Moonlight|3D 0.5.5 Released

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."

I don't get people sometimes...

[Quasar1999]

Why oh why bring back something form 2 years ago, especially when there is the blender3d project already out there... why not add to blender3d? Why waste resources competing with an opensource project? You have nothing to gain, if you don't like it's functionality, re-write it... don't create a whole new software... that's just re-inventing the wheel (to the next level).

Is this better than Blender?

[g_bit]

If so, how?

If not...why does it exist? Why not just get the Blender sources and add what you want into it?

Re:Is this better than Blender?

[oxygene2k2]

well, in terms of features, Moonlight isn't as complete yet

why does it exist?
- 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

maybe some stuff like choice could be brought in to the discussion as well...

Re:Description?

[Repugnant_Shit]

I agree, and here's some more good names:
Konqueror - those krazy KDE folKs.
Blender - about as descriptive as moonlight.
Mozilla - I don't understand this one at all.

And some closed-source weird names:
Excel - Maybe a spreadsheet has X number of cells?
Visio - almost as weird as Mozilla
Visual Studio...sounds like a paint program.

I think its all about what sounds good. For instance, my name is John, which is not as descriptive as "Overweight geek" but definitely sounds better.

Re:I don't get people sometimes...

[gfxguy]

Because the Moonlight interface is much more intuitive than Blender. Please don't respond with how great Blender is when you understand how to use it, because I wouldn't argue that - but if Moonlight can do modelling and rendering in a way that I find easier (because of my experience with, for example, Maya3D), then I'm all for it.

Re:because...

[Blkdeath]

These are two *very* different approaches to rendering so by no means would I say that Blender and Moonlight are cut from the same cloth.

This same idea seems to be prevalent on the Windows side of 3D rendering. Most of the people I know who work in graphics design will have two, three, or even four different graphics apps for various purposes. A couple 2D graphics programs, a couple 3D modellers, etc..

When asked why (especially considering the cost of a lot of the software involved - ouch!) they respond that different tools are designed for different purposes. I'd think that actual professional graphics artists who want to switch to Linux on the desktop would more appreciate a choice than being told to pigeon-hole themselves into a single tool.

Re:KDE and Gnome all over again

[pizza_milkshake]

to paraphrase the old saying "you can please all the people some of the time or some of the people all the time" -- asking for *the one* (product here) will never work, because some people will be dissatisfied no matter what. and in the OSS world, some people that aren't happy with the current situation take it upon themselves to provide an alternative they do like. asking everyone to like the same thing will never happen. it never has. so, even though it may seem that competition wastes alot of energy, i think it keeps everything fresh. besides, projects that try to do everything turn into ungodly behemoths and then the people that like it quick and simple end up splintering off anyhow. competition is inevitable, so choose sides and help out! :)

Tried Compiling on RH 8

[mrcparker]

I don't have OGL ttf library so I couldn't compile it, so I browsed the sourcecode. It is clean and modular and, unlike most OSS projects out there, written in C++ rather than C. Anyone who has an intrest in OGL coding should definitly check it out.

Re:What. Is. It.

[Osty]

think boycotting Slashdot because they post articles about software without telling you what the software does is a lot more childish than just ignoring such posts and enjoying the stuff you're actually interested in. But hey, that's just me.

First, note that I didn't say to boycott Slashdot. I simply said that a lot of slashbots think, "If you don't like it, shut up and leave," is a good solution to the "problem" of people thinking that the editors should actually do the job of editing story submissions. Second, it's a little difficult to know whether you're interested in reading an article if the Slashdot story description isn't good enough to even let you know what the article is about. Therefore, you have to read the article to figure out whether or not you want to read the article. Sounds kinda stupid, doesn't it? Or, I guess we could just take your approach and ignore any story that isn't sufficiently verbose enough to let us determine whether or not we want to invest time in reading the article. Ignorance is bliss, or so they say.