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Moonlight|3D 0.5.5 Released 180

Posted by michael from the reports-of-my-demise-etc.-etc. dept.
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."
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Moonlight|3D 0.5.5 Released More

Moonlight|3D 0.5.5 Released

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  • what the hell is it? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It'd be nice if there was so info in the press release about WHAT THE HELL THIS THING IS
  • I might just reboot into linux when I get home and try my gf3 out with this ... looks pretty nifty. Episode 14, here I come...

    Yea, right.
  • We got Blender3d now. Why revive old corpses and divide the community again?
    • We got Blender3d now. Why revive old corpses and divide the community again?

      Yeah! Who needs choice? Screw that shit!

      • Re:KDE and Gnome all over again (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        A choice between a $1500 3D Studio and a Free Blender3D, not between two redundant blenders
      • Yeah! Who needs choice? Screw that shit!

        You misunderstood. Let me elaborate further.

        Since developers allocate time out of their schedules and donate their skills (for free) to a project that powers the engine which essentially drives the open source movement. Blender3d was just freed. It's not a perfect 3d Modeling Suite by any means. It will be months, even years before it can reach the same playing field where discreet and Alias dominate the game.

        Moonlight project was killed. Seems to me we got a negative charge within the OSS community where they try to counter each and every project with a similar initiative, and in turn it just divides the developers into two camps and never gives edge to a single one.

        Suppose someone countered MS Exchange with an Open Source solution. I bet 3 days later there would be 2 different open source projects on freshmeat in a competition. Why? The first one isn't perfect yet!

        To me the logical step would be to perfect something first, rather than have 2 half assed-solutions.

        • Yeah. And it's weird how, like, negative forces in politics cause all these different parties to emerge, dividing politicians into two camps and not giving an edge to either one. Obviously, the next logical step is to elect me as your SUPREME LEADER.

        • But think about how nature works. Sure, different species duplicate effort in coming up with solutions to environmental challenges, but a diverse ecosystem is much more viable long-term, producing more varied species and is more adaptable to change.

          Seems to me we got a negative charge within the OSS community where they try to counter each and every project with a similar initiative, and in turn it just divides the developers into two camps and never gives edge to a single one.

          See, your whole premise seems to be based upon the assumption that there's One Right Way to do things. If there was, yes. It would make more sense to have everybody working on a single project rather than competing ones.
        • These are indivduals doing something they enjoy who share the results of their labour for free and owe you or me nothing. To suggest they do it to 'for a negative charge', as if the intent is to cause damage, is in the poorest possible taste. If I were an OSS developer sentiments such as yours would make me consider taking up another hobby.
      • I, like most people that would like to switch to a Linux desktop
        but can't, don't need choice. We need something that works.

        Dividing attention is not going to help is. However, I do understand
        why it satisfies developers and software architecture techno-freaks.

        If you just want to play, go ahead. If you want total world
        domination, choice just reared its ugly head one more time.
        • Well then please oh please do NOT move to Linux. We like our choice.. stick to what's made for you.

          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.
        • 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! :)

    • because... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Patoski ( 121455 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:41PM (#4455261) Homepage Journal
      Moonlight 3D is a ray tracer and Blender is a scan line renderer. Blender will likely never have/be a raytracer natively (although export scripts to a few ray tracers exist). 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.

      Best of luck to the Moonlight 3d team! Its a spiffy little app with a nice interface and plenty of potential!
      • Yeah, I don't understand. In the end they both produce pretty
        pictures of modelled objects, right?

        • Re:because... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Patoski ( 121455 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @03:56PM (#4455874) Homepage Journal
          Yeah, I don't understand. In the end they both produce pretty
          pictures of modelled objects, right?

          Well, not necessarily (game modelers for instance don't make pretty pictures) but I'll see if I can explain myself a bit better about why these two approaches are so very different (and somewhat developmentally incompatible).

          In the end that is the idea but there are many ways to skin a cat (or even a mesh). ;-) Scanline and Ray tracers are two approaches. Each of these approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. A scan line renderer for example is a fast renderer which generally produces nice looking results (by using shortcuts and certain assumptions). As a result of these shortcuts it is difficult or even impossible to implement some features well such as caustics or radiosity. A raytracer uses a highly accurate (but expensive CPUwise and render time) algorithm that calculates the paths of millions of beams of light and uses these paths to piece together a pretty picture. Using ray tracing you can implement the fancy stuff I mentioned earlier (caustics, radiosity, etc.) more accurately and generally more easily than you can in a scan line renderer. So basically raytracers are very slow but highly accurate but scanline renderers are fast and (at times) don't output highly accurate renders.

