Features Graphics
I’ve taken a minute to make a little pretty images to explain the features. Instead of relying on cheap screen shots and a ton of markdown text that nobody reads.
Terminal
I think a good terminal support is quite important. We need the project to be accessible from a number of different platforms. And system that have no GUI interfaces. For example. What if I want to make a render server using VCStudio on a big, biffy, server station. That has no use for GUI. I’m trying to make it possible.
At the moment I already can list assets, see their percentages, list scenes. List only main chain of the scenes. And preview the scene text.
I’m not planning on making the console mode fully functional. But who knows. Maybe it will be at some point in future.
Me Stupid
Some releases ago I made huge mistakes in the release names. It was a move to 2021 and I was confused. The idea was to release versions based on the date. Release of December of 2020 whould be 20.12. Which is a year of 20 and a month of 12. Of course the release of January of 2021 is a release of year 21 and a month of 1 right? 20.1 right? NO. 21.1 is the same as 21.10. And the release of January should be 21.01 so the computer would know the difference.
So I will need to change the numbers. BUT.
The updater works by comparing the current number to the update.data file. Ans seing what files are associated with releases newer then current. And letting you download those. In this release I made it possible to force install all files.
On the next release I’m going to change the numbers of the realeases. Adding the 0. So use the “Update all files” button.
Terminal Studio
Some people might want to be able to do some basic VCStudio things from the terminal. You kind of can already. Using the console mode.
For this start the VCStudio using python3 run.py -c
For now I have limited amount of working commands. But the eval command can make a lot manipulations with the python data directly. So you kind of can do everything. Tho it’s weird. Soon there will be more built in functions.
Installation Tutorial
People need tutorials and unfortunately in today’s world simply writing an article is not enough. People have patience to read words. Anyway. I do movies. And I make videos too. So it’s a big deal to make tutorials. For the next couple of days this is what I gonna do.
Project Manager Tutorial
This video is a quick history of Blender-Organizer / VCStudio and a tutorial to the project manager.
More file formats
People do not recognize the danger of such things as HDR and so I’m redesigning the format selector specially to include formats that are not open to showing people the they are not. And bring attention to the issue. I also include a Wikipedia article about each file format. So the user can research easier what exactly do they need.
A nice discovery while doing that was the OpenExr was developed by ILM. The pioneers in Visual Effects. And it’s kind of an alternative to HDR. And why people use HDR? Is it the better compression?
Anyway this and a few more things coming soon.
Before I totally forget about it. I just moved to GPLv3 License. Some places might still say that it’s on GPLv2. Ignore those. I just moved. I might make a proper clean up of those posts. I’m not sure about how hard it will be. Or whether I’ll find time.
Making the Markdown reader to embed documentation right into the program. It’s quite broken at the moment. For those who want to know where I’ve been. This article will answer that question. Short answer. I couldn’t think for a few weeks.
Now that I’m back, let’s implement this. I want to use this Markdown UI element in various places. Mainly in documentation. I will use it like a little browser. Maybe will add also ability to download Markdown pages from the internet. Images will be needed regardless of whether it’s going to work as a full browser or not.
I thought Originally that Markdown is a simple format. No it isn’t Implementing it is a pain. But at least links are not as broken as in the last version.
Testing it on a markdown document that wans’t made by me. (GNU GPL text) and it works just fine.
Also the bold and the italic formatting is implemented.
And the Multi-language versions work just like intended.
Some stuff to implement:
- Links:
- Links that do the
xdg-openand open the browser. - Links that point to a different .md file that will be loaded directly into the window.
- Links that do the
- Images:
- Simple rendering of images.
- Enable downloading images when they are referenced from the internet. ( I want to make it disabled by default and make a download button. And the user could enable downloading things from the internet automatically)
But all of it already not today. I’ve been fighting with Emacs way too much. I just switched working with Emacs. It’s not very intuitive. But I’m starting to love it. It reminds me of Right Mouse Button Select.
If you link an Image from icons. I made it so it recognizes it and changes the images if in the other theme, the icons are different.
Images work more or less like in the normal Markdown site.
NotABug implementation
Implementation of Devtalk
Ton Roosendaal
Ton Roosendall is the MDL of Blender. In the 80s and 90s Ton was working on 3D animation using their own peace of software called Traces (a ray trace Renderer). In the company called NeoGeo founded by Ton in 1989. Later they decided to put together an animation / modeling tool based on the interface of Traces. Combined product became Blender.
On 13 October 2002 Blender was released to the public under the GNU GPL license. Making it officially Free Software. And thus opening it’s features to be used in the ethical world of Free Software.
Since then Blender grew to the largest animation / modeling / video editing / visual effects tool that you can find.
My implementation
I think about making a slightly different implementation. I want the text to warp around the image in a pretty way.
Now the images from the internet also work. For now you have to click a button each time it’s online. I gonna implement a setting that will allow images to be downloaded automatically. But I guess it’s not going to be by default.
Version 21.0303
PLEASE UPDATE ALL FILES
The reason for it is quite straight forward.
The update system was changed.
See this for explanation.
Markdown Browser
Documeantion in an online Wiki is fine. But I can do better then this. By putting the documentation in different Langueages right in to the program. Emacs does something like this. Why can’t my little text editor do the same?
Now when you press the ? simbol in the corner of a window. You will get a page like this. Which reads of a Markdown type document. Now only 3 markdown documents are currently in the system. Readme. Readme_Russian. And the License. But for testing it was enought. For the next update I will release more integration of this feature. For
example for the upadater. And will make documentation actually work.
The challenge is to make the same documentaion work in the NotABug repository online. I will need to see how well integrated I can make it work.
With this update there is also a new setting. Called “Auto Dowload Images” for the images with in the Markdown files that are linked to something on the internet. It’s off by default.
More formats for Rendering
We had only 4 file formats for rendering. JPG, PNG, EXR, HRD. But I expended it a bit further.
Some of the formats are recommended. Others are not. Based on this document.. The reaon is that some formats tent to lead people into using Non-Free software or infringe on some patent. Or end up in a different nasty situation. We obviously don’t want it. So while I’m not taking the option away. I present people with an ability to learn.
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