered.com>) one of the places where you can download Blender. The long-term goal would be to make it easier for people to build their own mods for PC games with Blender and share these mods with other gamers.
>> So I was wondering if there are any Blender users on this list who are interested in PC games and could see themselves working on an integration between Blender and PC games that offer official modding support such as DOTA 2.
>>
>> Long story:
>> Valve is a company that is built on modding. The original Half-Life was built on a modified version of the Quake engine. All our major games since then started out as mods which we found cool, hired the people who built them and released them as major game titles. This is true for Counter-Strike, the original Team Fortress, Day of Defeat and DOTA 2 (Portal was not technically a mod but a student project - but you see the pattern).
>> Similarly, one of the most successful features of our Steam platform is the Steam Workshop (http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/), which is an interface for users to share, discover and install mods for their games. Essentially, you can publish your mod there and other gamers can bring your mod into their games with a single mouse click.
>> This is something that we think would be a cool feature for Blender to tap into.  Like modeling a sword in Blender, pushing a button and having it available to all users of Skyrim. But we bet there are more creative ideas out there than this one.
>> What we are currently looking at is offering a completely vanilla version of Blender as a free download on Steam that is completely the same as that offered on other websites. We'd hope that this will get enough of our users exposed to and interested in Blender so they will be inclined to work on Blender plugins that would talk to Steam's backend services such as Workshop.
>> If you think you might be interested in being part of that, we'd be happy to hear from you!
>> Best,
>> Jan-Peter
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