Re: [K3d-development] K-3D Status

[P. C. <p_c...@ho...>]

 Romain Behar wrote:
>  The big event of this summer is of course Blender 3D
> going GPL. Source code will be released on October
> 13th, and I guess hundreds of developers will download
> the CVS and a few of them will start working on it.
>  This is a big change on the Free Software scene,
> ...
>  What about K-3D? I don't know how modular Blender is,
> whether the engine is independant from the GUI or
> front-end, how easily it will be expanded, how many
> developers or compagnies will work on it.
>  The question is: will K-3D or any other free (as is
> freedom) modeler have their place behind Blender?
>  There are several office suites, as well as several
> vector drawing programs (Sketch, Kontour, Sodipodi),
> but there's only one Gimp!
>
>  Going on with K-3D would imply having unique features
> that Blender doesn't have. What do you think? (please
> write to the SourceForge mailing-list :
> k3d...@li...).

I'd like to remind you of my opinion about K3d, Blender etc.
Surely they must be bound together, that shouldn't however mean an absolute 
merge.
My big question is: What are users of K3d, Blender3d trying to do?
I know they are making 3d graphics with them, but where can these graphics be 
used?
I can immediately think of four categories:
1. Computer games
2. Multimedia apps (like fancy web-pages etc.)
3. Multimedia production, especially video
4. Professional design (say, CAD).
Thinking top-to-bottom about those, a major re-orientation of the project 
should take into account the needs and limitations those applications have.
I don't expect the final programm to do all four tasks, standalone. However, 
it should integrate with other projects nicely. I've seen decent attempts in 
the free software domain to build those apps and I believe there is much free 
code we could use.

I won't say more here, I'm waiting for your comments first. Please see the 
archive for older postings, so that I don't repeat myself.

One more point I wanted to make is that being able to load one other's file is 
far less than acceptable to me. Categories 3 and 4 need some real-time 
interaction of the 3d engine and some other programs.