farsthary – Moving to 3D Coat!
“I have an exiting announcement to make: I’m joining Pilgway/3DCoat team!!!!! my Unlimited Clay efforts are highly appreciated by them and I will be collaborating to integrate dynamic subdivision sculpting in 3DCoat.”
“For my loyal Blender followers that can be fear of myself leaving Blender development I must say: Don’t be afraid! At first I was a concerned by the possibility of a restrictive NDA, but nothing more far from reality! Pilgway/3DC team is like the Blender team :) very cool, open and collaborative guys :) ! of course I can continue blender development and your beloved Unlimited Clay now and in the future :)” Phew!!!
Full release hereEven through hurricanes and power disruptions he still managed to keep coding!
Congratulations farsthary!
ah. best of wishes. :)
Great news, both! :)
Ahh! thank goodness just for moment i thought whaaaat! but reading the full post i relaxed but anyways all the best.
Thanks for your hardwork
I feel that Blender Foundation is too slow to react.
As was said on BlenderArtistss. All the best Farsthary. Keep up the good work.
Bill
Dude, I am just not surprised in the least, I was wondering which of the major companies were going to scoop you up. I am just glad it wasn’t Autodesk.
Well, I hope you and your family and your fortunes increase due to this exciting and very well deserved move. Good luck and I can’t wait to see what revolutionary technology you conceive.
Only bummer is why Ton and BF didn’t take you under their wings earlier. You are a prodigy and one deserving of praise.
Good luck Buddy!
I would also like to Congratulate 3d Coat for recognizing the talents this man has and taking him in. Your lucky to have him.
I would also like to second a sigh of relief, that it was 3D Coat and not Autodesk.
3D Coat and XSI are probably the only 3D suites I’d buy.
I’d buy Blender too, you know, if it wasn’t free. Insert joke about “illusion mage” here. Go google it. It’s got all the features of Blender and Maya, but it’s a lot cheaper.
Yes, you read that correctly.
You know what’s funny?
“Check out more the amazing things that professional users are using Blender for:…”
…looks like he forgot to change a word. (not that you couldn’t Tell by the images)
That’s good news, I’m glad for you, recognition never hurts :)
However, I’m worried: I don’t see why 3d Coat would hire you to integrate unlimited clay sculpting in their software, and let you do it for free in Blender too, which would then become a serious competitor?
I may be wrong, I’m just asking.
That’s a really good news Farsthary , congratulation ! :)
And I’m sure 3DCoat team hired the good man to push 3DCoat next steps.
Good luck Farsthary, couldn’t be more happier for you and your family, what a good start to the new year!
Its a shame the BF were not able to help out financially, but just like the guy who did Scupltris, go for it….
looking forward to seeing more things from you.
TFS
“I am just glad it wasn’t Autodesk.”
/sigh
To give a possible answer to people asking why the bf didn’t hire him, generally the bf will hire people with a good track record and history of committing and maintaining quality finished code. Raul’s work has seemingly improved a lot in the last few years, but a lot of it was experimental r&d type stuff, there haven’t been many complete patches submitted. The bf usually doesn’t hire people for r&d type work, it’s usually for less glamorous maintenance type stuff that people won’t already be doing as volunteers :)
Ahh, It is good to be employed by some industry leaders! Good luck!
Just angry against BF…. We are victim of the “so-open” and “so-money-less” spirit of the BF
I like, flow like water but who is the newcomer to BF.
“Just angry against BF…. We are victim of the “so-open” and “so-money-less” spirit of the BF”
not true… we are not victims you dont have to use Blender. but I guess there was something financial on the side of 3D coat. Who wants to buy there software if there is a software which can do the same and is open source. I guess they thought that it is better to get farsthary out of the sculpting part of Blender.
@Matt: Thats true but there has to be a experimental stuff going on. If there are many programmers who fix bugs it is generally good. But there has to be something new. Raytraced indirect light for example. It would push Blender a lot further. The particle based fluid sim was incredibly usefull, but there was no mesh-create-part for it.
