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In case some has not seen this, I'll post the video. I've also posted this in the other thread, but I want to talk about what he said, not the conference, hence why I'm posting a new thread.

First let me talk about the Maya centric attitude in silicon valley. Why? Why? Why? I swear, they never learn. Every single platform that started out Maya or 3ds Max centric in their tools, ended up failing or having to redo their whole mindset around it. Why? Because they could not get enough feed back. Cloud Party, which was the latest example, was completely Maya centric, and the whole time they were open, only 1 big animator in SL had any decent amount of products available. Why? Because their rig was a mess, and didn't work in Blender, in which 90+% of SL creators use. The Blender community has ALWAYS supported the SL creators, and actually built extensive tools around SL. It is ridiculous that LL doesn't have a dedicate set of Blender users on their team that is creating this new world. Again, RIDICULOUS! Heck, what they should be doing, is working with the Blender devs to make sure there are dedicated tools for the new world in Blender. That would be thinking ahead.

No offense to Maya users, but....... Screw Maya! And yes, I am a total Blenderhead fanboy, but there are endless reasons why. Unity is not Maya centric. You can actually just drop a blend file into Unity and it automatically converts it to FBX. That fricken rocks! UnReal has a dedicated Blenderhead on their team, and they have promised to make Unreal more Blender friendly and to do more tutorials centered around Blender.

 

2nd, Ebbe is totally wrong about content, or he needs to catch up. I can't get too angy about this tho, as they do seem to be adopting the standards. Those standards are FBX and Csharp. Where Ebbe is wrong, is that you can today swamp fully animated characters between many different game engines. In the last week, I finished the elephant I've been working on. I'm specifically making this elephant for the Unity engine, but it will work in the Unreal Engine, and it should also work in the CryEngine, but I haven't tested that 1 yet. I just tested it yesterday in Unreal tho. I've been concentrating more on Unity, specifically because I know they are using a standard format that should be able to work in most engines, and Ebbe has specifically said they will support it. So, he is wrong. There is a standard, and it is fbx. The questions is, how will LL handle those FBX files. My fricken elephant better work, or they are doing something wrong.

 

Now, I'm open to handling things like animation differently, from the fbx, but LL's goal should be to make sure their platform can accept all fbx files that are compatible with Unity and Unreal. Don't make us do extra work, or choose between engines.

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Would you trust anyone who looked like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia - later on in the movie when he was wearing suits two sizes bigger than normal to make it look like he had lost weight because of his AIDS.

I thought he started off looking cool in a grey shirt (unusual to see them in rl, except on students who can't afford washing powder) which matched the cowboyish patches on his jacket and pants, but when they disappeared I realised that they were just artefacts of lag.

[Despite his decades in the business he has never been on a presentation course, has he.]

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I have yet to watch it.

(rserving this space for that moment).

For now I will say I agree with you that Maya is the wrong path for anything that is meant to be community developed.

Sure, a LOT of people have Maya out there, a lot of people also have 3DS. But...

Maya is a huge expensive platform. This means the only people with Maya either are companies, or people with pirated software, or people who cannot tell the difference in price between a latte at Starbucks (~$3-6) and the new Apple LIMITED Watch ($10,000).

Just about every time you mispell a search result for something 3D related you're going to land on a website offering Maya or 3DS for free, with half the page written in Russian and the other half in Chinese...

The last thing they want to do here is start approving of the use of illegally made content (we already know SL is full of pirated goods... putting a stamp of approval on that - is a bad move).

Blender is perfectly suited for the community here. Its free, on purpose, legally so. And sure, its confusing to learn - but that is true of 3D modeling in general. And Blender ALSO has a big community of developers. Developers that, if SL 2.0 got off properly, would be a great content creator pool to tap into... all you have to do is convince new modellers that selling what they make in SL is not only a source of income, its a great way to build an initial portfolio - in an enviornment where you can prove you know how to make 'models for real time gaming' - which is likely where the jobs are at.

 

I'll watch the video later and add more comments on points within it. The above was just my anti-Maya rant.

