2.93 LTS suggestion; No new modeling/rigging tools, make editmode/OSD fast instead

I’ve been saying the same since 2.8.
(I mean basically " No new modeling/rigging tools, make editmode/OSD fast instead")

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Hi, I agree these projects are important.

As Blender grows, the overhead of running the project grows too, we need to be able to scale better, that’s easier said than done.

The issue I run into these days is it’s now reasonably difficult to get focused time on single projects (even a week of focused time feels like a luxury).
This could be an excuse for failing on any project though, of course I have a responsibility to finish projects, even so - to complete some of these tasks I would have had to take time away from other areas and focus which (for the most part didn’t happen).

There isn’t one thing I can point to as the reason, code-review takes up quite a lot of time, there are also weeks we focus on fixes, issues for the release, investigating high priority bugs in modules, going over and reviewing issues in modules I’m involved with, investigating when/why a test broke… etc.

Recently another post here suggested we stop everything and focus on reviewing code.

I don’t think stopping everything (at least for extended periods of time) is a very good solution though as it’s likely to be disruptive - holding up other areas of development that are also important.

Personally, I dislike that Blender as a project tends to over-promise & under deliver. We should be more realistic about our plans.

Having said this, it’s important to communicate our goals, being too wary of failing in public might limit our goals too much.
That we don’t always succeed in every goal doesn’t mean we’re abject failures either.


As Dalai mentioned - having teams form to work on projects is something we’re trying out,
at some point we could look into having a team focus on modeling performance, as it remains an important project that shouldn’t be overlooked.

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I donate mysefl and don’t plan to stop (unless I loose my Job :D) since obviously the more money, the more faster those issues would be adress (I’m sure they will eventually). And this is just an awesome project.

I wonder if some sort of “bounty” system could be implemented to hire dev who know Blender well and tackle those issues.

Financing goal could be implemented that would approximate fund needed to resolve an issue (edit & undo performance) or implement a feature (light linking, shadow catcher).

Then if a dev is interested somewhere, he would get paid once most of the code is commit.

I’m sure very talented/clever mind would be willing to have a “side job” for a few months knowing they can get paid and help BF.

So more “code-quest” could be made once a year or two to help resolve those long standing and important issues that I read over and over on Devtalk and Twitter…

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This comes up periodically. I made an rcs proposal a while ago, some valid points have been brought up for and against it, but I don’t think this will ever happen.

I’d be all for it though, anything that gets me away from subscriptions.

I would not see it as a replacement of the current Devfund since BF need stable income, but more of a periodic/if necessary “code-quest” to resolve specific issue/feature.

Thx for the RCS link, indeed this is more easier said than done.

I had also proposed something similar but since I think about it…I think this kind of financing would work better as a periodic thing to help resolve specific and long standing issue as to ensure people doesn’t leave monthly donation.

In any case, I don’t want to derail this topic to a crowdfounding campaign discussion…

Just trying to propose/find solution here :slight_smile:

edit : @dan2 I read through your RCS, there is a lot of very good ideas I think and valid point from both side of view. But mostly I agree with you that this could work…

As you said… A financing system could be implemented inside RCS to crowdfund a proposal… And many others things.

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A post was merged into an existing topic: A Feature Quest Proposal

About Instance editing performance, nothing to say


System Information: GTX 1650 SUPER, 16Gb ram, 6 core 3.5Ghz. Not the good one, but the scene is not so heavy…

And it’s only 3 instances and 1 master.

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I don’t understand exactly what are these modeling improvements to stop doing? If this module is almost abandoned for five years, there is no project on modeling. It receives updates from time to time but many times external.

As I say there is no project (it doesn’t look like it to me), there is a list of things that would be cool to do but there is no clear project with resources based on the experience of modeling users.

if you look at the modeling workboard and you find discussions from two years ago about changing a default parameter in a command… This is to have abandoned and aimless blender modeling.

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The commit made last week…
https://developer.blender.org/rB196dfc01a3e99c3bef0e44acf599bca50ae0300e

Was technically a fix, but it was a sign of hope for those of us waiting to see if and when editmode performance becomes a higher priority. Let us not stop there though, let us go beyond fixes and bring in the long awaited optimizations that we know can be done, but have not yet been done.

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I see your point, modeling is not getting developer attention for large projects for a while.
(although new booleans is an exception).

On the other hand, it is maintained - which happens to be a fairly significant effort, and one of the reasons some larger projects aren’t being actively developed.

