Suggestions for Moho to go OPEN SOURCE. Discuss

General Moho topics.

Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger

Guest
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Jul 11, 2006 2:52 pm

Post by Guest »

Let's see now what AS can become.
Jorgy Has a point in his post.
Your proposals may carry more weight if you weren't hiding behind the word "Guest"...
Grow up Jahnocli, really, no need for that... :?

Nah I haven't seen Synfig yet Patmals, I'll give it a go..[/quote]
myles
Posts: 821
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 3:32 am
Location: Australia, Victoria, Morwell
Contact:

Post by myles »

My personal viewpoint:
Guest wrote:Unfortunately I asked for a discussion on it, not a judgement of whether it was a good idea or not.
Discussion: "examination (of a matter) by arguments for and against; a debate"
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

Just because most of the arguments disagree with you and argue the "cons" of the idea, or point out the flaws in some of the "pros", doesn't make it less of a discussion.
Guest wrote:I'm also aware that it has a very small niche market at the moment and its potential could be far greater.
A potential that will not necessarily be fulfilled by open source, which is part of the discussion.

Are the major successful marketplace positions Moho/Anime Studio is competing with open source?
See http://www.bakhter.com/html/2d/ink&paint_tools.html and/or http://www.bakhter.com/html/2d/animation_tools.html for examples.

Are there open-source 2D vector animation programs that are not wildly successful, and continue to remain in a very limited niche?
Synfig is possibly an example of this?
Guest wrote:Have any one used programs like Blender or GIMP then you should know that this software is extremely powerful and was only achieved through the Opensource community.
I have used the GIMP and Inkscape - they are fine, but many closed-source equivalents are equally fine, and sometimes better. I tried using Blender, but I greatly preferred commercial closed-source 3D software.

The GIMP and Inkscape were modelled at least partly from many existing successful closed-source programs - commercial software for 3D modelling/animation/rendering and image manipulation.
They are not examples of results only achievable through open source.

Moreover, as far as I know, like most successful open-source software the GIMP did not spring from the released source code of a previously commercial program. It grew from people who, in open-source parlance, "had an itch and scratched it". Likewise for Inkscape.
If decent commercial Photoshop or Illustrator equivalents had existed for Linux, and Linux users had been willing to pay for them, neither may have arisen.

Some open-source developers have fully-paid jobs, and open-source development is their hobby, or in some circumstances they are paid, by companies that use the software, to develop it further.
Neither would necessarily be the case for Moho/Anime Studio.

Blender is an unusual example in that it grew from the released code of a failed closed-source commercial project. What's more, if I remember correctly, the Blender-using community actually raised enough money to buy the source-code from the original owner after the project had failed, so it would continue to be developed.

Originally, and in its open-source release, Blender made money directly for its creator.

Consider also that many open-source programs are released only for a single platform, often that of its main developer/s, and often Linux, a world where programmers often dabble. As commercial software, Moho/Anime Studio is maintained on 3 platforms - Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Guest wrote:The developers can go ahead and develop Anime studio, but remember it will be greatly different to what Moho is.
But the point is, Anime Studio is just Moho 5.4 (5.5 ?) with a new name and a new distribution/support system. Moho has not finished or failed, like Blender, nor is it the result of "personal itches that need scratching", like the GIMP or Inkscape.
Guest wrote:Moho won't be around anymore
A change of name does not equal the software ceasing.

As for Red Hat, there are important corporate servers where managers are willing to pay significantly for technical support. What's the Moho equivalent? T-shirts? Printed manuals? Be serious!

I like open-source software. I use open-source software. I have written and released open-source software.

Is it appropriate for Moho/Anime Studio? Personally, I don't think so.

1. Are you willing to do significant programming for a Moho equivalent?
2. Or can you get someone to do it for you?
3. Are you willing to pay significantly for the release of Moho source-code?
4. Are you willing to pay significant money for an annual support contract, rather than for the software itself?

I think these are the criteria for the origin and survival of open-source software.
In the case of the GIMP and Inkscape, the answer to at least one of the first two questions is yes for any particular person. For the continuing development of Blender, the third question was true and the other two became true.
For Red Hat, see question 4.

For Moho/Anime Studio, I'd rather pay for continuing development as it currently stands, and that's why I think it should stay commercial and closed-source.