 

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LL might want to listen to the Father of the SL Skin

he made a mesh body which is pretty good. Over the street he said he made a mistake with it. The maps are not SL/Blender compatible and he is not getting the uptake in 3rd-party addons that he was expecting. Blender compatible they are for sure. Meaning that can open them in Blender. They just not Blender export to SL compatible without a whole heap of extra work by the addon maker

He said that he never thought thru his addon market as well as he should have. Most people who make addons use Blender. They arent RL professionals like him. Something he never considered as well as he might have, he said

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There is a summary here:

https://danielvoyager.wordpress.com/2015/03/18/ebbe-linden-talks-about-education-second-life-and-next-generation-platform-at-vwbpe-2015/

Extracted section relating to Maya :

 

  •  “At the beginning, the platform will be revealed to alpha users this summer who know Maya”
  • “After summer we will invite more people as it gets easier to use”
  • “It could be years before you decide to use this new thing instead of SL”
  • “In the beginning, accessibility and multiple platforms, we are focused on virtual reality and PC.”
  • “Any content in the new platform will be good on Oculus and PC”
  • “No more Linden Programming Language, so you can use existing experts.”
  • “We want to be open, so whatever we don’t supply 3rd parties can extend to provide additional solutions”
  • “When the platform is more generally available it will support many tools including Blender”

It seems to me like the period in which it will be opened up solely to Maya creators will be relatively short and only at very early stages about a year at least before a general release. That their planning, at least from my unsophisticated understanding of what is being summarised includes Blender compatability.

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I've been reading Inara Pey's transcripts.    I won't try to put in clickable url since they tend to get messages removed.  Instead, 

https://modemworld.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/vwbpe-2015-ebbe-altberg-lls-next-generation-platform/

 On the subject of Maya, what he actually says is, 


[08:39 / 39:59 ] And Maya is just a starting point; ultimately, we want to be able to support a huge array of third-party tools: Maya, 3D Max, Sketchup – any tool that any creator is comfortable with using, we want to make it possible for them to take content from there directly into this next generation platform, and then basically just instantly walk into that content, and easily invite people into that content and start to socialise in and around that content.

[50:30] Why do we start with Maya as opposed to something open-source like Blender? Why did we choose something that’s so expensive versus something that’s free or cheap?

[52:52] Like I said, this is very early. We started with the most sophisticated tool that allows us to create the most sophisticated content possible. Not just 3D content, but also animation, where we can get a full stress of almost every use case that we can think of, so it’s almost for our convenience. It’s not the intent that this is going to be the starting point for you guys. By the time most of you would find it worthwhile to start working in this platform, I would expect for us to have support for many other tools.

[53:34] but it was the tool that we could get our expert users to create the most variety of content and stress our engine to the maximum with the least amount of effort. So it was basically the fastest path for us to get the most complex content created as soon as possible without have to build a lot of tools to do that.

[54:04] By the time it’s more generally available, we’ll be having support for many other tools, including Blender, and ultimately, whatever tool you choose.

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Aethelwine wrote:

 
  • “No more Linden Programming Language, so you can use existing experts.”

will be good this for non-scripters to get stuff moving in a easy and no hassle way. Be a godsend really for simple things like lights and doors, etc. Even things like pathfinding behaviours be doable this way

will be interesting to see how more complex storylines will be able to be implemented if is no trad progamming language at all. Will still need to have some kinda conditional engine tho. if this then that. while this then that, etc 

maybe will be a trad language that can drop down to. But with heaps of experts/wizards/property boxes, etc then will be pretty good for what most people would want I think

+

eta add

have since read the transcript

is going to be C# the programming language. So thats good

 

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my takeout from this is that there is not going to be any LL-provided object creation tools in the new world

basically will be a multi-player game/world mount, animate, interact and display engine. With some limited amount of modding allowed. if set by the creator to allow mod

pretty much what we can do now with mesh. Altho if rigged mesh can be modded inworld then that be quite good

 

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irihapeti wrote:

my takeout from this is that there is not going to be any LL-provided object creation tools in the new world

Ebbe said also:

"Support for voxels is under consideration with the next generation platform, to present an in-world option for content creation, terrain modification, etc."