          Also some other differences between Blender and Moonlight.

          Moonlight 3D is more geared towards ease of use and to help newbies ease themselves into 3D w/a nice UI and basic modeling funtions.

          Blender is currently geared towards the more experienced 3D artist with an ultra efficient UI (with a steeper learning curve) and a professional workflow that enables you to output tons of work easily (sometimes at the price of user friendliness).

          These are two very different crowds that Moonlight and Blender are catering to. I think there's room enough in Free Software for them both. :-)
          • Blender is currently geared towards the more experienced 3D artist with an ultra efficient UI (with a steeper learning curve) and a professional workflow that enables you to output tons of work easily (sometimes at the price of user friendliness).

            If it's so good, why haven't real professional tools like Maya and Lightwave copied the interface?

      • Re:because... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Blkdeath ( 530393 )
        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:because... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @03:59PM (#4455890)
        Moonlight 3D is a ray tracer and Blender is a scan line renderer. Blender will likely never have/be a raytracer natively (although export scripts to a few ray tracers exist). 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.

        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.
    • Oh please. Blender has its own way of doing things, and I know from experience (at least mine), that it's not always the best or most effective way. I am very happy that the prospect for alternatives exists. I've not looked at M3d yet, but if you look at K3d, or Wings3D, for example, you'll see that they take a decidedly different approach to the workflow, offering different feature sets, and different methodologies. This kind of choice is needed, since there's no way that one app can be all things to all people.

      Blender has potential, but nearly everything about it is non-standard. It certainly incorporates some nice ideas, but in an off-center sort of way. It would be great if the mojo in the modeling community at large could move it more toward the center. Whether or not that happens, choice and diversity of ideas is a good thing.

  • Alive after two years (Score:5, Funny)

    by jbarket ( 530468 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:25PM (#4455109)
    And here in two seconds, the slashdot effect will make sure nobody on the internet can tell the difference.

    Ow, I bruised my bandwidth!

  • What. Is. It. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rschwa ( 89030 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:27PM (#4455128)
    , taking a look at slashdot's nice search function

    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
    • Don't forget about "Moonlight, the flame thrower." (The kids love that one..)

  • Description? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by scott1853 ( 194884 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:27PM (#4455129)
    I saw a post just the other day from somebody complaining about the lack of descriptive names in OSS projects. Here's a good example.

    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:Description? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Azghoul ( 25786 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:35PM (#4455207) Homepage
      Just curious, aside from branding, what the hell does "Excel" have to do with anything?

      Or "Mozilla"? Or "350Z" :-D

      Don't whine about a lack of descriptive names in OSS. They're everywhere.
      • I'm not going to endure a lengthy /. search, but I would think that the term "Mozilla Browser" was probably mentioned somehwere, and not just, "There's a new program called Mozilla, check it out".

    • Re:Description? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Repugnant_Shit ( 263651 )
      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.
      • YES, an intelligent response. Thank you.

        I agree, the names are chosen because they sound good. And MS names are no better in terms of describing what the product is.

        What some people don't seem to understand if that when you decide to publish a piece about a software program that was declared dead 2 years ago, and never made it out of beta, maybe you should mention a little more than just the name of the package.
        • And MS names are no better in terms of describing what the product is.

          I respectfully disagree.

          windows

          • often break
          • need a lot of cleaning
          • are often left unlocked for easy breaking in
          otoh:
          • are clear and transparent
          • can be armored
          • are made from sand. how open can the source be?
          Err.. confusing, this name stuff
      • I agree. Why can't all program names be as descriptive and their uses obvious as those old stalwarts grep, emacs, and vi? (to name but a few)
      • Duh. Giving every software project a name that tells you directly what it does is really kinda lame. It'd be like renaming the Cadillac Escalade the "Cadillac SUV That Is Just Like A Certain Popular GMC SUV Only It Costs More Because It's A Caddie And You Don't Even Get All The Snazzy Features On Other Caddies Such As Northstar."