Regards, Myles.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted."
-- Groucho Marx
Guest
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Jul 11, 2006 2:52 pm

Post by Guest »

Are the major successful marketplace positions Moho/Anime Studio is competing with open source?
See http://www.bakhter.com/html/2d/ink&paint_tools.html and/or http://www.bakhter.com/html/2d/animation_tools.html for examples.
Hmm, congratulations mate, a well researched critique of an idea. But I suppose because your mind is so used to being in a judgemental state, like most people, rather than in the examination of an idea and the design of new ones that arent destructive to the original one, but more or less than reinforces it.
The GIMP and Inkscape were modelled at least partly from many existing successful closed-source programs - commercial software for 3D modelling/animation/rendering and image manipulation.
They are not examples of results only achievable through open source.
I suppose the question you have to ask yourself is what does Moho do for the animation market that gives it VALUE to its consumers? Does it hold any value whatsoever, and if it doesn't, it will have a small market, thus it will sell poorly. These programs have features that were to a degree modelled over their commercial equivalents, but there are many features in them that were designed and implememnted by their contributors because they were of VALUE to the software and are not seen in their commercial equivalents, something ONLY achievable through open source. I consider one is complementitive to the other. On the other hand, lets hope the authors of Moho don't remove scripting/ Lua functionality though. So in that respect, you are right, but you are also wrong.

Anime studio will change the entire structure of how Moho is. You have to remember that E-Frontier is an established company that produce alot of industry software and they know how to make that software valuable for its consumers. For this to happen, the software must change to meet those demands from its consumers within the industry to become a valuble tool. THUS, Anime Studio will eventually evolve into something Moho isn't now. I do forsee it becoming more like Toon Boom, not that its a bad thing, but Toon Boom is more widely used for Animation than any other software in the market, practically all major Hollywood studios use it (that is a known fact), you only need to look at the credits of any motion picture animation or saturday morning cartoon to see its logo or name mentioned. I mean Hollywood studios and the like arent going to stop using Lightwave and Maya just because Blender is out.

Infact Moho is created from alot of opensource programs, plugins, extensions, etc. So in a way it is Semi-Opensource, LOL. Oh well, Lets just hope Synfig will keep that ball rolling, as in life, when something moves out of its place into something else, another thing comes along to take its place.
User avatar
jahnocli
Posts: 3471
Joined: Fri Oct 29, 2004 2:13 pm
Location: UK

Post by jahnocli »

Guest wrote:But I suppose because your mind is so used to being in a judgemental state, like most people, rather than in the examination of an idea and the design of new ones that arent destructive to the original one, but more or less than reinforces it.
I'm not sure which is worse about this sentence -- its arrogance or its confusion.

J
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
User avatar
slowtiger
Posts: 6067
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2006 6:53 pm
Location: Berlin, Germany
Contact:

Post by slowtiger »

guest wrote.
Toon Boom is more widely used for Animation than any other software in the market, practically all major Hollywood studios use it (that is a known fact)
Uhm, cites please?
User avatar
cribble
Posts: 899
Joined: Wed Aug 04, 2004 12:42 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Post by cribble »

My personal opinion, if moho went open source, then you might get other software companies making the exact same program over and over, and possibly making rip off's of anime studio (considering it might be same scripting behind it).

While, on the other hand, someone might find the technology and time to incooperate the system into Flash, or other programs, to make work flow a lot less hassle-hoff. I think people are already doing this, i've seen a few bone systems for flash, a few auto-tweeners aswell. So the knowledge must be out and about somewhere, i bet Moho's bone/timeline system was picked up from another open source program, or possible a script which someone might've been developing.

Otherwise, i can't see this happening and you're all getting worked up over nothing and being stupidly nit-picky with each others posts.
--Scott
cribble.net
User avatar
heyvern
Posts: 7035
Joined: Fri Sep 02, 2005 4:49 am

Post by heyvern »

Quite frankly...

... Myles last post pretty much summed it up. If after reading that you don't understand the process of what makes a "successful" open source application... or why it is done in the first place... what are the benefits... and why Moho doesn't fit...

... then obviously there is not much of a discussion here...

If Myles were on a debate team... I think he would have won.

I knew very little about open source... what he wrote makes it clearer as to why it is done.

In my opinion I still don't think Moho fits the category.

Both Mike and efrontier would lose money... and have more work to do... doesn't make sense when Mike was trying to get out from under all the work... and still maintain control and income from his outstanding application.

