Moonlight|3D 0.5.5 Released 180
oxygene2k2 writes "I just finished the release preparations for Moonlight|3D 0.5.5. "Moonlight?" you might think, taking a look at slashdot's nice search function and see that there are two articles from 2000 claiming that it's dead. It's alive again and this release was made to show this. We hope to attract both users and developers with this. Take a look at the Release Announcement for the Mailinglist, our development site and the press releases in english, german,
french,
italian and
spanish."
what the hell is it? (Score:2, Insightful)
What. Is. It. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're joking, right?
How hard is it to say "Moonlight, the window manager", or "Moonlight, the animated series", or "Moonlight, the new journalling file system" in these posts?
I don't even bother clicking these links because the server is going to be buried anyway.
..another waste of posting space
Description? (Score:3, Insightful)
Moonlight 3D. It's obviously related to 3D in some way. Is it a modeller, raytracing engine, game, scientific 3D analysis, 3D star map maybe? Give one sentence at least. Don't make me go read the damn article to figure out if I'm even interested in reading about it.
Now I've gone an had to follow the link to find out it's a modeller/renderer. You couldn't say "Moonlight 3D modeller/renderer released"?
Re:KDE and Gnome all over again (Score:2, Insightful)
newsworthy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:KDE and Gnome all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Description? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or "Mozilla"? Or "350Z"
Don't whine about a lack of descriptive names in OSS. They're everywhere.
Re:I don't get people sometimes... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, though, why not? Yes, we have Blender, but we also have over a dozen window managers. Open source is about choice - if you like something stick with it. People tend to get all up in arms about KDE and Gnome, but it's easy to see that without each other, neither would have pressed to reach the level of functionality that both have attained at this point.
Documentation (Score:5, Insightful)
I have downloaded the source to both Blender and Moonlight. And I'm still banging my head to figure out how to compile and run the darn things. What these projects need is some good documentation and developers jumping on board working out features.
So who's with me? Here I go to join the dev maillist [studentenbude.ath.cx]
Re:What. Is. It. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, '3d' is a buzzword that can be applied to just about any craptacular thing to make it that much l33ter, and there were no replies posted when I began my post.
Anyways, I'm commenting on a general trend of slashdork news posts. A relatively high percentage of posts are like this, talking about something which I'm sure is obvious if you're on the mailing list (In which case you probably heard about it a week ago), but for lack of two extra words of description, means nothing to me.
Half the time, the link is to some cryptic page on Sourceforge where I'd still have to spend 5 minutes poking around to figure out wtf the thing is, and the other half it's a link to some poor unsuspecting server that's going to be crushed within 10 seconds of the post making the front page.
"Moonlight3D 0.3.21.5, a 3D modelling package for Linux" would have been so much clearer, and may have saved who knows how much bandwidth for people who would then say 'hm, not interested in that', and gone about their business rather than clicking the link to find out what the 'story' was about.
Re:Do we really need another 3D suit? (Score:4, Insightful)
The users of Moonlight 3D will decide the answer to that question.
While it is noble to undertake writing a 3D suit, is it prudent to attempt to rewrite something that had already been written by 1999? To work on a project that is leagues behind the professional suits and that for all intents and purposes will most likely never be used in a professional setting?
Who's to say what will become of Moonlight 3d in the future? I'm sure people didn't think much would come of Linus' little side project either but look what happened.
Blender is a scan line renderer w/a real time engine and animation capabilities w/an efficient but arcane UI.
Moonlight 3D is a ray tracer w/a nice interface and decent nurbs, curve functionality
Hopefully these two projects will be able to learn and feed off of one another's progress (esp since they're both GPL) and both projects will be better off in the end!
Whadya mean, "why do we need it??" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Too little too late (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:KDE and Gnome all over again (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows is designed for comformity. And since you appear to be a big fan of conformity and all that it entails (lack of choice, no personal expression allowed.. art == bad etc.) please stay where you are and where you belong.
Re:because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Best of luck to the Moonlight 3d team! Its a spiffy little app with a nice interface and plenty of potential!
As a Blender fan (who has purchased books from NaN in the past and donated some money toward freeing the source) I can only agree.
My hope is that any and all of the free 3d modelling and rendering projects will get together on the data side, either using standards (e.g. renderman format) or agreeing on a common format to use as a lingua franca. Ideally one should be able to do portions of their project in Blender, portions in povray, portions in Moonlight 3D, and so on. If history is any guide, each of these projects will have its strengths and weaknesses, and allowing them all to interact (at least at the data level) smoothly would be a huge boon to all of the projects in question.
Of course, having them all be able to provide 'expert components' for their areas of strength to some kind of a meta (or ueber) 3d authoring suite is probably too much to ask at this stage, but not too much to dream of and perhaps work toward down the road.
Re:I don't get people sometimes... (Score:3, Insightful)
Any actual working implementation of an idea is a lot better than vapourware, and its easier to implement something with tools you already understand how to use.
It's all about choice, really.
Re:What. Is. It. (Score:2, Insightful)
Another solution, put forth by slashbots every time a reader has some issue with the editorial staff (and this issue is with the editors, as while they (claim to) have no control over the poster's submitted story, they should do their editorial duty and clarify these kinds of things when the original submitter does not), is, "Don't read the site," or, "Go read something else if you don't like it." While that is a valid suggestion and possibly even a viable solution, it's rather short-sighted. What in fact that suggestion is doing is filtering out anybody who may like the site but for a few small problems with the editorial staff. Rather than letting those people be heard (and then likely moderated into oblivion, and certainly just plain ignored by the editors), the slashbots advocate, "Our way or the highway." With all the talk of monocultures being bad that's been heard on Slashdot (re: operating systems, medical advances, hardware, music, and so on), it is rather surprising that the same readers would suggest that Slashdot should be its own monoculture.
"Love it or leave it," is a very childish attitude. However, I won't stoop to the same level. Keep advocating that attitude if you like. See what happens to Slashdot if the minority voices decide to leave. Maybe it'll mean less bitching and whining, but in the long run it also means stagnation.
Re:Is this better than Blender? (Score:4, Insightful)
- because some stupid guy did not take the sources of blender in 1996 or so when he started moonlight
- because some other stupid guys liked moonlight and used it
- because it's easier to cope with without learning yet-another-GUI-paradigm
- because it's fun hacking it (blender doesn't even build yet afaik)
- because blender sources weren't free in january, when I started
- and finally, because I guess that the blender sources are much bigger and less understandable than source that was once meant to be open instead of some corporate beast that wasn't supposed to see the light
- and because you are one cool dude
Seriously, let me say, um, 5 things: 1) Thanks a lot for doing this 2) Congratulations on your release 3) Keep it up 4) The glass angel is gorgeous! 5) Please ignore the clueless dickheads who probably never coded anything in their lives and never contributed to any project, yet think they know who should work on which project and why.