I think using Steam as a distribution platform would be a big win for Blender. Virtually all game artists have steam installed and I know that many would love this as it would enable auto updating from version to version etc. Users on Polycount have been asking for this for a while now, so I think we would gain some more love from that direction too.
There are still a few things that Blender needs to add in order to become a more robust solution for game artists such as projection cages, AA for baking & correct smoothing group support when exporting obj (Campbell is working on this atm) but we are getting there. :) Cheers, -Andy On 13/08/2013 14:21, Ton Roosendaal wrote: > Hi all, > > To put this in perspective - I've been in contact with JP and others from > Valve (they added a donation system, to mark a percentage of sales going to > Blender Foundation). > > Valve was very interested to find other ways to support Blender, and I > suggested them to more activily involve users of their platform in a > stakeholder role. That could be by adding forums there, maintaining todo or > issue lists, inviting people to contribute to Blender (C or with add-ons). > > Game modding is a popular 3d activity online, and Blender for sure has a big > following there. Their requirements probably won't differ much from game > artists in studios either - it's all about getting the tools well defined and > functional, and ensure I/O is as smooth as possible. > > JP's suggestion for platform integration I cannot judge really... nor how > much it would be a priority or how it can be delivered license-compitable. > I'll leave that to the experts here. > > -Ton- > > -------------------------------------------------------- > Ton Roosendaal - [email protected] - www.blender.org > Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute > Entrepotdok 57A - 1018AD Amsterdam - The Netherlands > > > > On 13 Aug, 2013, at 10:25, Jan-Peter Ewert wrote: > >> Hi everyone, >> I work for Valve (http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/). We would like to >> make our digital distribution platform Steam >> (www.steampowered.com<http://www.steampowered.com>) one of the places where >> you can download Blender. The long-term goal would be to make it easier for >> people to build their own mods for PC games with Blender and share these >> mods with other gamers. >> So I was wondering if there are any Blender users on this list who are >> interested in PC games and could see themselves working on an integration >> between Blender and PC games that offer official modding support such as >> DOTA 2. >> >> Long story: >> Valve is a company that is built on modding. The original Half-Life was >> built on a modified version of the Quake engine. All our major games since >> then started out as mods which we found cool, hired the people who built >> them and released them as major game titles. This is true for >> Counter-Strike, the original Team Fortress, Day of Defeat and DOTA 2 (Portal >> was not technically a mod but a student project - but you see the pattern). >> Similarly, one of the most successful features of our Steam platform is the >> Steam Workshop (http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/), which is an interface >> for users to share, discover and install mods for their games. Essentially, >> you can publish your mod there and other gamers can bring your mod into >> their games with a single mouse click. >> This is something that we think would be a cool feature for Blender to tap >> into. Like modeling a sword in Blender, pushing a button and having it >> available to all users of Skyrim. But we bet there are more creative ideas >> out there than this one. >> What we are currently looking at is offering a completely vanilla version of >> Blender as a free download on Steam that is completely the same as that >> offered on other websites. We'd hope that this will get enough of our users >> exposed to and interested in Blender so they will be inclined to work on >> Blender plugins that would talk to Steam's backend services such as Workshop. >> If you think you might be interested in being part of that, we'd be happy to >> hear from you! >> Best, >> Jan-Peter >> _______________________________________________ >> Bf-committers mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers > _______________________________________________ > Bf-committers mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers > _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
