Resurrecting Wings...

Dimitri · 01-25-2016, 06:37 PM

Wings is a long time now dead. It needs a resurrection. Of course, the efforts of Dgud, the devotion of Micheus in helping the newcomers, Ggalien's Manifoldlab edition etc are not to be undermined but this does not change the fact that Wings remains dead. There is no even a single major tool implementation in it for years now. Something has to be done, because it is a pity to leave such a piece of modeling app in such an abandoned condition. There must be found a solution.

What about inviting some developers building commercial plugins in small prices so that everyone here can buy them? I suppose that it would not be so difficult for anyone of us here buying add ons in prices as 5, 10, 20 or even 30 euros (prices according the complexity of things they do). So, all will be happy, both the customers and the sellers.

What do you say about this idea? It is something that is already happening in Blender's circles. So, why not thinking it for Wings too?

cyseal · (This post was last modified: 01-25-2016, 07:40 PM by cyseal.)

It's a great idea.
If Erlang will continue to grow then the Wings could benefit from that.
Maybe to Kickstart the idea?

What I would like is TopMod UI creation toolset and similar 3dsmax polygon modeling features.
But, it's a hard work to code that.

Altough, I'm really impressed with Wings and it keeps me surprised with functionality as I learn it.

ggaliens · 01-25-2016, 08:55 PM

Dimitri ... I just had a full day of working on logic for "pipes" to make it better than is was ... in MLAB. If you come to forum, you can see a new video. The way to drive free form pipes is all new.

Marcin Maćkowiak · 01-26-2016, 08:45 AM

I think we should do something to keep people alive on Forum. If others will see that Forum being updated and "fresh" there should be more new members.

What do you think about some 3D tournament? Maybe there are some Members that want to check themselves to each other. It could give us some fun and experience. I don't have any details but it won`t be a problem to figure something out. - I am the first to willing!

cyseal · (This post was last modified: 01-26-2016, 01:10 PM by cyseal.)

We could.
For example, micheus,ggaliens, Fonte Boa could set up the date limit and the thread in which we would post a declare the winner.
We could do February contest.

ggaliens · 01-26-2016, 06:04 PM

As a test to see what is POSSIBLE ... can we set up a new moderator for Gallery ? Someone brand new ad mod ? Or are we still operating under same old authorities ? I don't want to beat a dead horse ... but I'm curious about ownership of this forum ... if it is still Optigon's in terms of actual computing authority and website editing. Or is it all you now Micheus ?

micheus · (This post was last modified: 01-26-2016, 08:57 PM by micheus.)

Although my name is not listed for the moderation of any session in this forum, Dan gave me administrator rights to in order to be its maintainer - Forum Team. So, I do everything I can to keep it clean and give to new users a welcome. Smile

Decisions are not under my domain.

"Wings3D is dead" is a old subject. As ggaliens uses to say, it's like "beat a dead horse".

We have people interested in Wings3D - the number say that:
The most download version is still 1.5.4 - around 10000 download a month from Set/2015 - Jan/2016. SourceForge statistics
The Facebook communit (by Fonte Boa) got 475 followers since Oct/2012.
The YouTube channel (by Fonte Boa) has 930 subscribers

Despite all these numbers, the regular amount of user accessing the forum rarely is greater than a dozen.

We see just a few interesting works made in Wings3D. I mean that as other than abstract forms. This kind of work also shows that Wings3D is capable to produce some complex forms, but I think other forms would "impress" the users and stimulate they to work more with Wings3D.

I don't think the "Wings3D way" will change some day, so it's almost impossible to make those who like an interface full of buttons become to like Wings3D with its simple interface and hotkey/RMB driven. They just install Wings3D, look around and leave it.

It's difficult to find a decent tutorial for Wings3D. Even mine aren't good - I just try to do the minimal to keep Wings3D "visible". Who stops to watch them prefer to listen instead to read - what's fair. As a result for the around 1K views/month my youtube channel the average time watch time is 2min (the videos use to have 10min of duration).

We could try to define some kind of tournament? I already participate in the past in a Beginner Speed Modeling at 3dm3.com, but as I have seen in many other places after some time it become inactive. Maybe because the subject isn't interesting, or the time isn't enough or people just don't want to get into. Undecided

Let's see how many people will pinnate on that: Voting for a challenge creating

In the old forum there is a thread named Wings Wants / Feature Requests (FR) - Compilation.
Maybe we should do a recompilation of that with items compatibles and possibles to add to Wings3D. It could be a guideline for any programmer interested to contribute to Wings3D. Maybe ggaliens could implement some items since he code in erlang more time than me and maybe have more free time than me too. Smile

I believe that any new feature must be created as an independent plugin. This way users can install them and try. Also, I believe if dgud or björng think it must be added to Wings3D they will do that.

Dimitri · (This post was last modified: 01-26-2016, 10:07 PM by Dimitri.)

Happy to see so many replies. Smile

I think that putting forth a good list of needed features, having a voting poll for them, could constitute a first step.

cyseal · (This post was last modified: 01-26-2016, 10:29 PM by cyseal.)

Although, voting poll should be limited to developer team and programmers who know what are talking about.
For example, one could, as not knowing anything how Erlang works, set unreasonable goals.
I saw this in Blender developmnet process. Users who don't know python would like everything and immediately.
One step at a time.
Dev team must have set smaller steps and goals to achieve great ones. And coordination plays important role in development roadmap.

Mishou · 01-27-2016, 10:19 AM

Hello,

I wouldn't say the Wings is dead but, at least for me, life win over Wings and free time and I guess is the same with many others.
Also, is a specialized tool for a specific task and also have other competitors on the market with many other options. Don't want to look mean but Wings community will always be a small one, but who knows, maybe I'm wrong and time will prove me that I'm wrong!

Cheers,
Mishou