        What would we call all the office suites?

        The KDE Office Suite, the Gnome Office Suite, the Sun Office suite, with apps in them called KDE Word, Gnome Spreadsheet, and Sun Presentation Software?

        No, we couldn't even do that, because we'd have to name the projects themselves with a name that makes sense, so KDE would be called the "Desktop Environment Project That's Based On A Library That Used To Be Called QT Only We Can't Call It That Anymore Because It's Not Descriptive Enough." Sun would suffer even worse.

        Only Gnome and GTK+ would survive, since they are descriptive acronyms based on (somewhat) descriptive acronyms. We probably wouldn't be able to get away with using them in acronymic form, though. So GTK+ would suddenly become the "Gnu Image Manipulation Program ToolKit Plus"

        God save us with Gnome - we couldn't call it the GNU Network Object Model Environment, because we'd have to unroll the GNU, so it would become the GNU's Not Unix Network OBject Model Environment, only suddenly we have another acronym to unroll, and everything goes to hell and it's like trying to debug C++ programs that use multiple inheritance using gdb.

  • I don't get people sometimes... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Quasar1999 ( 520073 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:27PM (#4455131) Journal
    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).

    • Re:I don't get people sometimes... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TitusC3v5 ( 608284 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:38PM (#4455231) Homepage
      Because Confucius say "Choice is good."

      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.

      • Because Confucius say "Choice is good."
        But it's still nice to see that Blender and Moonlight|3D folks are cooperating - for example, they both [elysiun.com] use [digitalsimplicity.com] the slogan "render your imagination", which is one of the best slogans I've seen on a 3D program, to be honest (thought it looked better on blender site where I first saw it).
    • why not add to blender3d? Why waste resources competing with an opensource project?

      Because while Blender may be well endowed with features, its user interface sucks. Really, really sucks. Moonlight 3D (and I admit, I haven't used it in years) had a much better UI. To rework the blender UI would take a lot of work, almost a complete rewrite. Besides, as others have said, choice is *good*, and since they're both now GPL, they can cross polinate each other to improve both projects.

    • 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.
    • Let me put it in very, very simple terms so that you and whoever moderated your post to interesting can understand it:

      What if you don't like blender? what if you don't like how it's coded (and therefore won't contribute to it)? or how it looks? or even the community or people who created it?

      Bottom line: the reason moonlight exists is the same reason kde or gnome exist, or freeBSD or Linux exist, or PostgreSQL or MySQL exist. And the same reason we exist: diversity, choice, darwinism, alternatives.
    • What if a person has very in depth knowledge of the inner workings of Moonlight|3D, but not Blender3D, and has ideas about computer graphics that s/he wants to implement, and would rather spend the time actually coding the implementation rather than trying to figure out how Blender3D works.

      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.

  • Yum!! (Score:1)

    by PinkX ( 607183 )
    With the recent release of Blender as opensource software, and now that Moonlight 3D is 'coming back to life', the offer of quality 3D modelling software is increasing in an intreasting manner. Not that I'm an expert 3D sculptor, but I've always admired the work created by the people that manages these pieces of software.
  • 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? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by oxygene2k2 ( 615758 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:35PM (#4455206)
      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:Is this better than Blender? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by SurfsUp ( 11523 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @07:22PM (#4457537)
        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

        - 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.
  • Do we really need another 3D suit? For those who don't want to pay for their 3D suit or want to feel good about using an open source 3D suit there's Blender. For those who actually need to model professionally theres Softimage and Maya. 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?
    • I have to agree that in an opensource situation, it's kind of a waste of manpower to have people working on two identical projects.. but the more projects there are, the more competition there is. They've got somebody to be better than, steal ideas for features from, etc. I think the existence of other projects is a good thing.. as long as it actually exists, and isn't just vaporware.
      • Something I learned about manpower:

        Take a highly skilled engineer, an equally skilled architect, and a team of 60 well-trained construction specialists, and you can put together a bridge.

        A million barefoot workers working 24/7 with a basketful of dirt and rocks, and you can manage a dam, perhaps.

        It is better to have a small, highly skilled team that a large lumbering one for many projects.

