21
01
2009
About Prim.Blender and the state of this blog
Posted in /dev/null, /dev/zero, articles, omgwtfbbq, prim.blender
Yesterday, America received a historic new president. The irony is not lost on me, then, that I choose this time to give a status update on Prim.Blender and this blog.
Newcomers to this site may notice I haven’t posted new material in the past six months. A large part of this was the completion of my Master’s degree at the University of Miami. But… some of it wasn’t.
In particular, I want to discuss the lapsing of support for Prim.Blender, what it means, and what I have next on my own agenda.
Before I continue, I want to let everyone know that it’s been fun. Really. You all have been great at keeping your questions civil, interesting, and to the point when contacting me, and I really appreciate it. Just as I hope you learned something from me, so too did I from all of you.
It’s truly been a great three and a half years. But all good things must come to an end, should they remain “good things” for all involved.
—
Several of you have asked me what exactly it means to be “lapsing support to other tools.” This means:
* I will continue to answer support email and forum questions addressed to me.
* I will no longer be working on Texture support for the tool, nor support updates to the Sculpty system by Qarl.
* I won’t be supporting porting Prim.Blender to third party grids at this time.
* I will begin referring people to other tools maintained by other residents, such as the fantastic Prim Composer by Shack Dougall and entries on this list.
* Anyone interested in continuing to maintain the project is more than welcome to step up and email me about picking up where I’ve left off.
As for the reason why I’m choosing to do all this, I find that I no longer have the time or the will to continue supporting this tool for Blender. This is due, among other things, to repurposing my time on other projects.
Over the years, Linden Lab and I have also differed on a series of core beliefs on what constitutes the so-called “Metaverse”; that’s part of it too, I suppose. And, while I am thankful to them for continuing to open source their system, I can’t help but feel we all could improve on their system in forming a true “standard” for how we conduct ourselves and our avatars.
For those interested in the continued hosting of Prim.Blender’s files and this site, don’t worry. I will continue to maintain the SourceForge page until a suitable replacement is made, and [re]purpose this blog to discuss more of my own personal and professional projects. I still do cool stuff these days, including within SL.
But more importantly, I’d love to know what you all think on this. This site doesn’t capture too much traffic at the time of this writing, but if you’re reading this, consider dropping me a line sometime.
What are your experiences with my tools? Were they useful? And what cool things have you done with them that you feel are interesting? I’d love to hear them.
Thanks for sticking with me through this journey. It’s been fun!
– Tom “MrGomez” Robinson
Newcomers to this site may notice I haven’t posted new material in the past six months. A large part of this was the completion of my Master’s degree at the University of Miami. But… some of it wasn’t.
In particular, I want to discuss the lapsing of support for Prim.Blender, what it means, and what I have next on my own agenda.
Before I continue, I want to let everyone know that it’s been fun. Really. You all have been great at keeping your questions civil, interesting, and to the point when contacting me, and I really appreciate it. Just as I hope you learned something from me, so too did I from all of you.
It’s truly been a great three and a half years. But all good things must come to an end, should they remain “good things” for all involved.
—
Several of you have asked me what exactly it means to be “lapsing support to other tools.” This means:
* I will continue to answer support email and forum questions addressed to me.
* I will no longer be working on Texture support for the tool, nor support updates to the Sculpty system by Qarl.
* I won’t be supporting porting Prim.Blender to third party grids at this time.
* I will begin referring people to other tools maintained by other residents, such as the fantastic Prim Composer by Shack Dougall and entries on this list.
* Anyone interested in continuing to maintain the project is more than welcome to step up and email me about picking up where I’ve left off.
As for the reason why I’m choosing to do all this, I find that I no longer have the time or the will to continue supporting this tool for Blender. This is due, among other things, to repurposing my time on other projects.
Over the years, Linden Lab and I have also differed on a series of core beliefs on what constitutes the so-called “Metaverse”; that’s part of it too, I suppose. And, while I am thankful to them for continuing to open source their system, I can’t help but feel we all could improve on their system in forming a true “standard” for how we conduct ourselves and our avatars.
For those interested in the continued hosting of Prim.Blender’s files and this site, don’t worry. I will continue to maintain the SourceForge page until a suitable replacement is made, and [re]purpose this blog to discuss more of my own personal and professional projects. I still do cool stuff these days, including within SL.
But more importantly, I’d love to know what you all think on this. This site doesn’t capture too much traffic at the time of this writing, but if you’re reading this, consider dropping me a line sometime.
What are your experiences with my tools? Were they useful? And what cool things have you done with them that you feel are interesting? I’d love to hear them.
Thanks for sticking with me through this journey. It’s been fun!
– Tom “MrGomez” Robinson
Entries (RSS)
February 28th, 2009 at 3:47 pm I can understand completely your decision to cease supporting PrimDotBlender due to your lack of time. I am very grateful that you have contributed so much of your time and talent in creating PrimDotBlender and enabling it to mature to the stage at which it’s now at. In my experience, a very usable and flexible tool in the arsenal of the SL builder who for whatever reasons(be it cost or choice), has decided to follow the opensource route of content creation for the world of SecondLife.
That said, I do fervently hope that others continue to allow this project to thrive and develop further, as it would be such a shame to loose such a useful resource, primarily due to it becoming stale for the lack of updates and not keeping up with innovations in Secondlife building techniques and methods.
With the relatively recent developments of the OpenSimulator project (http://www.opensimulator.org), and the increasing interest in virtual worlds, I’d suggest that the requirement for good off-line building tools, such as PrimDotBlender will increase and grow further in the future.
Anyway Tom, you certainly have my thanks for your great work on PrimDotBlender and I wish you continued success in your other projects. I will look forward to hearing about what you’ve been up to in Secondlife with great interest in the future.