-vern
myles
Posts: 821
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 3:32 am
Location: Australia, Victoria, Morwell
Contact:

Post by myles »

slowtiger wrote:Uhm, cites please?
It's a comment partly based on such press releases as http://www.toonboom.com/pdf/pressReleas ... 6-Pegs.pdf

Although Toon Boom (a fine product) is well and widely used and Toon Boom promotional material claims a lot of these companies as clients, it is unlikely to mention that other 2D animation software is equally well used by Hollywood studios (sometimes the same ones), professionals, and amateurs.

For example, very little research is needed to find that Animo was used by Warner Bros for the animated film Osmosis Jones, by Klasky Csupo for The Iron Giant, and by Dreamworks in The Prince of Egypt, all client companies claimed by Toon Boom.
See http://www.animo.com/showcase/default.htm for these examples.

So, I certainly wouldn't accept that it is the major 2D animation software used by Hollywood studios without some more compelling evidence. I'm willing to accept it is certainly a major tool in this area.
I'm also not sure that major Hollywood studios are necessarily the target market/niche that Moho/Anime Studio is aiming at, but I'm not qualified to comment on that.

Curiously enough, getting back to the original topic, Toon Boom went "mainstream" without going open source. :)

I certainly don't think that (without involving a very large sum of money) anyone will convince Lost Marble or E-Frontier to release Moho as open source.

I would be interested in knowing what specific features exist in the GIMP and Inkscape that don't exist in commercial software - I can't think of any off-hand, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

Lastly, I'd like to say that I've already watched Moho evolved through several versions into something it wasn't originally, influenced strongly by the demands of its users (erm, consumers) to become increasingly more valuable to them. Even without knowing about the E-Frontier deal, I expected it to continue evolving to become even more valuable. I still expect Anime Studio will evolve to be a better Moho.

As the E-Frontier deal looks like it will allow Mike to concentrate on development and feature implementation rather than on sales, marketing, and support, I'm all for it.
If E-Frontier can help him with that development, so much the better.

I guess for now Guest and some of us will have to agree to disagree on some things, and if Guest is still with Anime Studio in a few years (I certainly intend to be), we'll have to have another discussion on how it all turned out, and maybe how it compares with Synfig by then. :)

Regards, Myles.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted."
-- Groucho Marx
User avatar
Fazek
Posts: 246
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:37 pm
Location: Hungary
Contact:

Post by Fazek »

I like open source too. There are many things I could change in Moho then. Now I am working on a C language support library for Lua, to handle animated channels - with keyframes and undo/redo. It is working with the standalone Lua console now. I am learning a lot of things about Lua with this program. Moho could permit at least the usage of C libraries, that would be a great advantage without becoming open source.

I have an idea about how to make Moho more user-controlled with an advanced rendering. But now all what I can do is to make a separated software, incompatible with Moho. It's a lot of work and I hope it would be an open source extension of Moho.
- - - Fazek
Skinart
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Sep 09, 2006 1:47 am

Post by Skinart »

I have looked at open source software before, and have yet to find one I would actually use-- with the notable exception of Eclipse, which I believe is open source, but am migrating towards Netbeans, and I never used Eclipse because it was open source. I used the first available IDE I became aware of that I could get. If the first Java IDE I found had happened to be one that cost money, I probably would have paid for it without regret.

My prejudice against open source is the tremendous headache involved. I am not stupid, but my time is worth something to me. Working with open source involves significant overhead in research and experimentation to get the program off the ground. While I have occasionally run into some nightmare installs with closed source software (Steinberg, I'm looking at you. Grrr.) In a nightmare closed source install there is more available support.

Yes, open source software has communities to provide fansupport, but so do closed source programs, and they are of equivalent value. But the support from the actual developer is much more valuable.

Support from a developer in an open source package is nigh to impossible. Supporting software in an open architecture with a bajillion different possible configurations is already a nasty job. One look at Microsoft's ills compared to the (alleged) relative ease Apple has illustrates this point dramatically. But once the user has the ability to alter and add to the code, the problem of maintaining the code becomes impossible.

The reasons are simple:

Not only must a developer contend with their own bugs, but they must contend with the bugs the user has introduced-- and further, must somehow determine which is which. Furthermore, a developer in an open source environment can't rely on code being in any particular location, so writing patchers is suddenly foolhardy and dangerous.

Maintainence of code is already difficult, but under these conditions...

True, one can argue that many pieces of software exist open source in spite of these difficulties, but they do not thrive because of them. The user base that would rather purchase closed source without these headaches rather than a bunch of code they have to shoehorn together is much larger than the base that flocks to 'free software'.

