[Bf-committers] Current state of Blender's user experience (Ton Roosendaal) (Sybren A. St?vel) (Ton Roosendaal)

Wed Apr 27 11:10:16 CEST 2016

Hi Joe,

I talk about mails people send to the Blender Foundation, with a list
of requirements for them to start using Blender. 

I then try to encourage them to then share their ideas in public or to get involved
in one way or another.
That is (for the reasons I outlined) not possible for many professionals.

-Ton-

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

> On 26 Apr 2016, at 21:25, Joe Eagar <joeedh at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I often get mails from professionals who say "nice job on Blender, but..."
>> and then come with a list of favourite Maya or Max features. This might be
>> an acceptable consumer attitude towards commercial software, but it's very
>> not helpful for a public open source project. Dynamics here work
>> differently, it's not based on market shares or consumer satisfaction, it's
>> based one time and energy - contributions.
> 
> Oh really?  Care to explain?  I find such feedback incredibly helpful.
> I think you're making the mistake of thinking that if a user wants
> something, he should get it now.
> 
> That's just silly.  I'm perfectly happy to take a commercial user's
> input, and factor it into my medium and long-term thinking.  An
> example of that is superknife, which I designed as a hybrid of two
> different commercial package's knife tools.  It took years for BMesh
> to reach a state where I could implement it.  Geoffrey Bantle thought
> the same way, which is why the BMesh data structure he designed is so
> flexible and yet simple to work with; it's meant to cover all an
> enormous number of use cases (except cad, which requires holes in
> polygons; both of us were too intimidated to attempt it at the time).
> We loved getting ideas from commercial software and the users of that
> software.
> 
> Of course, given the human tendency to turn every public conversation
> into a flame war over "which is normatively better, my tribe--erm, I
> mean app--or yours?", most of these conversations happened
> semi-privately on IRC or through email, and occasionally the main
> developers list.
> 
> I love feedback.  Feedback is wonderful.  Software development is an
> incredibly complicated constrained optimization process.  Feedback
> helps you prioritize goals.  It doesn't have to be implemented
> immediately; in fact it can take years, and I think that's okay.  I'd
> much rather have knowledge I cannot act on now, then live in ignorance
> until I have the means to implement said knowledge.  When I finally do
> implement it, I'll have had years to think about it.
> 
> Cheers,
> Joe
> 
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 6:34 AM, Thomas Dinges <blender at dingto.org> wrote:
>> It's Ton, not Tom. ;)
>> 
>> Am 26.04.2016 um 15:23 schrieb David Ballesteros:
>>> Hi Sybren,
>>> 
>>> It's simply crossed to me as a too much white & black answer, nothing else.
>>> I just read Tom new answer and I understand his original answer.
>>> So all is good.
>>> 
>>>> You don't appear like an avid hater, so why do you feel he is addressing
>>> you?
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> --
>>>> Sybren A. St?vel
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Hi Tom,
>>> 
>>> Thanks for the welcome and the answer.
>>> Now I understand much better your points.
>>> 
>>> I'm very glad to read you're open to suggestions form "commercial" software
>>> users.
>>> 
>>> A simple argument can be used to those users that want feature X in Blender
>>> is asking them how many features suggested by them got implemented on their
>>> commercial X software. ;) I know several of mine were completly ignored in
>>> LW and Modo :D
>>> 
>>>> My expectation was that we could use the dynamics of the 2.8 project to
>>> include that target.
>>>> But I'm still not convinced we are ready for it now. The project is too
>>> complicated, with too
>>>> many inactive stakeholders and not enough active contributors. But we
>>> make progress here...
>>> 
>>> I read the document you attached yesterday, and I'm very glad to see where
>>> is going, and I guess you mean it was for the 2.8 branch and still under
>>> disscusion if it oges or not?.
>>> 
>>> I liked the consolidation explained area by area, that will really
>>> streamline Blender and make it even better.
>>> 
>>> I still have a lot to read on Blender internals to even know where to start
>>> to touch without breaking anything :) I'll try to do my best.
>>> 
>>> To the OP (Daniel):
>>> I read that reddit thread, and I think better ignore it. Too much energy
>>> spent in a discussion that doesn't take anywhere.
>>> 
>>> Cheers
>>> David.
>>> 
>>> Message: 6
>>>> Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 11:17:51 +0200
>>>> From: Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org>
>>>> Subject: Re: [Bf-committers] Current state of Blender's user
>>>>        experience (Ton Roosendaal)
>>>> To: bf-blender developers <bf-committers at blender.org>
>>>> Message-ID: <667E96F1-D629-4E04-9389-774609ED12A8 at blender.org>
>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>>>> 
>>>> Hi David,
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks for sharing, I just addressed the Blender haters out there, not
>>>> users of other 3d tools.
>>>> 
>>>> It is great that there are so many people involved with our projects who
>>>> used (or still use) commercial 3d software as well. We can learn from them,
>>>> especially because they were curious enough to invest time to figure out
>>>> how to use Blender, or what makes Blender good (enough to use) as well.
>>>> 
>>>> So please feel welcome to hangout, help developers with their work or
>>>> contribute code.
>>>> 
>>>> I often get mails from professionals who say "nice job on Blender, but..."
>>>> and then come with a list of favourite Maya or Max features. This might be
>>>> an acceptable consumer attitude towards commercial software, but it's very
>>>> not helpful for a public open source project. Dynamics here work
>>>> differently, it's not based on market shares or consumer satisfaction, it's
>>>> based one time and energy - contributions.
>>>> 
>>>> It's also a misconception to think we didn't code awesome feature X or Y
>>>> because we didn't know it existed, or didn't know it was so important.
>>>> There's just not enough developers to contribute.
>>>> 
>>>> So: how do we get studios or professionals organise Blender projects to
>>>> handle their favourite topics? I always tell them they're welcome, with
>>>> limited success. I learned that getting involved with FLOSS is not in their
>>>> DNA really. First of all it takes (a lot of) time, which is expensive for
>>>> pros. Second we cannot give a hard guarantee in advance that things will
>>>> work as planned or get accepted in releases. And third: corporate practices
>>>> is still based on secrecy and non-disclosure, participating in a public
>>>> project is regarded as a loss of competitive advantage. That is changing
>>>> (ILM, Pixar, etc), but hardly in small/medium sized companies.
>>>> 
>>>> Because it could be so easy. If just 20 Maya/Max subscribers would decide
>>>> to invest in Blender what they'd give to Autodesk, they could hire a
>>>> developer to work for them full time - to fix mouse/keyboard input mapping
>>>> and configurability for example, snapping tools, and other very useful
>>>> projects.
>>>> 
>>>> My expectation was that we could use the dynamics of the 2.8 project to
>>>> include that target. But I'm still not convinced we are ready for it now.
>>>> The project is too complicated, with too many inactive stakeholders and not
>>>> enough active contributors. But we make progress here...
>>>> 
>>>> -Ton-
>>>> 
>>>> 
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