Congratulations, well deserved! The best to your future, and to your future contributions to sculpting in general and Blender in particular :-)
BF in fact should have more developers.
Maybe they should consider to implement some official and transparent donation system only to pay off official (permanent) developers, and temporal developers to finish other branches.
System with whole information: how many developers they have, how many they cost and how many actually missing to pay them off, or how many reserve they have.
And as I am very happy for farsthary – It is always success for a programmer to get hire by professional team – I am also being sure, so farsthary will leave Blender development soon, and we never will see unlimited clay in Blender. That is life and normal vicissitudes. So I am rather little disappointed in BF then in farsthary.
And I don’t think that paying only for people with a good track record and history of committing and maintaining quality finished code is the best option. If you pay people they will do a lot more then if you don’t pay them…
Cuz bug fixing is the most boring and most expensive and time consuming process in design code!!!
Good luck in new job!
(Hey. Do not complain about sculpting! in earlier versions of blender – form 2.4x the first python script that enabled sculpting, allowed sculpting from tris, just like sculptris do. I remember that. Unfortunately i do not remember who was the author of that script… (was he forgotten?) So why not use that script now, instead of layer sculpting that came next?)
Best wishes to you,
Glad it wasn’t Autodesk, that could be a shocking news…
Who’s to say that BF hooked up 3D-Coat with Raul?
Anyway, even if Raul stops developing for Blender, I’ll remain happy for him. He gave us one of the CG holy grails already so I’m glad. I hope that one thing keeps leading to another for him in the positive sense. So add that to the Blender repetoire: Launching careers!
“Glad it wasn’t Autodesk, that could be a shocking news…” : maybe it is shocking news….. for Autodesk :)
Bit sad, as I can’t see a reason why 3d-Coat will let him share a code with Blender, but if they will.., well, kudos for them.
Congratulations farsthary! You truly deserve it.
I wish farsthary all the best but is the whole “I can still work on Unlimited clay” a bit “naïve” to say at least ?
Pilgway is a BUSINESS and it isn’t in their interest to make Blender better, I’m sure they rather would like to sell licenses for their software to me instead of me using a free product.
It is all great & dandy that there is a 3D-coat connection but that is just because at the moment they can collaborate. But what if Blender is getting 3D-coat like features ? This makes no business sense whatsoever.
Someone needs to make a shrine in honor of farsthary and print it up on shapeways in gold….
A major blow to blender development.Hay I wish the guy best but is steady pay! Ton seem to care less of what is happening around,but what can he do-“not thing”.Some of yous feel normal about this cross over,however you will feel the effects of it——————-Just let it sink in! Know the term of conflict of interest.
But there another hope.
Hi all!
guys, guys, guys, please don’t speak as I’m leaving!!!! No, I WILL CONTINUE BLENDER DEVELOPMENT, expept full time people payed by BF I don’t think there’s out there an open source developer who does not have another real life job! that’s the beauty of Open Source …. wherever you are you can still contribute ;)
And yes, 3DC will DO ALLOW ME TO CONTINUE UNNLIMITED CLAY FOR BLENDER, PARTICLE SURFACING, PHYSICS, etc the NDA is related to internal unique technology of 3DC that I cannot share or redistribute, 3DC does not see Blender as a foe, as I said Blender community is HIGHLY APPRECIATED BY 3DC. They are not taking me away in Blender, or something like that. Since 2 years ago I’m a computer enginneer working in my college and I haven’t quit blender development…. time could be the only issue I see, but nothing else, and who don’t have time issues these days? please don’t say me goodbye!
Thanks to everyone for your encouraging words!
Raul, I wish you the very best, you totally deserve it, not only for your great talent, even more because you’re a very specially good guy!
And… let me say, reading directly from you 3dc doesn’t limit your contribution to Blender and you’re still eager to contribute to develope Blender make me even more happy :)
In some ways, most companies doesn’t give you freedom to create. For instance, when I was in Vietnam, I saw all the arts duplicating other famous Western art. When I asked the gallery owner why there’s no originality in these artworks, he said that because this is what sells. But the artists would produce these copied arts for the store, but when they go home, they do their own, experimental, inspiring work.
