Friday, November 04, 2011

The end of Gyes

-----------------------
NEW FEATURES
-----------------------

All things come to an end eventually so it comes to no surprise that Gyes ends here. The initial goal of Gyes was that would be an addon that could include all my future blender script , but I can see now this is not the best idea. Both RMG and RTG work great under the roof of gyes, but they are only 2 scripts and that keeps the GUI easily and manageable.

However Gyes did not end silently, it ended with a BANG!


The first thing added were a feature to import all material to the history tool that match a specific text filter even partial, making it dead simple to randomly assigne tons of already available material.

Another big addition is the fact that now history is multi-history , the history now has 12 slots each slot is a history or a group of material each material taking one index. Material of course include node materials, texture and node textures.  This means that history is ideal if you want to organise your materials into material groups and because of the filter text import you can import all that material even if there thousands of them in mere seconds.

The final BANG and the biggest of all, is the fact that I finally sit down to create a wiki for GYES. I tried to document through videos but it turned out to be a really bad idea, because I keep improving features and that meant that videos had to be redone  and that meant also loads of free time lost. Lesson learned from now on youtube video only for demonstration purposes.

This is where the wiki is located

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.5/Py/Scripts/System/Gyes

-----------------------
LOOKING BACK
-----------------------

To be honest when I started this project I did not intend to be 1288 lines of code , with a tons of features inside. I did not intent to randomize textures . I did not intend to offer full customisation on the randomization. I did not intent to invent a new tool for blender to store data that will be easier to organise than conventional material lists. I did not intend that tool to be saved with the blend file. And of course I did not intend to import materials based on text filters

I did not intend many things. I was a noob , did not know what the hell I was doing , I was just toying with an idea.

But I managed to do all those things, and loads more that are documented in the wiki. I certainly did not imagine that my first attemp with python and blender addons would be included in the contrib. It was so fun that I could not stop.


The thing is that for me I consider this project to have come far away, I dont want to say that I am a super coder , far from it (though I like to use the term "python wizard" for fun) , I am still very noob. But if you look into the history of blender from version 1 to version 2.6 , there have been some texture and material randomisers but nothing that offered the level of control of GYES. Probably I could go even further, but I dont try to prove how great coder I am, cause I am not . I prefer making addons that people really need and use.

------------------------------------
AND LOOKING FORWARD
------------------------------------

I like to inform people here that I decided to drop the idea of material librarian that can show thumbnails. I had the oportunity at last to look into cycles and draw 3 conclusions

1) cycles is already excellent way to preview materials
2) cycles is the future of blender
3) cycles is not yet matured enough to develop on it an addon

So my next project will be porting lithosphere and updating ANT , or to be more precise I intend to create a Ecosystem builder, starting with a terrain generator. Already speak with developer of lithosphere and I have porting some of the code, it will take some time till I release the new addon but I can promise you it will worth the wait.

By ecosystem I mean that you wont be able just to build terrain , but also river, trees, rock , cities , asteroids, planets and even solar systems

Its an ambitious project that probably will take me years to complete and it will bridge many addons like Plant generators, tree generators, littleneo's city generators, rock generator and any future addon that comes out that is related to my project.

As "taste for things to come" I link screenshots and videos from lithosphere, they are going to impress you

http://lithosphere.codeflow.org/screenshots.html

Have fun and see you soon