[Reiner]

Wow, that was a quick one. And i have even missed it. Bforartists is really over a year old already. Happy birthday Bforartists

Let’s have a quick look at what happened in this first year.

We have seen the start of it all at 2.6.2015. That’s when the development of the page started. The domain was registered at 2.7.2015. Then the page went live at 13.8.2015, and i started to make the project public, and started to search for volunteers. At 22.8 2015 the github account went live. And at 21.9 we have seen version 0.1 of Bforartists. It contained not this much more than the Blender version 2.75 plus the small changes to rebrand it to Bforartists.

At 14.10 Version 0.2 appeared. This version brought the changes from Blender 2.76. And this was the moment when Bforartists started to walk alone. It is based at Blender 2.76.

Since then we had four smaller point releases up to version 0.3.1 at 26.3.2016

The development side of the project has had its good sides and its bad sides. We have seen a big menu cleanup. A ton of double menu entries are removed. A few reorganizations. Lots of hotkey only tools gots finally a menu entry so that the users knows they exists at all. We have a new keymap. With left click select. And with lots of free space so that the user has some free useful hotkeys available for its own mapping. We have seen quite a few new features. Like Hidable groundgrid, hidable 3d cursor, hidable editortype menu, wireframe colors, and so on. And we have icon buttons in the tool shelf now. In short, we have seen lots of smaller and small changes. Not even so visible at the first look. But in the sum all those small changes are very visible. And that’s the road to go. Solve one small issue after another.

What did not work was the try to migrate to Qt as the UI framework. This means that we have to live with the old Blender UI. And try to do the needed changes within its limits. Some things may work, some not. What also did not work was to implement a new editor type. Well, it was not a complete failure. But the last step, the content part, did not work. I will try to fix the issues that leaded to the conclusion to implement new editors with the existing editors therefore. The try to solve those two issues has cost lots of time, nearly four months are “lost”. Time that would have been better spent at issues that works. But that’s development. Sometimes you simply have to try it to find out if something works or not. And the time wasn’t really wasted. I have learned lots of things again. And now that the result is clear, on with something different.

But the project is not only code. We have seen the migration of the Python API documentation. We have seen the Blender manual converted to Bforartists. And quite a few adjustments and additions at the page and in the Wiki area.

The further roadmap is a bit vague. I have no fixed list anymore at the moment. Just a few open issues in the tracker. I will most probably work through the UI again, with the UI proposal under my arms, and add the issues at a one by one base when i stumble across them.

The goal is still the same. I still want to come as close as possible to what is defined in the UI mockup document. But that those two issues from above, the Qt integration and implementing new editor types, did not work, reduces the posibilities dramatically. Lots of the UI ideas were based at the migration to the Qt UI framework, and simply cannot be done with the current UI solution. Not without to rewrite it in big parts. Which is out of scope for me. That’s exactly why i wanted to implement Qt in the first place, to go around this rewrite. And quite a few  ideas had been connected with new editor types.

Anyways. There are still some open points left in the Tracker. There is still lots to improve left. The improvements might become a bit smaller than initially thought. But even small improvements are worth to do them. And i will continue with improving the UI in Bforartists until we have our first stable and production ready version.

While at it, a big thanks goes to Mox Fulder, fjuhec ( Francesc Juhe ), DMJC and Stan for helping and participating at the project.

Well then, that was that. Let’s have a look what the next year brings, and how far we can push it

laters

Reiner

 

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