Personally, I find that once the value of time is considered, the price of open source is much higher for the end user than closed source.

And yes, I feel I paid a nontrivial cost working out how to get Eclipse to work.
User avatar
Fazek
Posts: 246
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:37 pm
Location: Hungary
Contact:

Post by Fazek »

In Moho/Anime Studio, my only problem with your ideas is, that AS uses many open source contents. At least the Lua language, the sound loading and the SWF saving are all open source freewares in this software. Open source is working usually with dynamic libraries (DLL under Windows, shared object under Linux etc.). This permits to solve a particular problem and many others can use it in their programs as a "black box" without modifying it.

For me open source means open access to the resources. A closed source program hides many possibilities from the user. Now I am working on a C language library for the standalone Lua interpreter. Currently it supports animated channels with keys, interpolation between the keys and undo/redo support.

Perhaps it is possible to create an advanced rendering engine, fully controlled by Lua. Layerscript is nothing to the possibilities of this. For example you will be able to define your own curve algorythms for the outline of the shape.
Now it is an interesting experiment for me, and I don't know how far it will go. I am really afraid about the future of AS, at least the future of the Linux version.
- - - Fazek
User avatar
7feet
Posts: 840
Joined: Wed Aug 04, 2004 5:45 am
Location: L.I., New Yawk.
Contact:

Post by 7feet »

Huh?
but they must contend with the bugs the user has introduced-
How do you, as a user, introduce bugs? You can finds modes the software wasn't mean't to work in, and make it blow up, but introduce ? As a coding simpleton, I've tried to proof the dumb lil' scripts I've put out there, and when a "feature" shows up I'm not gonna blame the guy at the end.

That does often seem to be (as much as I can get behind the move) where it falls over. Anything by commitee is probably going to suck vast and terrible arse. This one I got behind in large part because it was so clearly one persons vision of what they wanted to be, and flaws and all there was a head behind it. I'd kill to have a full-on marketing arm set up to allow me to let my baby grow, and leave me to make it grow. F-in' cheers

I'm entirely happy to do some stuff for here, but if I thought I could write something so hugely cool, I'd ask for a little too.
User avatar
Rasheed
Posts: 2008
Joined: Tue May 17, 2005 8:30 am
Location: The Netherlands

Post by Rasheed »

I'm not sure why Moho/Anime Studio should become open source software. I know that Moho had become too complex to be developed by one individual and IIRC developer Mike has decided to accept some help with the development.

Most closed source software is made open source because it has become a commodity (e.g. operating systems), because the development by outsiders is better than doing the development in-house or because the developer doesn't want to continue development of the software. I don't see character animation software becoming a commodity any time soon, nor see I the development of animation software coming to a halt (quite the contrary). As long as viewers want character animation to be more entertaining than before, the software is pushed further in development, because the authors (that would be you) want it and the developer is able to deliver.

OTOH, Guest, if you like open source character animation software so much, do a search on SourceForge. At this moment, there are 12 projects present:
  • Cal3D - 3d character animation library - Cal3D is a skeletal based 3d character animation library written in C++ in a platform-/graphic API-independent way.
  • Piavca - Piavca is a character animation engine that supports an extensible method for blending and combining animation and a library of body language based animation methods. It works together with Cal3D and OpenSG
  • AutoManga Cel Animation Engine - AutoManga will provide authoring tools (integrated with the Skencil vector graphics program) and PyGame (SDL) based display tools for parametric character animation, with tools and helpers optimized for "manga-style" characters. Uses 2D SVG "cels".
  • ReplicantBody - ReplicantBody is a character animation toolkit written in C++, built upon Cal3D and OpenSceneGraph.
  • ANIM Animation Pipeline for Maya - Public character/animation pipeline tools for Autodesk's Maya.
  • Character Animation Viewer for Everyone - CAVE provides an (n)curses interface for viewing text-based character animations. It includes lots of interactive commands and features.
  • StickBuilder - Character animation tool for 2D or mobile games.
  • Panda Puppet DPS - Panda Puppet Digital Puppetry System is a Windows-based digital puppetry interface for creating real-time 3D character animation.
  • Mustang DirectX Game Engine - MUSTANG: A Windows C++ DirectX Game Engine - DirectX geometry representation with optimized rendering - dynamic motion physics - animated characters and solid objects - C++ object oriented environment - advanced character animation and collision geo
  • Cal3D loader library - A configuration scheme and library to load cal3d (character animation library) files.
  • White Rabbit - White Rabbit is an avatar system that is comparable to MS Agent. It relies on the cal3d character animation library and OpenGL. This project includes the avatar and a design studio to create characters. It is all written C++ under Linux.
As far as I can see, there isn't really a character animation software project that qualifies as an out-of-the-box solution, like Toon Boom Studio or Moho/Anime Studio Pro.

