[K-3D dev] K-3D Status

[Romain Behar]

 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,
since no GPL modeler reached a production state yet
(MindsEye, PrettyPoly, Giram, etc). Many projects did
start, but froze months later because developers
changed work or life and no new maintainer continued
the work.
 To name a few ones (both kinds) : 3Dom, Ayam,
Innovation, MindsEye, Moonlight. All of them provide a
useful set of functions, which would make a great
modeler if they were gathered together within a single
piece of software.
 Shareware and free-closed-source software reached a
better state: AC3D, Nurbana, Equinox. I'd place Wings
in this category, since it's written in an exotic
language. Blender was closed source too and free to
use (though one had to pay to get the latest
features).

 Blender is known to be a great modeler with a steep
learning curve. Many of the functions are to be called
with the keyboard, which make it a rather
non-intuitive interface. Professionals will say that
the keyboard is the best interface for everyday work,
which I agree, but most of the users will probably
prefer using menus and mouse.

 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 :
address@hidden).

  Romain


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