Hey Raul: good luck with the new job, I really hope it will work out all fine. The fact 3DCoat people are open for you to remain involved is only beetter :)
At all: I don’t think “BF should hire more developers”, the strategy is to have the industry hire more Blender developers. Preferably on Blender code of course, but also for coding on other projects we’ll sooner or later benefit from it.
And I certainly don’t have a “no money spirit”, we currently even employ 4 devs (counting me) for getting 2.5 stable. I do prefer to keep BF lean and mean though, and have a real distributed world-wide network of developers active in Blender, volunteering or hired by studios alike.
-Ton-
I’m really happy for Raul. All his efforts and skills have finally been seen by a company.
Congratulations, and good luck for the future !
@ raul
congratulations man, I’m so happy for you, I wish you the best for your new adventure!
@ ton
raul is a pure talent, something rare to find, even more rare if we consider the open source world.
Everybody saw what he can do in his free time, with connection problems and no paid at all for, only based on his talent and dedication.
I’m very happy for him to receive such an offert and being able to grant him and his family a better future, but in this case the Blender Foundation has made a terrible miscalculation.
congratulations farsthary and all the best for you!
always enjoyed your max innovative work.
3dcoat users must be happy to have this new talent onboard..
thank you very much for all you´ve done and keep up;)
For some reason, this unlimited clay stuff is much sought after. Look what happens just as Sculptis is shown in alpha stage. Now look what happens to farsthary experimental demo is shown. Congrats.
@ ton
I believe you don’t have problem with hire programmers. And 4 is great number, but I really think, so more is better in this situation. You and BF can do better.
You are doing great job with 2.5, while unfortunately some basic features missing (decent bevel tools for example). Hope 4 devs will be enough to code it after 2.5 will be stable ;P
And as I mentioned before I don’t share believes so industry will hire Blender devs on it’s own. Its to early, maybe after 2.5 will be finished and blender will prove in industry maybe then.
I really agree with Fin about miscalculation.
There are few people worth to hire, always few more then we can afford ;)
@ton: Thank you for responding/clarifying. The concern that BF might not be doing enough to keep from “losing talent to the competetion” is understandable, but it seems that people are drifting in the direction of thinking of BF as a for-profit company and themselves as shareholders.
Go (and stay) farsthary!
Good news for all working with 3DC, it’s a great application from a group of people who care about thier uses ( as does BF).
Excellent news! You made my day! Best regards! Hail to the 3D-Coat!
Before anyone else blasts, Ton / the BF…
1) Ton has been very encouraging and helpful to Raul, helping him get to the point where he is able to do stuff with a company like 3D coat
2) Certain aspects of where Raul lives actually make it very difficult for Ton to hire Raul.
3) 3Dcoat have said – in writing – that Raul is welcome to keep contributing code, past and present, to Blender. Naïve or not, it’s in writing.
4) Ton has created, arguably, the most successful fully open source, userland application in history, brilliantly balancing development, community and business. I can think of no one who has *ever* achieved this as well as him. If you haven’t come close to managing such a thing yourself, I’d think twice before posting a comment that assumes you know better.
5) Farsthary has communicated to 3D coat that he’s committed to the community. They’re happy with that and want to maintain a good relationship with you all.. and make sure Farsthary can still have access to the resources he needs as he goes. It’s worth remembering that most of their users are *not* Blender users, so what Farsthary commits to Blender makes less difference to their business, than what features are in 3Dcoat.
6) Farsthary thrives off learning. This way he will be learning a lot of new stuff. Some of it (like specific algorithms) he won’t be able to commit straight into Blender, however a lot of things he learns (like just being a better coder, working with a team, using CUDA etc) will be of direct benefit to his contributions in Blender. Personally, having proprietary companies money going into teaching people that commit to open source sounds like a *good* thing to me :)
7) If Farsthary’s demonstrated that he’ll keep coding for Blender through hurricanes (that did *much* more damage than “just” removing a roof, trust me, I saw.) then a little thing like having the bills paid by helping out 3D coat shouldn’t concern anyone. Come on. This is Farsthary we’re talking about!