Just counting fixes alone, there are over 800 in the last 5 years (only a rough count), nevertheless, over 100 fixes a year is far from being almost abandoned.

I’ll look into prioritizing this, even if this gets split into multiple smaller projects.

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There is no need to be defensive all day long. I think it was understood that I did not mean that it was not maintained but that there is no objective or project as such for the modeling module.

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To me, and I suspect many, the phrase you used, “almost abandoned for five years” was pejorative and showed a lack of appreciation for the huge amount of effort that Campbell in particular has put into polishing and improving the modeling tools throughout Blender’s lifetime. One doesn’t need “objectives” or “projects” when the tool set is widely acknowledged as pretty good.

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I don’t know in English, but in my language the sentences are read in the context of a conversation, I would swear that in English too.

And if we are talking about “new modeling tools” and I speak clearly that there is no project with a goal and you know for a fact that I regularly visit the development and report bugs… I think it is quite clear. Especially when Campbell the first thing he accepts is that there are no big modeling projects in blender for a long time.

And let’s see if we stop being defensive all day long, it’s already boring, let’s see if some day we can write in the forum without having to go pending that someone is offended by something.

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And by the way, I rewrote that offensive message five times before publishing it. Do you want to know why? Because I knew that someone would be offended, in one of the versions I said that it was necessary to understand that the tools were still good and so on. But I didn’t want to be kissing ass unnecessarily every time I commented something and the message was growing.

And in the end I left this one because I’m sick of having to rethink the messages twenty times when will be the same and someone will find something to complain about.

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Please keep the thread civil and constructive, and avoid personal-level discussion. Thanks.

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We are back to the usual loop that will end up with deleted messages in a couple of hours… That loop that prevents us from ever improving anything because it always offends someone, like when I already warned that it didn’t seem to be taken into account to improve modeling performance four years ago, before the codequest, and I was told that it was not true, that it was taken into account, that I didn’t know what I was talking about and that I was belittling the developers.

It’s the same old story. If something is criticized, someone is offended, the one who criticizes becomes the bad guy and the criticism is deactivated.

It’s easy to avoid this trajectory. Don’t criticize on a personal level and use respectful wording. We all share the love for Blender, and we all want it to get better. Let’s have constructive, fruitful conversations to reach that common goal. One can disagree with others while not blaming them for expressing a different view or counter-arguments, and try to understand their point of view.

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That’s impossible… if you see my original post I do just that

  • I avoid talking about Campbell, and Howard, because they are the two people who develop and I don’t want it to look like the criticism goes to them. So I avoid anything that might directly mention them. Because I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault, it’s simply the development philosophy.
  • I only talk about how the modeling is abandoned as a project with objectives.
  • I also don’t want to be licking the ass of the program or someone and look like a fanatic that has to be all the time saying how cool blender is.
  • I also don’t mention “I already said it” because I warned about this years ago to avoid confrontation.

Obviously I can’t find any “constructive” message about mine asking about the subject, or proposing, or asking for clarification…

And as I say, I knew perfectly well it was going to happen, you can never criticize something constructively or not. It’s the same old story. That’s why in the end the only feedback that ends up permeating the forum is when 10-15 users get pissed off and start a fight.

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Phrasing matters, you do not need to be confrontational all the time to get your message across, rather than phrasing it as “has been abandoned for 5 years” you could have phrased it as “Has seen few if any big improvements beyond bug fixes in the last 5 years” which would have sidestepped much conflict that it drove while still getting your point across.

This is not “licking ass” this is is just having good manors, if the only way to get your point across is through conflict perhaps time to reflect a little on that and see how you can work with the community better, it’s more fun without the constant bickering, i promise.

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The reality is that it is abandoned and it is okay to say it because it is the truth. And we all know it perfectly well, Campbell is a thousand things to be the main developer and there is no one else who is dedicated to improve the modeling workflow comprehensively so it has been abandoned for half a decade. Saying that I have to cut a sentence that is not offensive in itself is not good manners, it is asking for a way that could be easily ignored.

There has to be a minimum of criticism in a message that is critical, it does not have to be sweetened every sentence. And even so, if I had done that, the first sentence would be criticized because it is also “rude”. So in the end the logical deduction is directly not to write the message and continue as usual.

But it is good that you say so because in the end with this you admit that my message is not answered because of the confusion that seemed to be with my words, but because what I was saying was not comfortable to read.