    • Nothing wrong with my suit (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Nothing wrong with my suit, my tailor made it fit perfectly, even bought the waistcoat to finish it off :)

      ok i gotta go back to my editing suite and get some work done

    • Re:Do we really need another 3D suit? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Patoski ( 121455 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:59PM (#4455392) Homepage Journal
      Do we really need another 3D suit?

      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. :-) I'm not saying this will happen for Moonlight, but anything is possible. Besides, choice is a good thing and to me the different focuses of Blender and Moonlight are signifigant enough to not pull out the "you're reinventing the wheel" card.

      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!

      • Thanks for nicely pointing out the main features of the two programs. And for pointing out that they're BOTH GPL'ed now.

        For those folks that are saying "what! two whole GPL'ed 3D programs for Linux! what's the need?", take a look at the list here [google.com] and then tell me there isn't room for a couple more competing GPL'ed programs.

        Good luck to both the Blender and Moonlight3D guys.
    • It's "suite," asshole. You could at least make sure you got the word right before you use it 6 times.

      No one asked you what was noble and what wasn't. If you know the slightest thing about programming you'd be aware that you don't start writing something beat what's already been made, you start by writing something, and then you add to it, and as your knowledge increases you can take on more and more complex or difficult tasks. At this moment, there is no open source 3D modeller/renderer/kitchen sink which these guys can go to and learn how to do these complex things. The algorithms used by these complicated applications are all but unknown to the community; the proprietary ones certainly aren't published in books, and even if they were it would take a great deal of skill to "get inside" them, figure out how they work, etc.

      We have to start at the beginning.

      Did you use the Gimp three years ago? I tell you it wasn't a "photoshop-alike" then. We have to start somewhere and then move up. There are programs we have in free software that are so advanced, there's no analog for them in closed-source. For example, the RADIANCE [lbl.gov] renderer is the only one that does light accurately, and it has been free for ages and will become open source in December. Aspell [aspell.net] uses a new algorithm that beats every other spell checker. At its inception, would you have said we shouldn't invest this time and effort into another spell checker?

      The problem is that people like you look at open source development like closed source development. As though when a project is formed, some segment of the total number of developers have to be allocated to it. Fortunately, the way it really works is developers work on whatever they are attracted to. Even huge projects like Mozilla have at the core less than 20 developers. I haven't checked, but I would guess that these 3D projects will have 2-4 core developers. Everyone else will contribute from time to time, or possibly even just once. But the people who work on Moonlight are not people who necessarily would have worked on Blender. They are not even necessarily people who would have developed for anything at all.

      What does a professional setting have to do with whether or not something should be developed? Take enlightenment for example. I bet many people said, this is a window manager which will never be used in a professional setting. And yet I know several sysadmins who have used enlightenment as their window manager! It's like science, we don't research the things we think are going to bring about "useful" discoveries, because that's counter-productive and we never know which research will result in useful discoveries. Instead, we just generate all of the software we'd like to generate, and some of it will get used, and some will not. AWK is a good counter example; it was developed for a particular purpose for which it is extremely useful (parsing text files with very uniform structure). And yet, it has fallen by the wayside because Perl can do essentially the same things, but is a more powerful programming language in general.

      To summarize:

      1. Yes, we do need another <insert software-type here>.
      2. No, it doesn't matter what the software is. You think every window manager should be like TWM?
      3. People will develop what they want to develop, regardless of whether or not YOU think it is prudent or a good use of "resources" (ie. people besides you).
      4. Start at the beginning, and work your way up. RMS stated that the GNU system would encompass everything from a shell to a spreadsheet. Linus just wanted a kernel. Which one has been useful the longest? Don't bite off more than you can chew.
      5. Professional != Better (necessarily).


      --
      Daniel

  • newsworthy? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:32PM (#4455180)
    Blender being GPL'd was aboslutely newsworthy. Why is Moonlight's resurrection newsworthy? A program sits around a long time, it gets an update, front page news on slashdot. Aside from the possibility that the author/team has a friend in the slashdot editors, this just doesn't seem to belong on the front page at all. Many, many programs are inactive for a long time, then someone (sometimes the original author) comes along and updates it.
    • Blender being GPL'd was aboslutely newsworthy. Why is Moonlight's resurrection newsworthy? A program sits around a long time, it gets an update, front page news on slashdot.

