Hi all,
ok, here we go, another thread on surfacing… I was going to skip this one, but Sky is bringing some interesting points about the 3rd party plugin reality. So, I’m biting…
I’ve been very vocal about the 3rd party plugin model being very user hostile in the long term. And I always say that most plugins are pretty much a dead-end road.
Last time I believe was about a year ago, when a plugin developer tried to convince me in the moddle of a thread why I should consider going with a plugin, instead of asking McNeel to build a featured I needed natively: a simple VR viewport (something all 3D apps should have natively in 2020). And my response has proven that my hunch was right, they have been acquired by now, and still I don’t see anything developed any further than a really weird tech demo:
There are two exceptions to this concern I have about 3rd. party plugins:
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When the price is so low, that if you only get to use it for a few jobs, or luckily for a year, it is enough to be worth its value. With zero future expectations. Case in point here: Xnurbs. It’s super cheap and super useful, and if they are gone in a few months, oh well. But I do have a feeling they’ll stick around.
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Programs that have a multi-platform plugin strategy and/or also a standalone product, so they have scale to make a good business outside of just a tiny tiny tiny niche segment of only Rhino a few hundred (or thousand) Rhino users. Examples here: Octane, Vray, RhinoCam (I think I’ll be buying it soon)
So why does McNeel allow these flight-by-night companies to come and tease us with functionality that we might need and then they disappeared, acquired by usually dysfunctional and fucked up companies? Is McNeel Evil? No!
These fly-by-night plugins are a great way to see what happens if a company puts development/marketing/support effort in a niche solution and see how many people find it valuable. It’s a zero cost way for McNeel to test if a dedicated effort into one of the under-served areas by Rhino is important enough to be putting more development effort.
I think in the both cases many of you keep mentioning: VSR and Tsplines it is obvious that the market opportunity is just not there. The Rhino user community has already voted with their Dollars on these two ones. Those companies would have never been sold to Autodesk’s Competitive Software Burial Service Bureau if they were sound businesses.
So McNeel/Bob I think they already know that putting a ton of effort in Class-A fancy surfacing tools might actually be a waste of time (just my opinion here). I also think that a lot of the problem you are trying to solve with head-splitting Nurbs workflows (like blendSrf and MatchSrf) will be much better served with SubD topologies, and proper tools for control them. Nurbs and Breps are old useless shit, used mostly by sick/ODC/old people like us. Look at all these twin threads lately: they are an echo chamber of the same 10-20 usual users. And many of us will be retiring soon, even before this work would get done!
I personally agree with your frustrations, I even share them a bit. But also, I think these problems makes our work even more sought-after. If it was all easy, and everyone could do it, would you then be in high demand? Would you be able to charge what you charge? So maybe the fact that this high-craft work is hard is not so bad after all.
I really hope I’m wrong here and McNeel is building some kick us surfacing tools. But of they don;t I think it’s totally ok. We will all be ok.
Best,
Gustavo