"Like I said, over time, we’re obviously going to make it easier to do layout without within the world, but we’re also exploring technologies like voxels to think of ways to make it easy for non-3D experts to be able to create environments and structures; so that’s an area we’re investing some time in right now, to understand what we can bring to the table there."

"So we can hit a much broader range of creators,  from professionals who can use the tools they’re comfortable with today to hobbyists who are willing to learn some new tools and who could benefit from using things like voxel systems to easily “paint”  and chip away to create terrain and tunnels and caves and stuff like that."

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yes

i think that to get voxels at the level of what we would all like we will have to wait til NVidia, AMD, Intel etc have made the nextgen cards. Hybrid cards that can do both trad triangle rendering (so are backward compatible with existing) and also have hardware support for rendering voxels on the card going into the future

is a paper here by Cyril Crassin: http://maverick.inria.fr/Membres/Cyril.Crassin/thesis/

it basically describe how such a card might be made. He also has some vids which demo what is possible

since writing his thesis Mr Crassin has been hired by NVidia to do further work on this. His NVidia profile is here: https://research.nvidia.com/users/cyril-crassin 

hopefully we will see something soon in the 1000 series (of whichever number system NVidia will use for them)

+

i think pretty much everyone is waiting on these cards

+

eta

i dont mean to be mean but any talk of voxels at the level being talked about is pretty much vapourware til the cards come out of the lab and are in the shops. And then we going to need tools to make stuff out of voxels. Is hardly any (like none) toolsets available to the public that go anywhere near the featureset of current triangle/mesh tools

so is maybe 3 or 4 years away I think before we can use voxels in the way we would like. Like as a full replacement for existing mesh methods

+

eta more

just thinking about what can be done on existing cards

terrain voxels can work. Like can dig a tunnel (a bit blocky like Minecraft style ish) then line it with mesh. Can make caves as well this way

that be pretty good

 

 

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Just about every time you mispell a search result for something 3D related you're going to land on a website offering Maya or 3DS for free, with half the page written in Russian and the other half in Chinese...

The last thing they want to do here is start approving of the use of illegally made content (we already know SL is full of pirated goods... putting a stamp of approval on that - is a bad move).

How is LL approving the use of illigally made content by using Maya? That's like saying "whenever I type windows in google I get offered a free version. So LL should not support the windows platform and only make the new VW available for open source OSes like Linux".

You know, you can use blender to rig pirated game characters or export stuff from turbosquid for use in SL..

I don't think that supporting a platform that you can download a pirated version of means you're approving the use of stolen content.

 

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Innula Zenovka wrote:

On the subject of Maya, what he actually says is,

[08:39 / 39:59 ] And Maya is just a starting point; ultimately, we want to be able to support a huge array of third-party tools: Maya, 3D Max, Sketchup – any tool that any creator is comfortable with using, we want to make it possible for them to take content from there directly into this next generation platform, and then basically just instantly walk into that content, and easily invite people into that content and start to socialise in and around that content.

[50:30] Why do we start with Maya as opposed to something open-source like Blender? Why did we choose something that’s so expensive versus something that’s free or cheap?

[52:52] Like I said, this is very early. We started with the most sophisticated tool that allows us to create the most sophisticated content possible. Not just 3D content, but also animation, where we can get a full stress of almost every use case that we can think of, so it’s almost for our convenience. It’s not the intent that this is going to be the starting point for you guys. By the time most of you would find it worthwhile to start working in this platform, I would expect for us to have support for many other tools.

[53:34] but it was the tool that we could get our expert users to create the most variety of content and stress our engine to the maximum with the least amount of effort. So it was basically the fastest path for us to get the most complex content created as soon as possible without have to build a lot of tools to do that.

[54:04] By the time it’s more generally available, we’ll be having support for many other tools, including Blender, and ultimately, whatever tool you choose.