8) There are ways that this can *really* help Farsthary work on Blender more than ever before in the long term. I won’t get into it here, but I guarantee you it’s true.
Personally I want to thank both Farsthary for his hard work under difficult circumstances and Ton for being so supportive along the way. This is wonderful news for both Farsthary, 3Dcoat and Blender, even if people who don’t know all the details may not be able to realize it just yet. :)
I would also suggest that someone at BlenderNation change the title of this post from “Farsthary – Moving to 3Dcoat” to something more accurate like “Farsthary Hired by 3Dcoat”. He’s *not* “moving” (which implies leaving). Titles like this are part of what is creating the confusion here. :/
Enhorabuena Raúl, te lo merecías.Buena suerte. Saludos desde España.
3D coat is excellent. Looking forward to see what Farsthary can add to it.
i think that this is a very important fact
blender can be a special 3d university
it’s not a good software killer, and all open source must not be the death of real work
open source can make everything better, so that you can get what you pay also from a good team
in fact also open source software can be sold
so it’s a natural fact if a blender developer shows he is able to work in a team which sells software
farsthary is reaching a dream and he lets us to follow our one
thank you, it’s just the best way, keep up the good work
p.s. sorry 4 my english…
Right, what Blendiac and johnj said.
That Blender has gotten to where it is today is a rather amazing bit of magic, and it didn’t happen because of shrewd hiring practices or highly competitive marketing strategies. Best thing we can all do to help keep it moving along is keep the love flowing.
Raul is one of the best Blender’s progress pushers! :) His enormous ammounts of new and inspiring ideas can be a plank for all who want to dedicate own time for open source software development.
Of course, Ton’s support is great and, please, don’t blame BF decisions because any institute’s management is not an easy task! Stop your inner emotions and start thinking in an objective way. Then you’ll get many things.
I’m sad that people are antagonistic toward the BF. There are other super geniuses working on Blender and Farsthary is still one of them. There are surely about 9 guys that are making state of the art stuff for Blender, so rest a sure that R&D and new features implementations are not halted.
@ Everyone: Doesn’t it strike you at least a little bit odd about the unlimited clay thing and 3DC? I mean 3D Coat IS unlimited clay with its volumetric sculpting. Thats why other polygon based sculpting programs are taking this up all of the sudden. So I’m guessing Farsthary won’t be working on unlimited clay, but other things I guess….
Small spelling correction. It should be exciting news, not exiting. :)
Congrats, farsthary! I wish you well with the new job! I also look forward to any contributions to Blender you may still give! Thanks for all you already have done! 3D-Coat guys, you’re a lucky team!
Congratulations Raul, Andrew is awesome and what he’s created in 3DCoat. I bought 3DCoat as soon as it was released and it is a great application, but now can only get better.
Congrats!
hermano, eres genial, te deseo lo mejor para tu carrera, demuestra en 3D coat lo que puedes hacer… y si no nos olvidas….algo en Blender… :P
wow una buena noticia en este año que empezó tan loco…
Good for you Raul! I am a fan of both Blender and 3DC, so I eagerly look forward to using your new tools in the near future :)
@Ton, 4 devs is a pretty small team, blender is nearly 1million lines of code, what is the point of keeping the team “lean and mean” on such a large project?
@Matt, “…Raul’s work has seemingly improved a lot in the last few years, but a lot of it was experimental r&d type stuff, there haven’t been many complete patches submitted…” – i don’t get it Ebb, Raul has gone above and beyond here with unlimited clay, and just because he hasn’t submitted so many complete patches he is passed over ?
@Blendiac, “2) Certain aspects of where Raul lives actually make it very difficult for Ton to hire Raul.” Blendiac, the Netherlands has no problem with Cuba, its not very difficult at all.