      OK, I'll bite. Note that Moonlight's focus is on intuitive interface, a important niche to stake out in the OS/3D ecology, don't you think? On the face of it, a little competition on the UI front would not hurt Blender at all. Also, maybe we'll see some useful cross-package code and file standards developed as a result of users using both tools for different strengths, and wanting to port between them. With just one major modeling package, this important area might not get as much attention as it needs.

      Anyway, OS/3D modelling *is* front page news because it strengthens our hand on the 3D game front, one of the few major areas where free software is still weak. But it's coming, it's coming...
  • Did we resurrect this software because it's the only thing bad assed enough to fight Blender and prevent its dark army from destroying the world?

    Will we get to see two chicks do battle with sharp objects?

    No? Yawn.

  • Sheesh (Score:4, Funny)

    by back_pages ( 600753 ) <<back_pages> <at> <cox.net>> on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:40PM (#4455256) Journal
    I have no idea what the article is about...

    I read the comments... everything is either off-topic or refers to the article negatively...

    I'm puzzled. What's up? Could it be that I--!! QUICK! Scroll to the top again! YES! I foolishly turned off my "michael" filter!

    A quick trip to my preferences prevents this mishap in the future. Now.. must turn off third person narrative... ...

  • This is SWEET!!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by cnelzie ( 451984 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:42PM (#4455273) Homepage
    I played about with Moonlight 3D some time ago and found it far easier to use then Blender 3D.

    To me, the user interface was quite simply far more user friendly then Blender is. (Of course, that is a matter of opinion and that is my opinion.)

  • Documentation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Screaming Lunatic ( 526975 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:48PM (#4455316) Homepage
    For some constructive criticism. We can bitch and complain about Blender vs Moonlight and how it's KDE vs. Gnome (pick your favorite religous battle) all over again. The bottom line is that Linux needs an OpenSource 3D modelling package.

    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]

    • Bah, KDE vs. Gnome? That's not a religious battle.

      Vi vs. Emacs, now -that's- a religious battle! All other software-of-choice religious battles pale in comparison.

      [Checks off 'Step One' for his insane plan to solve the world energy crisis by generating a flamewar about flamewars.]

  • I'm not dead yet... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tonysee ( 416247 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:50PM (#4455326)
    Moonlight|3D isn't dead, it just smells funny.

    must.. avoid.. lameness.. filter...

  • romantic walks under the moonlight (Score:3, Funny)

    by master_p ( 608214 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @02:55PM (#4455368)
    Moonlight 3D is a 3D animation program which simulates a romantic walk of a geek(that's you and me) with a beautiful woman under the moonlight.

    It provides:

    1) pond simulation(for breaking the ice commenting on that frog you stepped on)
    2) real star maps(so you can count stars while she fells asleep)
    3) nice seats for sitting romantically holding hands(not to say that you're broke, of course)
    4) no dangers from people with green hair(of course you have not been in the gym lately, due to that school project)

    The 3d suite's previous name was 'geekdream', but the author changed it for political reasons.

  • Description: (Score:2, Informative)

    by Palos ( 527071 )
    from http://ml3d.sourceforge.net/ What is Moonlight|3D? 2002-10-12 Moonlight|3D is a free software modeller and renderer for 3D scenes with an intuitive GUI and powerful editing capabilities. This effort is based on the Moonlight Atelier sources (version 0.5.3) from 1998, which - unfortunately - was the last sourcecode release. Early 1999 the original author released a newer version (0.9.2) which has texture mapping and other important features, but he never released the source (he didn't need to). The development of Moonlight|3D aims for the features of 0.9.2 but also wants to go beyond that: the goal is to have a powerful 3d editing tool with animation capabilities which is still easy to handle for someone new to 3d modelling.

  • I need this (Score:1, Redundant)

    by kenp2002 ( 545495 )
    I simply need a modelling tool that lets me build counter-stike and quake 3 maps that is as easy to use as the old Duke Nukem 3D mapping tool. Why do we need yet another Lightwave/3DSMax/Maya/Bryce/Blender/Easy3D/blah/bl ah God bless the open source comunity to reinvent the wheel... again... Good luck! Now if someone could just make these apps easier to use then I'd care...

