[Bf-committers] Please can we get a decision about future support for Collada ?

[Brecht Van Lommel]

Making the Blender C core extensible is on the scale of the 2.5 project,
multiple years of work by many developers. Opening that discussion here is
not going to help us make a decision on Collada now.

There was a thread about plugins recently on this mailing list, it's better
to continue the discussion there.
On Nov 27, 2015 08:40, "homac" <homac at strace.org> wrote:

> Hey there!
>
>
>
> Not sure if I'm free to express my opinion here, but I feel somehow
> related to this discussion due to my current project.
>
> Long story short: I suggest a radical change and move further towards a
> pure plugin architecture (even on C language level), removing (i.e.
> outsourcing) everything that's not blender core functionality into a
> separate plugin project (no longer part of blender's source code tree).
>
> Blender has grown to a significant large system trying to fulfill all
> kinds of user demands. Unfortunately, the development/maintenance effort
> grows exponentially with the size of a software system due to the
> interfaces between modules and necessary negotiations between the
> different teams maintaining it. And people tend to stick to what they
> already have which results in interfaces getting more and more messed up
> with every compromise made to suite the needs of others due to the tight
> integration.
>
> Consequently moving to a plugin architecture concept (again: on C
> level), and removing everything not actually part of blenders core
> functionality, cleans up interfaces and gives you more freedom for
> future developments. The plugin teams on the other side have their own
> freedom to write whatever they think is necessary, and they know exactly
> what they can expect from core. (so, gaia: you could keep maintaining
> collada if you so desire - that's why I wrote this mail ;) ). Due to the
> same reason, it will attract more coders to contribute and the blender
> ecosystem will grow even faster without you having to worry about it.
> And blender can need it, because development seems a bit behind schedule
> considering modern methods and technologies - as I realised in less than
> a month working with blender core and listening what you are talking
> about on channels.
>
> For those, who didn't get the picture yet: I think of Eclipse or Apache
> server as some prominent successful examples. There is of course a lot
> of ranting between the different groups, and plugins/modules tend to
> have compatibility issues but the benefit is obvious, I believe.
>
>
>
> Regards
>   Holger
>
>
> On 26/11/15 23:09, Brecht Van Lommel wrote:
> > I think the main issue is that every feature in Blender has some
> > maintenance cost. Refactoring, updating for new features, bug fixing,
> > building library dependencies, etc, also for people who are not
> > maintaining the module itself. Especially with big refactoring like
> > Blender 2.8. Imagine for example big changes to the material system
> > that would require Collada material I/O to be rewritten.
> >
> > The question is then if it's worth the cost. A few years ago Collada
> > seemed like it could become a real 3D interchange standard, but it
> > seems that hasn't happened. Looking ahead 2 years for the Blender 2.8
> > release, will it still be relevant then?
> >
> > Still there are some users, so it would be interesting to understand
> > what they use it for. I've seen some people use Collada for basic mesh
> > export from Blender into some smaller or custom game engines, but
> > other file formats could work for that as well. For materials,
> > animation, armatures I'm under the impression that I/O was never
> > working well enough (both on Blender's and other application's sides).
> >
> > But maybe there will still be important use cases for it in 2 years
> > and I'm just unaware of them.
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 9:45 PM, Gaia Clary
> > <gaia.clary at machinimatrix.org> wrote:
> >> Hello;
> >>
> >> Recently there was a serious discussion about removing the Collada
> >> module from Blender. As far as i understand there is no decision
> >> made yet, but i have the impression that all main developers want
> >> this module to be removed.
> >>
> >> * The main problem with keeping Collada seem to be the size of its
> >>      libraries (some 40 MBytes) which need to be shipped with Blender
> >>      releases.
> >>
> >> * The main problem with creating a Python based alternative is that
> >>      Creating a Collada Importer for Blender is a challenge. Collada
> >>      exporters are not such a big problem.
> >>
> >> Can we get a decision on that? Depending on that decision i will
> >> either continue to maintain the Collada module or let it go.
> >>
> >> But Please do not misunderstand me. If the decision is made to keep
> >> the Collada module, then i will of course continue working on it.
> >> Otherwise i will step to new challenges :)
> >>
> >> thanks
> >> cheers,
> >> Gaia
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Bf-committers mailing list
> >> Bf-committers at blender.org
> >> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bf-committers mailing list
> > Bf-committers at blender.org
> > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-committers mailing list
> Bf-committers at blender.org
> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
>