Need advice about my modeling program
polycounter lvl 10
Hey guys. So I'm been developing my own 3D editor program and I'm really torn about who my potential customers are going to be after my next release.
Essentially, my program has the ability to do basic modeling, but also has a built-in ability for power-users to directly edit shader code. For the mass majority that don't know how to do that, It'll also include a solid number of built-in already made shaders that can be used.
My concern is, if you saw a potential new modeling program that you were about to try out, and you saw a screenshot featuring a code-editor window, even if the other screenshots showed basic modeling usage, would that code editor scare you away from trying the program? In other words, do you think some people may get mislead into thinking "this program requires me to know code, it's way too advanced for me" and then move on? If this is the case, I'd rather not even advertise that feature at all, for fear of losing out on potential interested people.
what are your thoughts:
screenshots in question:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bg-4hP1CQAAS_xM.jpg (basic modeling)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Be8pR2LCYAEkOHC.jpg (code editor)
Essentially, my program has the ability to do basic modeling, but also has a built-in ability for power-users to directly edit shader code. For the mass majority that don't know how to do that, It'll also include a solid number of built-in already made shaders that can be used.
My concern is, if you saw a potential new modeling program that you were about to try out, and you saw a screenshot featuring a code-editor window, even if the other screenshots showed basic modeling usage, would that code editor scare you away from trying the program? In other words, do you think some people may get mislead into thinking "this program requires me to know code, it's way too advanced for me" and then move on? If this is the case, I'd rather not even advertise that feature at all, for fear of losing out on potential interested people.
what are your thoughts:
screenshots in question:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bg-4hP1CQAAS_xM.jpg (basic modeling)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Be8pR2LCYAEkOHC.jpg (code editor)
Replies
I would ask myself:
what does your program do that other programs aren't already doing for me?
What is the power in combining editable shader code with modeling tools?
Apart from being on mobile (which isn't all that as impressive these days), it's designed to be easier to use than most tools, and it has features that make game development (especially on mobile) easier such has the shader editor and live cubemap generator (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BialcFRCQAAX2W4.jpg), multipass pipeline editor with wysiwyg graph of the shader stages), etc etc. Most of that stuff will all be new features of the currently-unreleased version.
This is definitely a power-user feature. The (hopeful) idea is that saavy uses will start building a wealth of shaders for the app and share them. The shader effects are like little black boxes. They are editable sure, but they can be written once by someone and then used over and over again by a community of others. They are saved with the scene documents and cns also be copy-pasted between scenes. Their inputs such as "incidence of refraction" can be exposed and keyed in directly by other users of the shader without having to look at or edit any of the code as well. So hopefully people use this to make lots of shaders for verto akin to the same way people make plug-ins for Blender.
Edit: blender is starting to get more widespread use, and has both the opportunity for plugins in python (which can be distributed with the official releases, if they're deemed worthy), and c patches. It's users would welcome a nice shader editor, and any realtime viewing improvements.
Also, Polycount already kind of collaborated on improving a modeling program: NVIL, formerly known as Voidworld, started out asking for advice on Polycount, and was overhauled quite extensively to accomodate our requests.