Introducing Blender Lab

Introducing Blender Lab: an innovation space within the Blender project, where designers and developers can work together on future-defining projects. More information on the blender.org announcement. Comments are welcome!

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Love to see it. These projects traditionally always made Blender jump ahead in big leaps.

My only fear so far would be that the definition of a lab project feels at the same time a bit inconcrete and too specific for me. I mean - the way I understand it is that if there is a team that is working with Blender and is implementing something new for this project they can do so to get the help from core devs at Blender as long as they are willing to do everything in the open, right?

Maybe that could be a good addendum to the explanation. Something like: “If you have a project that you would love to try and maybe make happen in Blender and are willing to do it openly then Blender Lab will help support you to make sure that everything is being tested and compatible for a poissible Blender integration from the start.”

Sounds a bit more friendly to me. I am always under the impression if it’s worded like: “We love to see it and if you are willing to throw yourself at it we are willing to help.” it might attract more people who are excited to work with BF. After all Open Source traditionally often means idealism and/or appreciation over monetary returns. Small thing but maybe makes a difference.

Anyways - excited to see it launch. I hope it catches on. :crossed_fingers: :brown_heart:

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So are lab activities mostly long-running branches, or is the long-term plan to do more with feature flags? It isn’t entirely clear if people will see the phrase “Blender Lab” inside Blender itself, or if this is just an online thing.

Thanks for the feedback. You mention something about friendlyness. Is there something in the tone of the article that suggests lack of it? Or is it more an issue of ambiguity?

It depends on the activity. Some activity could even start outside of Blender itself! Blender Lab can be used as a “label” to categorize projects, but not something to give them visibility in Blender.

Mostly the ambiguity.

It sounds friendly but I think maybe the point that would make me, personally, feel a bit more confident would just be to emphasize the help part a bit more: “We want to help you to maybe get your project into Blender if you are willing to do it in the open.”

It’s really just more of a preference, I guess. :slight_smile:

8 posts were merged into an existing topic: I would love to help write the MCP for blender. Can I get involved in that?

Blender Lab should also include Blender Apps.

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Apps are a very interesting concept, but there is no current plan to work on them (due to other priorities). The first steps in that general direction would be to improve and polish the existing workspaces in Blender, allowing for more refined and optimized workflows.

When the time comes, apps could definitely be explored as a lab activity.

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