This just shows you how little Ebbe and his team knows about 3D. Blender is many times better than Maya. Heck, with a simply spline, you can have instant boob and butt physics in Blender. Ebbe has no idea what he is talking about. Blender can make far more sophisticated content than Maya can. Convenience? Well, almost no Maya users have the latest version. So, what you are getting when you use Maya users, is inconsistency. No 2 Maya users will be using the same version. Every single Blender user can use the exact same version, at any time. When I get contracted to work on a team, I never know what to expect when everyone is not a Blender users. When we are all Blender users, it's easy, cause we can all trade the blend files. And my last point is, Blender has millions of users. You'd be lucky to find 10 Maya users in SL. Just look at the forums when someone askes a Maya centric question.

 

Ebbe, and LL, are using Maya, cause they don't know any better. It's because of ignorance.

 

My prediction! LL's new world will bomb massively. Nothing will work for any who is not a Maya user. The animation system will be a complete and total mess, because they are using Maya. 6 months after they open the doors, they will be lucky to have 1 or 2 animators selling stuff. This is not something I just made up. This is EXACTLY what happened with Cloud Party.

Until I see LL make some major changes to how they interact with us, and how they are creating this new world. I'm just going to write it off. Ebbe has shown me LL's attitude, and that is all I need to know.

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

 

For now I will say I agree with you that Maya is the wrong path for anything that is meant to be community developed.

Sure, a LOT of people have Maya out there, a lot of people also have 3DS. But...

 

I was originally a 3Ds Max users, before I became a Blender user. I was using an old version of Max, so I wanted to upgrade. I thought seriously about Maya, but went with Blender because of the community. It's easy to find a tutorial for Blender on just about any topic. When Cloud Party openned up, and they were so Maya centric, I decided that I would seriously give Maya a try. Initially, I just wanted to figure out what Cloud Party was doing with the rig, and see if I could change it to get it to work in my mocap software, which can import and export any format and works for every single game engine and skeleton there is, except Cloud Party's rig. So, I got the trial version of Maya and figured I'd give it the full month and decide whether to buy it after that. IMHO, compared to Blender, Maya is a mess. It's a mish mash of tools and whatever the F, seemingly trying to squeeze every last dollar out of the user for essential plugins and whatnot.

Remember, I was a Max user, and picking up Blender was fairly easy for me. Maya tho, without a crapload of plugins and other programs, it's useless.

The reason I'm a Blenderhead fanboy, has nothing at all to do with price, in the end. I have the money for Maya. Blender is really the only free software that I use, and I'm not hesitant to buy addons for it. It's comes down to what is the better product, and which program I see standing after another 5 years.

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Medhue Simoni wrote
You'd be lucky to find 10 Maya users in SL.


That's probably because the Mayans thought the world was going to end in 2012.

Out of interest, are there any Maya users here in GD?

[Yeah, I know, that question should really be asked in the Technical Forum.]

PS Anyone that claims to be will have to prove that they are neither a Linden alt nor a shill.

PPS Is it coincidence that one of the meanings of the original Sanskrit word Maya is "Unreal"?

PPPS All of the other meanings imply something that doesn't, and will not exist except as a figment of someone's imagination.

PPPPS Do you think LL's codename for SL V2 is Maya?

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Medhue Simoni wrote:


This just shows you how little Ebbe and his team knows about 3D. Blender is many times better than Maya. Heck, with a simply spline, you can have instant boob and butt physics in Blender. Ebbe has no idea what he is talking about. Blender can make far more sophisticated content than Maya can. Convenience? Well, almost no Maya users have the latest version. So, what you are getting when you use Maya users, is inconsistency. No 2 Maya users will be using the same version. Every single Blender user can use the exact same version, at any time. When I get contracted to work on a team, I never know what to expect when everyone is not a Blender users. When we are all Blender users, it's easy, cause we can all trade the blend files. And my last point is, Blender has millions of users. You'd be lucky to find 10 Maya users in SL. Just look at the forums when someone askes a Maya centric question.

 

Ebbe, and LL, are using Maya, cause they don't know any better. It's because of ignorance.

 

My prediction! LL's new world will bomb massively. Nothing will work for any who is not a Maya user. The animation system will be a complete and total mess, because they are using Maya. 6 months after they open the doors, they will be lucky to have 1 or 2 animators selling stuff. This is not something I just made up. This is EXACTLY what happened with Cloud Party.

