2014 and 2015 are going to be great years for Blender! Ton Roosendaal just shared some of his plans, including:
- EU funding of €220,000 per year (with luck for two years).
- The launch of Project Gooseberry, the new Blender Institute open movie (a teaser website is now live).
- A list of projects and tools - many in the content/asset management and collaboration area.
- A list of full time and part time employees - the team is growing!
The scale and budget of these projects are unprecedented in Blender's history. Looking at the long list of team members, I can't help but feel that we're entering a new era of expansion and increased development. What is the part you're most excited about?
Ton writes:
In the past 6 months, I’ve only had time for a handful of tiny commits to the Blender code. As much as I love coding and work on Blender itself, I’m also quite useful for other tasks – especially to help the Blender project to grow, become more professional and to get more developers on board.
Blender has grown as a community and volunteering project very well in the past decade, but the current user demands and our ambitions also require that we need more full-time developers on board. The past Open Movies have helped with that, and last year the Development Fund and gifts from sponsors allowed us to hire more people as well.
12 Comments
Funny that he didn`t mention the UI anymore :)
Well, the post on the code blog is about Gooseberry. That is what the money Ton secured from the EU media fund is for. It is meant to be used to pay developers that make collaboration between studios worldwide possible. So it is not very surprising that the UI is not discussed in the blog post.
Don't worry, the UI is on good hands. See the Developer Meeting Notes: December 22, 2013 (http://migre.me/h87dv). Jonathan Williamson will propose UI targets for 2.70 version.
Ah, indeed, there is the mentioning. This is great. I was a bit in fear that the UI could fall under the table again :)
UI or EU ..pick your choice . :P
Actually we can get both. In the developers meeting notes - http://migre.me/h87dv - Ton had informed that Jonathan Williamson will propose the targets for the UI. With the support of the EU we will get a better UI.
That's good.
It would be very difficult though ,on finalizing the exact UI because of individual needs of the studios that participate on the gooseberry project.
I would expect 10 teams (or 60-70 people) who work full time on 3D to require a good UI too.
Aside of that - work on better configuring Blender for personal workflow demands (including for training or newbies) will happen too. Is useful for both pros and occasional users.
Hey Ton: Is there a way I can help? I'm only twelve, but can edit videos and do a fair bit of typography. If I could help with anything, that would be awesome.
Announcements about how we intend to involve help will all be on the website later. For now, I prefer to first get everything solved with the full-time teams though.
Can't wait to see what great things are in store for this fantastic product!
Wait for the team announcements and contact details... next month!