  • hmm this tool looks really (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    linux - like.
    honestly - wings3d is far more powerfull as a modeller. the interface of ml3d is worse than blender imho
  • Shame on you guys! You think one tool is all anyone would ever need? Look at mainstream computer graphics market. How many 3D modeling and animation applications are there? ONE?!? I don't THINK so. Last time I checked, there were five or six major animation packages, and about a dozen more minor ones. Cut it down to modeling only, and you've got another half dozen or so. Diversity is what we're all about, whether it's open source or not.
  • that you managed to find *anything* with 'Slashdot's nice search function'.

    That should be a front page story, right there.

  • But at this stage of the game, can it catch up with what is already out there? It showed promise before it dropped off the map so long ago...
  • Another bit to add to the Moonlight confusion is the name of a rendering package called 'Blue Moon Rendering Tools' which is a pixar-type rendering engine that was built by Larry Gritz.

  • checkerboards, curved mirrors (Score:5, Funny)

    by helix_r ( 134185 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @03:23PM (#4455580)

    If I see one more checkboard or curved mirror surface on "art" generated by a raytracing program I _will_ kill someone.

    • You think that just having to see the stuff is bad. I still have nightmares from the renderers/raytracers I've written. For some reason I'm in some post-apocalyptic world with checkerboard as far as the eye can see while being chased by teapots possesed by the devil.
  • Yawn... Another closed source project with a cool name... Who cares.

    What is really sad is that this used to be a GPLed Open Source project.

    I'm a wee bit surprised RMS isn't all over them for continuing to call their project "free software"... (I believe the quote was: "Moonlight|3D is a free software modeller and renderer...")

  • Journalism 101 (Score:3, Informative)

    by jheinen ( 82399 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @04:39PM (#4456271) Homepage
    I am not often critical. Well OK, I am almost always critical. So to criticize this article I will say that the editors need to pick up a basic journalism text. If you did so you would notice that one of the canonical rules of good journalistic prose is to let the reader know what the piece is about in the first sentence. Nowhere in the entire posting does it mention what Moonlight 3D actually IS!!!! Before posting please proof read the content and ask yourself some simple questions; does the article in question clearly state the who, what, where, when, and why of the story? News is meant to inform, not send the reader off on a wild hyperlink-hunt and search engine expedition in order to figure out what the story is about. I read Slashdot because (I hope) it will present information that is of interest to me in a fairly concise, easy to read format, saving me from having to spend a lot of time hunting for the information myself. Please present articles that have the most important point right in the very beginning, and then fill in the expository details later. That way people can get the gist of a story with a quick glance, and those that want more detail can stick around for the juicy details. Pick up any decent newspaper for examples. It's quite simple really.
  • 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.

  • Art of Illusion (Score:4, Informative)

    by dcuny ( 613699 ) on Tuesday October 15, 2002 @05:09PM (#4456522)
    How about Art of Illusion [sourceforge.net]?

    This program never seems to get any publicity, but it's a free, highly functional open source modelling + renderer + animation package. It's got just about all the features you could ask for:

    • Excellent documentation and tutorials
    • Scanline rendering for quick & dirty previews
    • Raytracing for slow and pretty pictures
    • Bones and pose-based animation
    • Inverse kinematics
    • Global illumination
    • User-friendly interface
    • Actively being developed
    • Cool procedural texture editor

    It's written in Java so it performs nicely under Windows, Linux and the Mac. That plus Wings3D [wings3d.com] (a great open source modeller based on Nendo [izware.com] gives you a complete Open Source animation package.

    • How about Art of Illusion [...] It's written in Java so it performs nicely under Windows, Linux and the Mac. That plus Wings3D [...] gives you a complete Open Source animation package.

      I use blender and love it, but you (or someone else) had pointed out Wings3d before as a better modeler that could be used in conjunction with blender, and I had lost the link (and slashdot's search function is next to useless for digging up worthwhile information in older threads).

      Thanks for reposting that info, and may I suggest Wings3D should list their project on freshmeat (it wasn't there, and I couldn't recall the project name. I'm sure it is buried on google somewhere, but after wading through several google pages having searched on 'free 3d modeller linux' I gave up). I have added links to the packages you mention on my website [expressivefreedom.org] (under the Free Tools sidebar) to help out, but getting that project listed on freshmeat would go a much longer way toward getting the word out.

      Thanks for the post, you saved me a long search I'd decided to put off, and deserve every +1 mod point you got.

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