[Bf-committers] Steam-powered Blender

Tue Aug 27 10:21:58 CEST 2013

Hi Ton, 

Yes, I am willing to pick that up to the degree that I am able to, since I am not an engineer. Sorry for being silent for a while, preparing and doing GDC and Gamescom took up a lot of resources.

As for requirements, my feeling is that the first step is to get a version of Blender out there that makes people on Steam aware what Blender can do for them at the moment. I was thinking of publishing the current version with io plugins for Source, Unreal and Unity. 

As for devs, I have already received some very encouraging feedback from people on this list that I have not yet found the time to get back to, but you are right that we should absolutely push to get people from Steam that are not yet Blender developers on board. 

Best, Jan

-----Original Message-----
From: bf-committers-bounces at blender.org [mailto:bf-committers-bounces at blender.org] On Behalf Of Ton Roosendaal
Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2013 3:33 PM
To: bf-blender developers
Subject: Re: [Bf-committers] Steam-powered Blender

Hi,

I think we have two issues to solve to make it more organized. Hopefully Jan-Peter from Valve is willing to pick that up?

- Requirements
Define a well written list of end-user expectations of what should needed, prioritized. Try to separate the requirements related to the valve platform and data I/O, from the ones related to Blender using in general.

- Find the devs
Advertise this well in Steam channels to insipre developers there to join efforts on it. Valve could play a role in it too... maybe giving out some rewards for it or so?

I think this should be handled in the Steam community first. Issues like APIs, dependencies, license compliancy, technical designs to comply our releases, then can be handled here or one of other channels (IRC).

Thanks,

-Ton-

--------------------------------------------------------
Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute Entrepotdok 57A  -  1018AD Amsterdam  -  The Netherlands

On 15 Aug, 2013, at 3:05, Jeffrey H wrote:

> A suite would probably do better overall than individually maintained 
> tools. A suite allowing a two-way dev environment would provide the 
> best workflow and would likely gain and keep support from the 
> community (as opposed to creating a dozen different tools to fill holes left by others).
> Having a team develop these tools as a whole (whether Valve, the 
> community or a third party) would keep them compatible with each other 
> and up-to-date. I think this would work out well while we're talking 
> about Source and its collection of command line tools, but what about 
> other dev kits? Do other workshop dev kits support the same source files (obj/tga)?
> 
> Regarding the tool suite: what would we need in this suite to allow 
> two-way data transfer between SDK and Blender?
> -An importer/exporter for models and related data (mesh, skeleton, 
> animation). This would essentially be SMD/DMX tools with an importer.
> -Importer/exporter for materials and textures -Possibly an interchange 
> with Hammer's plain-text format (vmf)?
> 
> This is essentially my thought process from this afternoon. Hope I'm 
> not dreaming to big here.
> 
> 
> On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 12:14 PM, SheeEttin <sheeettin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Additionally, on the other end of the pipeline, I'd love some support 
>> for decompiling/importing existing compiled MDLs. Currently the only 
>> solution is to use third-party tools (MDLDecompiler, StudioCompiler) 
>> which aren't reliable. Making assets like hats for TF2 requires 
>> working on top of the existing model, and that's kinda hard to do 
>> without the model.
>> 
>> I'm really excited for this whole thing, and I'm willing to help any 
>> way I can.
>> 
>> On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 4:28 AM,  <brookesy at internode.on.net> wrote:
>>> I have been a long time user of blender for source modding, and have 
>>> been through all the add-ons that have been released. The most 
>>> recent SMD/DMX tools by Varsity (of facepunch) are by far the best, 
>>> and are really easy to use. The part that most people have trouble 
>>> with in source is the compilation process, so you would want to have 
>>> an automatic system for generating a .qc through the blender addon 
>>> (like the one used by GUIstudiomdl, for instance) for new users. The 
>>> .smd/dmx files and the .qc could be uploaded together and compiled 
>>> remotely (and locally for testing). This would maximize useability 
>>> for new modelers I think.
>>> 
>>> Another major feature that would be very useful for modders is the 
>>> ability to create source materials for their models directly within 
>>> blender. At the moment there is no VTF support, so we use tga or png 
>>> and convert them externally. Blender already has a good material 
>>> system but being able to generate a .vmt from your material settings 
>>> would be great as well. At least the basics like phong/cubemap and 
>>> normals. These two features would immediately allow people who 
>>> already model with blender to make models straight away.
>>> 
>>> Hell I have a whole list of stuff but I digress.
>>> 
>>> I'd be up for providing training for modelers to use the tools, I 
>>> have already been making tutorial videos and such on youtube, but 
>>> the majority of my input has been streaming to online classrooms via 
>>> Livestream. I would love to help out in any way I can, be that 
>>> testing or providing some service to the community. My support is 
>>> behind providing Blender with the SMD/DMX tools already installed 
>>> and automatically maintained. Great that you guys are even 
>>> considering this!
>>> 
>>> - Abe (Black_Stormy)
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
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> 
> 
> 
> --
> Jeffrey "Italic_" Hoover
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