You DO understand that this means UNLIMITED CLAY IS DEAD as well as GLOBAL ILLUMINATION for the internal renderer. Well..somebody will have to start from scratch once again..
Good luck to you !
I love the soft, not the voice :
http://www.3d-coat.com/company/our-voice/
Another one falls for the Dark Side of the Force ;)
Since 3D-Coat is commercial and not open-source, there’s very little chance it will survive in the long run, even if it’s successful.
I just hope FarstHary will continue developing cool stufs for Blender. But I doubt it, since his new employer will see it as a competitor which cannot be aided.
Nice! You really deserve it man :) best of wishes!!
Farsthary made a decision for his the best for him self and family,we all should respect it.
Although, he should have been honest about it. I was hire to work on commercial program and I won’t be involved in blender any more thanks for your support..Instead this long sugar coated easy on his web site and others adding more sugar to it. Blend head there is another “Hope”.
It looks like we will see Unlimited Clay when we see BMesh.
The formal developer of the blender Game engine left and went
to work for Sony America and brought the Bullet Physic engine in Blender
Brecht van Lommel who used to be our god!!! is now working for Octane render
Now you develop Unlimited clay, your skill are recognize by professional,
and you will now be working for 3D coat. Wonderfull new!!!
It is so cool to see that Blender and Open source and Free application can
Bring real opportunity and change people life for the better.
Do see why people are anxious, like Ton said blender is not one person, blender
is a community, even if you don’t have time to do further development on this tool,
I am sure that someone else will carry on…
Do what you think is the best for you not for the blender Community…
This is Great new for you and should be great new for the Blender Community.
Congratulations! Best of luck with your new work!
It’s really great to see that your work with Blender has led you to further success in the field!
Congratulations, Farsthary! Me dieron ganas de llorar y todo… Bien por tí! All the Blender community should be happy for this) Felicidades desde Venezuela!
This is great news for Farsthary, but I don’t think this is good news for the community. Remember Sculptris? It got bought by Pixelogic, it seems all of the people who code high polygon sculpting tools get picked up by companies and they stop developing open-source. I see Farsthary (Raul) suggests that he will continue development of Unlimited Clay for Blender. Well, I for one commend this action. He’s been a great Blenderer and I am a bit sad to see him leave. I was looking forward to his contributions to Blender. I know I sound very pessimistic, but again look at previous tools fading away.
Again, Congrats to you Raul! You deserve it!
+1 for Blendiac
Congrats Raul, keep rocking!!!
I think that’s great news. Talented programmers can use Blender to show their skills and hope to be hired by big companys, its a win-win situation. We all get something with that.
On the other hand, we have to understand that Blender is not going to be in the path of other comercial products or companys. That’s the great thing about it. It’s not tied to the rules of the market (at least not completely).
People come and go, the great thing about Blender is that it is open for everybody to join the team from anywhere in the world to add something more to what other people already has done, and together build a better Blender.
If Ton begins hiring more people, he is going to need to get more money, without selling anything but open source films? that’s not how he has reinvented Open Source model.
I think that he’s been quite succesful whith Blender. Blender is growing not as a goal but as a consequence of the community growing around Blender. If growing was the goal, Blender should be commercial, but i think the goal is make a great tool for all, made by all.
I thought that being open source is equal to being charity foundation?
Wow, 3d coat is a cool app, and it’s encouraging to hear that he’s landed somewhere as progressive as blender (as well as being a damn good ‘cutting edge’ dev)
Ton think your reply shows why there’s no reall ill will to any coder & dev who goes onto other things, and I reckon the advancement of the people who are developing blender is always moving onwards. :D
Congrats Farsthary, and glad to hear you’re keeping and a hand on your unlimited clay tools in blender.
You were right on the money with “For my loyal Blender followers that can be fear of myself leaving Blender development” lol. I’m relieved that they didn’t “steal” you away from Blender development. I wish you the best of luck in your new endeavors as well as your old still. ;)