Why not? Well, it seems providing character animation library solutions is enough, so others can use that in other open source projects, which are not necessarily character animation authoring software projects, but rather projects in which character animation is a part of the user experience (e.g. games).

And Blender, why isn't Blender listed here? Well, Blender is animation software. You can do character animation with Blender, but it is not particularly geared towards character animation. Therefore, Blender is not specialized character animation software for the entertainment industry.

Those are my 2 cents on this subject.
Skinart
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Sep 09, 2006 1:47 am

Post by Skinart »

7feet wrote:Huh?
but they must contend with the bugs the user has introduced-
How do you, as a user, introduce bugs? You can finds modes the software wasn't mean't to work in, and make it blow up, but introduce ? As a coding simpleton, I've tried to proof the dumb lil' scripts I've put out there, and when a "feature" shows up I'm not gonna blame the guy at the end.
When something is open source the end user has the ability to modify pre-existing code or write code that modifies pre-existing code, this can and will introduce new bugs. If the program worked before the user's code was added, but breaks afterward you have several possibilities:

1. The user has exposed a flaw/bug in your code.
2. The user has written flawed/buggy code.
3. The user is attempting to do something the code wasn't meant to do--a variant of option 2.
3. The user has exposed a bug in another piece of code written by yet another party.

It could even be some unholy alliance of all 3.

Thus an end-user introduces bugs--no bug without their code, bug with their code. A nightmare for a developer to maintain as they have to determine which of the above scenarios is the case-- and then try to fix it...

Maintaining your own code can be a nasty beast, even if you have a consistent style and are really dedicated to extensive documentation of your code-- but the world is full of amateurs and hobbyists without such discipline who just like to tinker around and get the code written.
larpon
Posts: 32
Joined: Sat Jun 10, 2006 9:17 pm

Re: Suggestions for Moho to go OPEN SOURCE. Discuss

Post by larpon »

Guest wrote:Moho should go open source if the creators want it to go mainstream. I mean sure they wouldn't get paid for selling the software anymore, but if they supervised its evolution into later versions (like Ton Rosendaal does for Blender, it's original creator) from not just the Moho community but the Entire Open Source community too it could become something greater than our expectations. Better than Toonz Bravo, Mirage Studio, Toon Boom or Flash! Who Knows!!!!!!!! :)

I only look at Blender, Inkscape and GIMP as examples and see how far they have come, they pretty much match and in some cases exceed full price retail software. I would be interested in what people have to say on this matter...
Give this guy a break, Guest or not...

The first of you that posted can't seem to understand that you can actually earn money and still make your source code open to the public. Well it is possible, you know...

An app like Moho/AS could indeed earn money on support.. and could need a hand with the GUI, it's not intuitive in any way and you can't rely on your standard hotkey knowledge.. if Moho was open sourced.. some guy would definately improve this.. this is just one of many features that would improve moho/AS IMHO...

Besides that everything isn't about money these days, but also about helping out others and give other ideas for their work, innovation spawns the best programs, you get more innovation into your project if you open source it.. you've got loads of other programmers that's interested in improving your work, introducing new bugs or not.. you'll get free ideas and eventually a better program.

The latest and most wisely commercial->open source move I've seen is xara extreme.. and they still charge money for their windows version, making it free for linux and mac users.. this is just another buisness model...

Far from all (if any at all?) people in the open source community are hippies that just want free software... Most of us just want quality software free or not... I didn't think Windows was quality software.. Mac was too expensive, So I moved to linux.. Been happy ever since.. not being a hippie, not just a glutton for free software, I just wanted something better. Besides that all the tousands of free libs and helpful source code makes it easier for any programmer to write new programs, it also gives anyone the freedom to implement new features in existing apps. Mostly to the better.

And we still want to know how our kernel work, still want to be able to fix anoying things in our software.. we can't do that unless it's free to look at...
Look at how enormous KDE and GNOME has become.. KDE is about to overhaul MacOSX in a not so distant future...

Point is... open source can actually be good.. not bad..

My 2 cents
Post Reply