[K3d-development] A good start

[Brett W. M. <bm...@ch...>]

Greetings!

I just tried out K3D last night.  I had tried to compile it before, but
the bootstrap barfed big time (using Linux 2.4.17, on Debian Sid).  I was
very happy to see Debian binaries!

I think this system is off to a good start -- it is way beyond what other
free Renderman modelers seem capable of, such as Ayam3D, which has really
good support for NURBS modeling, but does not support animation, and its
wireframe mode really sucks.  I was also happy that the software is
desktop independent -- i.e., not dependent upon Gnome or KDE (the K in the
name of the software is deceiving...).  The interface is very lush and
fairly easy to use, although I personally prefer the Gimp-like toolbox
paradigm (which Ayam3D uses).  The realtime 3D manipulation is pretty
fast, even considering I am using a Pentium 233MMX with only 128 megs of
RAM right now (Ayam3D can be slow to update, esepcially if you turn
shading on in the view objects).  The online tutorials are pretty neat
also.  That's a nice way to introduce the software, without requiring
someone keep a web browser open and try to make what they have on the
screen match what is in the screen shots of a web-based tutorial.

Realizing that the software is still at version 0.1.37.1, it does present
some stability problems, but I am sure these will go away as the software
matures and undergoes more testing.  Several of the tutorials also fail at
certain points, and I see bugs have already been submitted for those.

Another item that is missing is documentation!  The tutorials are nice,
but a reference manual of some sort is necessary.  That said, I'd be
interested in helping out on this project in anyway.  I'm a software
engineer by trade, although my C++ skills are rather rusty (I do mostly
Perl system programming), but I can write documentation, bug fixes,
installation/upgrade tools (for binary installation) and do testing.  I
think developing rpms and debs for Linux binaries would be a good idea at
some point also.

-- Brett
                                          http://www.chapelperilous.net/
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