Until I see LL make some major changes to how they interact with us, and how they are creating this new world. I'm just going to write it off. Ebbe has shown me LL's attitude, and that is all I need to know.

 What he said was 


[54:04] By the time it’s more generally available, we’ll be having support for many other tools, including Blender, and ultimately, whatever tool you choose

It sounds as if they've already identified their "expert users to create the most variety of content and stress our engine to the maximum with the least amount of effort" during the alpha testing stage, and they want to use Maya (or are content so to do).  From what he says, people will be able to use Blender or whatever else they like by the time it goes live, so I don't see what the problem is supposed to be.

Unless someone is very anxious to participate in the early alpha testing, what does it matter?    

Isn't the important thing that it supports a wide variety of content creation tools, including Blender, doubtless all tested in the beta testing stages, by the time it goes live?

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Innula Zenovka wrote:



It sounds as if they've already identified their "
expert users to create the most variety of content and stress our engine to the maximum with the least amount of effort" during the alpha testing stage, and they want to use Maya (or are content so to do).  From what he says, people will be able to use Blender or whatever else they like by the time it goes live, so I don't see what the problem is supposed to be.

Unless someone is very anxious to participate in the early alpha testing, what does it matter?    

Isn't the important thing that it supports a wide variety of content creation tools, including Blender, doubtless all tested in the beta testing stages, by the time it goes live?

Did you miss the part where I talk about Cloud Party? See, to say only Maya users will be the only 1's able to be in the alpha, shows a serious lack of understanding of 3D. A mesh is just a mesh, in every single software. A rigged mesh is a rigged mesh. Maya does nothing special at all. There is no reason to only allow Maya users in. What you are doing when you do only allow Maya users in, is you are creating your own little bubble, which will allow you to ignore everyone else. This is what Cloud Party did. Within a week of Cloud Party opening up to the public, I told them their rig won't work in neither my mocap software, nor in Blender. They gave some lame excuse and told me to use 3ds Max, cause I also can use that. Of course, their files would not import into my old 3ds Max 8. In Blender, I could kind of see what was wrong with the rig, and I pointed it out to them, which they again ignored. Finally, I got a trial version of Maya, brought in their rig, and figured out that had some utility bone rotated 180 degrees, which was screwing up the rig in everything else. Of course, I told CP this, and they ignored me again. Finally, months later, and CP had been open for almost a year, they realized that if they didn't make their rig Blender compatible, they would have no people selling stuff, besides the 1 animator that was a Maya user. They started changing the rig, and then they were bought out.

It is extremely likely, that LL will make the same exact mistake. It won't be able to be caught by a Maya user, cause it will work fine in Maya. And technically, I've already changed over to making content almost exclusively for Unity and Unreal. Part of the reason I did this was to get things ready for the new world, because if LL does things correctly, then all content from Unity and Unreal, could be used in the new world. If LL doesn't make things compatible, then they are the only 1's losing out, not me. Unity and Unreal have more than enough customers to fill LL's void.

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LlazarusLlong wrote:


Medhue Simoni wrote
You'd be lucky to find 10 Maya users in SL.


That's probably because the Mayans thought the world was going to end in 2012.

Out of interest, are there any Maya users here in GD?

[Yeah, I know, that question should really be asked in the Technical Forum.]

PS Anyone that claims to be will have to prove that they are neither a Linden alt nor a shill.

PPS Is it coincidence that one of the meanings of the original Sanskrit word Maya is "Unreal"?

PPPS All of the other meanings imply something that doesn't, and will not exist except as a figment of someone's imagination.

PPPPS Do you think LL's codename for SL V2 is Maya?

Funny stuff!

Cathy Foil is the only dedicated Maya user in the forums that I know of. Chosen Few is another Maya user, more like a fanboy, that was on the forums alot. Him and I have worked together on a few projects outside of SL, and we argue over Maya and Blender quite a bit. Chosen has pretty much left SL tho, mostly because of the TOS, but I know he does do work for some SL merchants. I just worked with him on 2 games in the last 2 months, so I know he's around. It wouldn't surprise me if LL gets him to be in the alpha, cause he has actually done work for them before.

