TG3 Library question re organisation

[Oshyan]

I see you wanted a reply to this renewed discussion, so I'll tell you what I can. The Library was indeed Jo's initiative. He is still working part-time with Planetside so there is the possibility he could continue his work on it in the future. But there will be no significant changes for it in TG4, at least not in the initial 4.0 release.

I am hopeful we can make it more useful with time and that people will be encouraged to use it, but I must say it is hard to say whether it's a chicken or egg issue, i.e. whether the feature itself is just not as appealing to people as we hoped, or whether it's just too limited to be appealing *right now* but could be made more appealing. And if it is just too limited, how much work and how many additional features would be needed to make it a much better choice for people to organize their assets? Plenty of 3D apps don't have such systems, so it's not a given that they are included. That being said we have the beginnings of a decent system now so I'd like to see us try to improve it rather than abandon it. We'll be able to consider that kind of focus after the initial 4.0 release.

- Oshyan

[AP]

I seem to recall MojoWorld's method of a library to be rather interesting but that was some time back so maybe my thoughts might be different now. I think perhaps it was more of a wizard then anything else but it was very neat.

[Oshyan]

I do recall the wizard-esque thing they had. I don't think that's something we're likely to add soon, and in general they've fallen well out of fashion these days (though they were sort of up-and-coming in the early 2000s when Mojo was in its heyday).

- Oshyan

[AP]

Just more of a passing thought and come to think of it some more I do not recall seeing wizards in any recent programs over the years.

[reck]

Thanks for the update Oshyan,

In terms of whether it's worth the effort or not I think if it was further developed and became better than what people are currently doing with their asset management then why wouldn't people use it? The flip side of the coin is what do you do with it if you decide not to develop it further? You have the framework of a feature that was never developed and is not used (very much), so then what's the point?

Although not many other 3D applications use an asset manager I think it could be more beneficial to Terragen as I think asset reuse is a lot higher in Terragen than in general purpose 3D.

When I use Blender for instance I tend to be creating new objects and scenes for the most part rather than loading existing assets, but in Terragen projects most of the time I'm loading in existing assets as I want trees, grass, weeds etc and a lot of the time it's lots of different assets (multiple grass etc).

[Oshyan]

That's good feedback on the potential value of the feature. And indeed when we talk about the future of the Library we are most often thinking of its use in the way you describe. So hopefully we can develop along those lines in time.

- Oshyan