I’m sorry if this is a dumb question. But i’ve been using RCS everytime i spot a thing that would make for a good dev change. Feel free to see some here
But as far as i can tell not actually much from that site goes into development? I don’t know if devs are using it at all. Should they? Should i stop posting my suggestions there, in favor of more articulated threads here?
The reason 2 of my suggestions are labeled done. Is because they actually turned out to be more of bugs in the end, which i reported, and afterwards i changed the status to done myself. I don’t know if any devs use the site
The different purposes of the two sites is summed up pretty well in the notice just above your post (and at the top of all threads here). “This is a dedicated place for Blender module teams to reach out to contributors - development questions are welcome. For feature requests, please use rightclickselect.com. For questions about how to use Blender, ask on one of the community forums.”
Basically this is a site for developers (current and prospective) to get help in developing Blender. So if you are looking for guidance, help, and direction in how you can implement your suggested improvements yourself, then this is indeed the place. But if your suggestions require other people to do the work then Right-Click Select is where to go.
Developers do occasionally look at RCS. I’m a volunteer developer and I look there once in a while and go through the ones related to modeling. I used some of the suggestions as ideas suggestions for this summer’s GSoC.
I think the reason the you don’t see many of the suggestions making it into development is simply this: there are too many possible things to do already and RCS suggestions just add to the list. Take myself for instance. There are 100+ ideas for things I could work on next. But I tend to look for a big important project, and it can then take months to do. And then there are always bugs to fix in things I have already done. So most of those 100+ are unlikely to get done (by me). And it is similar for the paid developers. They have big projects they are working on that have been carefully chosen for their importance and take up most of their time that isn’t spent bug fixing, patch reviewing, improving code quality, etc. etc.
To anyone who wants to get involved in Blender development: RCS can be a good place to get ideas for a first project to work on. You should probably check with developers first to make sure it’s an idea that would likely be accepted. Many of the ideas on RCS probably would, but some might not, for various reasons.
that was also my concern few month ago but if use the filtering option in top header you can able to see what is in Development now there are more than 90 topics under develop, and completed are 269.
To make a slight contra point here: Quite a few of the “in development” features are marked as “in development” after the people proposing them are told in the comments: This is already a thing being developed. So the in development status is set by the original people posting it. So not all the features markes as done or in development reached that status because of RCS. Doesn’t change the outcome that the feature ultimately exists but the other way round still makes a difference in the status of RCS as a valid source for requests.
Point in case: One of these five in your very screenshot is one of my proposals and it’s exactly how it happened. And it happened on others before that as well.
The other thing is: There are proposals which are in development but are stuck in this state without any progress on a seemingly abandoned design task for a long time.Also point in case: I’ve made a retopology proposal which was discussed in the community over at Blenderartists. I took most of the ideas I had, the input William Reynish made at the time and some of what others posted in the thread. And it got a very high rank on RCS. The desig task was created. I switched the status to “in development”.
Yes: Some of the feature requests are being done. Absolutely.
No, the Blender Developers are not obligated to create everything the community wants. And no, the community does not have a deeper understanding of the inner organization of the core dev team. So of course there’s a disconnect of people telling: “just make it like this, I know it so much better than you.”
The problem I still do see with RCS and in that regard also with the banner on top of this forum, which is being discussed now:
RCS is considered the official ideas forum but it suffers from two major perception flaws:
It is nested inside a conglomerate of other communities which takes away from perceived credibility as a legitimate feature request portal.
Most of the features are uncommented by developers (no matter if internal or voluntary external). No matter if it’s highly requested features or not. RCS feels like a place where people are sent to let ideas die but feel better about having said something.
I feel people come here because there is a noticable possibility to actually reach developers here where RCS feels like screaming into a pillow, way too often. Not because of outlandish requests made there but for requests which can be considered very vital, sometimes even core functionality. I’ve said it in another post: Sort RCS by “TOP” and chek the results. A lot of them aren’t outlandish new functionalities or experimental feature requests for fringe case scenarios. Most of the TOP rated proposals are actually requests for very frequent and mundane tasks many artists need on a daily basis when dealing with day to day work Noise types, Snapping, Render windows, UV tools and visualization, retopology toolsets, grouping/container objetcs, array randomization options, better bezier/curve tools, multi object property editing, hotkey visualization map editor …
None of these feature proposals are things that could be considered experimental or fringe-case tools suitable for only a fraction of artists.
And don’t get me wrong here: I think RCS is a fantastic thing to have. There are a lot of Pros to RCS which by nature simply aren’t possible or sensible in this forum. And I know Pablo is working on updating it with security against spamming and features. And that’s also a very good thing.
You can posts with reference to other software
you can gather a visible interest from other people
You usually have a much wider audience than in a pure developer forum as there are actually users posting in a community, as opposed to here. Which is very necessary as after some time around here most of the heated discussions among users tend to be ultimately held by the same few people.
you can see if others have already thought about the super cool feature you think nobody ever thought about (spoiler: most of the time someone already did ;))
It eliminates noise for developers in this forum where the focus should be on development questions. Not on user discussions.
All of these are very vital, good and necessary points.
Yet, what I’d ultimately love to see in RCS is this:
A link to the design task if a feature is already in development.
Possibly a live link to said design task to immediately see in the overview what it’s status and last activity is
proposal of similar tasks when creating a new one to mitigate
link to some sort of dev status overview from RCS to what is currently in development. Often times people who found out about RCS don’t know where to find if something is already being worked on or considered
a slightly more official look and feel - it is a comunity site but being bunched together with announcements, builds and some other blender language communities feels very unofficial and forgetful for a place where people come to ask for occasionally even very vital shortcomings.
Maybe a way for Developers to “claim” a task. It might even be enough to have all those communities on the left side not be there as a main navigation button but hidden in a “More communities” sub menu from each of the sites.
RCS has it’s own URL redirect. Make it feel like it’s something official and respected. Or if it is in fact not then kill it. But don’t let it be the place where people are sent to let their proposals die out of sight.
Valid comments, so I again apologize for my initial confusion. Though if this is a developer forum. Is the idea that any tiny idea I have. I should look into trying to implement myself? (I’m not against that of course, I simply don’t know where to start) Is it then just to make more add-ons. And if so, when does an add-on become an integrated feature?
An addendum is I don’t actually know if every little thing in blender is an add-on cause a lot of stuff is of course toggled on as an add-on by default, and a lot of others aren’t, even if they maybe should be, node-wrangler for one.
The different purposes of the two sites is summed up pretty well in the notice just above your post (and at the top of all threads here).
Yes…but also no. Since the 2.80 codequest at least, there has been a bunch of threads here that are actually calls for feedback, workflow examples or content, and that have been created by the development team (see calls for themes content, particle nodes workflow, sculpt mode workflow…and now prominently GeometryNodes feedback). And they are directed at users, not just contributors (as in developers)
So, to me it isn’t as clear cut as the label says.
In fact there is a category of user feedback that, if the sole purpose of the forum is what’s stated in the label, I’d argue that it doesn’t make much sense as it is right now…or at least it is understandable if users are prone to confusion
If it wouldn’t create any legal troubles it could be an idea to have RCS and actual User feedback be sister forums to this one. I guess the split is due to the copyright issues in this forum.
(edit) to clarify: I mean in the sense of combining them to one community but keeping them as separate
self contained sub-sections like on the Blender Community sites (RCS, Graphicall, Blender.Today,…)