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Medhue Simoni wrote:


LlazarusLlong wrote:


Medhue Simoni wrote
You'd be lucky to find 10 Maya users in SL.


That's probably because the Mayans thought the world was going to end in 2012.

Out of interest, are there any Maya users here in GD?

[Yeah, I know, that question should really be asked in the Technical Forum.]

PS Anyone that claims to be will have to prove that they are neither a Linden alt nor a shill.

PPS Is it coincidence that one of the meanings of the original Sanskrit word Maya is "Unreal"?

PPPS All of the other meanings imply something that doesn't, and will not exist except as a figment of someone's imagination.

PPPPS Do you think LL's codename for SL V2 is Maya?

Funny stuff!

Cathy Foil is the only dedicated Maya user in the forums that I know of. Chosen Few is another Maya user, more like a fanboy, that was on the forums alot. Him and I have worked together on a few projects outside of SL, and we argue over Maya and Blender quite a bit. Chosen has pretty much left SL tho, mostly because of the TOS, but I know he does do work for some SL merchants. I just worked with him on 2 games in the last 2 months, so I know he's around. It wouldn't surprise me if LL gets him to be in the alpha, cause he has actually done work for them before.

So basically, you choose to ignore the actual texts as Innula has pointed out - in which Ebbe makes it clear Maya is just in the first rounds of testing for reasons LL will know and later they will incorporate A LOT of other softwares - I get the feeling you are just ranting about because you do not like or ..maybe, want or //gasp, maybe you cannot!, use Maya and so you focus on that specific alpha-testing phase and love to skip the rest.

 

Good story.

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Caitlin Tobias wrote:



So basically, you choose to ignore the actual texts as Innula has pointed out - in which Ebbe makes it clear Maya is just in the first rounds of testing for reasons LL will know and later they will incorporate A LOT of other softwares - I get the feeling you are just ranting about because you do not like or ..maybe, want or //gasp, maybe you cannot!, use Maya and so you focus on that specific alpha-testing phase and love to skip the rest.

 

Good story.

I can use Maya just fine. I would never want to tho. Blender will ALWAYS be supported. That isn't even in question here. To even ask shows a lack of understanding of 3D. This is my point. There is no reason to restrict alpha testers to Maya users. It's arbitrary, if you understand 3D. It's like saying you can only take pictures with a canon. The end result, the FBX files, is exactly the same. Few would even be able to tell what software you used to make the FBX.

The part that worries me, is LL is setting themselves up to fail, because the rig is probably the most important element in the 3D world. The rig is the first thing you want to get right, not the last thing. I'm the lead developer on a game right now, and we won't be doing anything until we get the rig sorted out.

Really, unless LL pays me, I have no intention to give feedback, other than "your crap doesn't work". If I was in the alpha, I would simply test the items I've already made for Unity, and if they don't work, I would just come back later and test it again. At least, that is my attitude now. I'm really done fighting to get LL to fix things. It's not worth my time. I can be much more productive doing other things.

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Caitlin Tobias wrote:


Medhue Simoni wrote:


Really, unless LL pays me, I have no intention to give feedback, other than "your crap doesn't work".

I rest my case.

And it's my whole point. I don't care if I get in there. I have a very full plate. That said, I'm very confident that others will be able to point out LL's mistakes to them. I wasn't the only person telling CP their rig was screwed up. But..... if all LL has is 5 people testing their crap, then I have no hope for the new platform.

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Medhue Simoni wrote:


Caitlin Tobias wrote:


Medhue Simoni wrote:


Really, unless LL pays me, I have no intention to give feedback, other than "your crap doesn't work".

I rest my case.

And it's my whole point. I don't care if I get in there. I have a very full plate. That said, I'm very confident that others will be able to point out LL's mistakes to them. I wasn't the only person telling CP their rig was screwed up. But..... if all LL has is 5 people testing their crap, then I have no hope for the new platform.

Mhm..sure.

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