Lost Marble wrote:There's another factor besides how easy something is to do, and that's how many people it matters to. This one just didn't bubble up to the top. There's a clear sense here that some of the professional users have changes they want, and we'll try to address more of those in the future (we did in fact implement several features that were requested by professional studios). .
Having had one-to-one discussions with Mike over Pro changes, I can vouch for the fact those new features made the 5.6 cut. And its welcomed.
Lost Marble wrote:The forum is not the best place to track bugs.) How exactly is it not letting you export any animation?
I think Mike has hit the nail on the head with this: What is needed is a proper ticketing system, where bugs (and features requests) are automatically tracked.
Whilst SM might have apoplexy having just released ASP6, it might be worth forming a Anime Studio 7 steering team. If made by the pro users or those 'hobbyist' and others who are are clearly not amateur, then it would help in the design process. many people here have extensive production experience with toonboom, Animo and other apps, and have a very clear understanding of a feature is used 'in the field'. For me, ease of batch rendering is very important as when in production, days are very long and two minutes from home time, I want a facility to drag and drop, point to the render directory and run away to bed. The next day, I want to look in one directory (with subdirectories is okay) to retrieved the png sequences. For the hobbyist, this is also good, especially if the folder is datetime stamped - if a take one fails, no problem, render it again - the datetime stamp prevents accidental over-writing of other takes. Using YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM date format also means the renders will appear in logical order in the folder, very easy to locate the latest "right" render.
In a different thread, Mike spoke about how Moho reached a crunch point, where development without outside assistant was unsustainable. Fors eFrontier entered the frame, then SM. The other option at the time was going the open-source route; Looking at where we are now, there are some of us who wished the OS path had been take: for people like Vern, mkelly and myself, it would have been an ideal solution, having access to the source code to be able to build in the features we required ourselves.
Now, as a commercial operation, the code is proprietary and collab programming is much more difficult. Scripting helps but much of the changes we want are not accessible - the ease-in/out for example. personally, I have no issue with working open-source like on that module to get it working right - I even have the maths block already done. But because ASP is now proprietary, any collab means NDA's and other safeguards for Mike/SM.
As for some of the SM criticism, its well founded: There are communications issues as a commercial operation, highlighting those failures is fair game: The WalMart debacle is a classic (one producer on hearing ASP had been released via WalMart demanded to know "why we were messing with junk"); the very reason the current flaming round erupted was because WalMart jumped the gun. It forced Sm into crisis management and from past experience they have shown they are not very good at that.
Constructive Suggestions:
- a bugs ticketing system, preferable public to prevent multiple reports of the same issue, and to permit other comments to assist the bug.
- A better features request system - a email batch list system might be best.
- Vern should be on the payroll of SM, either full ot part time: He should be tasked with responsibility for this forum, with full admin rights: he understands the program well and has established lines of communication with Mike and SM. It would be his responsibility to feed relevant comments to and from the ASP dev team. It frees up Mike from forum admin and the users have a visible (and very-dedicated) face here. His contribution and value to the forum should be recognized by SM.
- Serious debate should be give to whether ASP should be bought out as an open-source project. From an animation industry point of view, there are very strong reasons for backing such an option. It would secure its future as a pro tool and producers would feel more secure in adopting it in their production environment. It would also permit development of entirely new support programs such as automated PMS (Production management Systems) resource manager tools, and direct interfacing with other open-source projects such as Blender, Celtx etc. Animation is a small industry and hard for commercial operators to see large returns fro large code investment: Blender demonstrated how a small proprietary product-turned open can become a serious challenger to Maya/Max and Cinema-4D. ASP can be the giant killer too.
Mike has done an excellent job on ASP and there's no criticism over that. Sure, things got forgotten but that happens when developing other killer modules.But to get ASP into the giant killer league, he needs more coder support. Smaller issues and some bugs can be delegated to team 2, freeing the A Team to concentrate on main development.
I am happy to dedicate my time for free on coding tasks, project management and whatever it takes to get ASP into pole position in the Pro environment. I am sure mKelly and Synth are too: Vern's coding contribution to date demonstrates where he stands. For pole position to happen, we need infrastructure, a communication system to coordinate the effort. MC is already Captain of the ship. By freeing his time away from the minutia, development will quantum leap. In effect the coding team would quadruple.
ASP is great, but by harnessing the available talent here, it can be awesome.
Rhoel