[Bf-committers] OpenGEX in Blender

[Juan Linietsky]

Hi Ton! Well, the idea about the exporter was always that due to it's very
small size, maintaining it should be rather easy, so all I asked was
someone from the developer community to give me a hand with keeping it up
to date and get it to work correctly. The plugin is actively developed
because the Godot community depends on it.

The problem is that, even though I believe I understand the API well, I am
not familiar enough with Blender internals so I asked for help getting the
code reviewed and make sure everything is properly done. That never
happened, I tried and I was unable to get anyone to give me a hand at that.

There are several hacks in the plugin that I believe should not be there,
because every a few weeks I discover that certain types of datasets are not
properly handled (had to fix stuff with uvmaps, tecoords, actions, etc for
cases i didn't expect to break). I have no way to know these things in
advance, only people familiar with the internals do. All I ask is for a
proper review and being pointed in the right direction.

Without this help, I definitely can't maintain the plugin properly for
inclusion, and I don't think anyone else in the same situation can.

Cheers

Juan



On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 10:57 AM, Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org> wrote:

> Hi Juan,
>
> You've mailed me in july about this too, and I've invited you to add this
> to our patch tracker and get reviews.
>
> Back in 2012 you also submitted code, and there was a whole lengthy
> discussion about it. For some reason nobody gave code feedback. However,
> you said that you wouldn't have time to support it or maintain it, which
> might explain a lack of enthusiasm.
>
> That's just the main problem with Collada - it has no stakeholders, nobody
> to maintain or fix it or to keep code work. So even if you have "perfectly
> functioning" code. I would rather see someone who's around to make sure
> it's "perfectly maintained" instead. You know - for Blender it's about
> users. It's the damn users!
>
> I don't know if OpenGEX is anything better, but before I would look into
> it I'd rather see stakeholders getting involved there first. And I mean
> game studios, game makers, engine coders. That's why my twitter message.
>
> -Ton-
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
> Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute
> Entrepotdok 57A  -  1018AD Amsterdam  -  The Netherlands
>
>
>
> On 8 Oct, 2014, at 13:47, Juan Linietsky wrote:
>
> > Hi Guys!
> >
> > Saw Ton's twit about OpenGEX:
> >
> > https://twitter.com/tonroosendaal/status/519432465396809729
> >
> > I'm also interested in this format in Blender and would gladly make an
> > exporter. In fact I approached the author about rewriting my Collada
> > Exporter (which, despite functioning perfectly, I don't think there is
> any
> > will from the Blender developers to include it instead of the current
> > broken one.) to output OpenGEX. Maybe an OpenGEX plugin would have less
> > resistance from you guys to be included.
> >
> > But the author of OpenGEX does not seem to care much about it being
> adopted
> > more widely. When I asked him if there is any viewer I could use for
> > reference to test if my exporter, he invited me to purchase his C4 engine
> > and refused to even give me a personal license to test. The format also
> has
> > many issues, as it exports texture paths as absolute only (so it does not
> > work as exchange format) and does not support animation clips. Tried to
> > convince the author about fixing these issues but he seems not interested
> > and stopped answering my mails.
> >
> > Any advise?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Juan
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