Silo development update (bad news for fans, I'm afraid)
mod
Bit of a sensationalist headline, but not as bad as cgdig's 'Silo almost dead'.
Here's what the developers posted:
Personally I feel that's a real shame, as Silo has a fantastic workflow. It saddens me that the big guys still haven't adopted half the things that make Silo great, and it saddens me possibly even more that upcoming underdogs (modo, as an example) don't do so either, making switching to them seem fairly pointless.
What am I talking about? Well, the ease with which you can set new hotkeys, the ability to entirely change the viewport-navigation to more closely resemble that of another program, or to make something entirely different. Sticky keys, the context-based filosophy that different tools can share the same shortcut when appropriate, component-highlighting and multi-mode selection that actually works
Ofcourse, we shouldn't say Silo is 'dead'. It's still alive, and is already a capable modeler in its own right. Sadly though, if you do most of your work in other software, integrating Silo into the pipeline isn't easy. That's largely the fault of said other software, sure, but fact remains that I haven't seen fit to use Silo in a while. If I had to do something organic, I know I would use Silo for it, though.
Here's what the developers posted:
Hey guys,
Hmm, looks like some communication from me is in order again, sorry if some of you have felt we've been out of touch by delegating our communication duties to David. I think probably the main point I should make to those of you who are interested is that Silo is very much alive, though our communication and development patterns are different than they were a few years ago, and we should probably realign expectations for forum users now that our patterns are decidedly different.
In the past we've aimed for continual Silo development dialog with users, which had its benefits and drawbacks to us as developers, and sometimes we've been good at keeping that up and sometimes we've been bad at it. It can be a lot of work to pacify the vocal minority of Silo users who get worked up about certain things and start worrying that the company doesn't value its users or is dying (neither is true, we love all our users and the company is doing great :]). There have also been both benefits and drawbacks to having everyone know what was coming in the next update to Silo. Now instead of saying "ok, we're going to be really good at posting development updates every week", we'll say instead that sometimes we probably will and sometimes we probably won't.
As a company, Nevercenter continues to grow and develop into the boutique software company we dreamed of from the beginning - a place where we can follow our many interests and allow all of our projects to cross-pollinate and make each other stronger. (For example, we're developing a game engine which relates heavily to Silo and has helped us understand what some of you game artists have been saying all along :]). As we embrace this approach, it means that we no longer devote all our time and energy to the development of Silo -- and we feel like Silo has reached a point of maturity where it doesn't need that. We still have a plan for Silo, and it is still under active development, but you'll probably see that development happen in shorter bursts at key times.
So if you enjoy using Silo, use it and discuss techniques and make suggestions to us and we'll be watching and contributing where we can. There will likely be times when we're very actively involved and releasing quick updates, and times when we're not. Promised updates will come out. Sometimes we'll be letting on what we're working on and sometimes we won't until we're ready to release it. We do read your suggestions and comments, especially the bug reports.
As for me, I'm quite literally off to go do some modeling with Silo, I hope you'll do the same!
Jamchild
Personally I feel that's a real shame, as Silo has a fantastic workflow. It saddens me that the big guys still haven't adopted half the things that make Silo great, and it saddens me possibly even more that upcoming underdogs (modo, as an example) don't do so either, making switching to them seem fairly pointless.
What am I talking about? Well, the ease with which you can set new hotkeys, the ability to entirely change the viewport-navigation to more closely resemble that of another program, or to make something entirely different. Sticky keys, the context-based filosophy that different tools can share the same shortcut when appropriate, component-highlighting and multi-mode selection that actually works
Ofcourse, we shouldn't say Silo is 'dead'. It's still alive, and is already a capable modeler in its own right. Sadly though, if you do most of your work in other software, integrating Silo into the pipeline isn't easy. That's largely the fault of said other software, sure, but fact remains that I haven't seen fit to use Silo in a while. If I had to do something organic, I know I would use Silo for it, though.
Replies
While everyone on the "outside" always thinks that user input is great, and in general it is useful, the sad fact is (as the Silo guys said) there's a vocal minority who always push pretty much every little idea they think is great out to the developers, and it can become very hard, tedious and time-consuming to sort out the good from the bad, and still manage to please everyone.
Even if you implement a feature that people request, chances are there will be a percentage of users who think it's implemented "wrongly" or think there is a better way to do things. Even if they're right, this process of re-evaluating and implementing features is just a massive time sink, and in the long run it's often better just implementing high-end stuff on your own and listening to the general drift of the feedback rather than reading every single post from every single user.
It's pretty much a reality of development that a lot of people don't consider.
I don't run into them too often on my computer, but I've had horrid stability issues on other ones, and I'd hate to discredit people simply because I don't get these bugs on my machine. This doesn't have anything to do with communication, clearly, so I was referring to the comments about Silo being 'mature', which is possible a tad too optimisticly spoken.
It's one thing to 'implement high-end stuff on your own', but this post seems to be much more about slowing down the already slow development.
I'm not very personally invested anymore, so I don't really connect with that vocal group of angry users, but I do find this sad news.
His note about 'understanding game artists now' supports your theory of the engine benefitting Silo, but then that has yet to be proven. As it stands, you still need Max if you want to edit the smoothing on your model, for instance.
Ged: angle snapping is something that was being shown off a few months back. They proposed a few different ways they could implement it, but then thing slowed down. A few more things that are promised to be in the net update: collada support, stability/speed-improvements, and they've made it clear that they've heard the pleas for scripting, and are taking it seriously.
wow didnt realise it had been a year thats not good and stuff like the angle snapping should have been sorted out in a 1.0 release of a 3d app I mean really what software doesnt have some sort of angle snapping these days? As an old user of max and c4d and new user of silo I have to agree silo is not done and has plenty of room for improvement, stability issues are a huge problem, surely they cant ignore that kind of stuff.
It's an extremely good modeler -- by far the fastest for me, but it's buggy and doesn't do well on complicated objects (say I do a moderately complex prop with 20/30 HP pieces the scene editor becomes useless as you can't organize it by name etc). The bugs around symmetry/undo/UVing are a right pain. Although you do get a 6th sense about when they're impending, even the person with the itchiest incremental save finger is going to have their flow broken. It's much faster and way more fun to model in Silo than it is in Max and Maya, but if they're not going to do bug fixes it's going to get unuseable soon (it already saves as .pov by default in Vista, a file format that you can't open
It's good that they're honest that Silo is completely back burner. Now I know to not recommend the product to anyone, and that I have to put the effort into scripting the hotkeys I'll need to make modeling on the next software less painful
(edit @Ged) They can, it's not their company's focus now. They'll likely need them for their game, but just don't expect them to be going into Silo to make Silo a better modeler (expect them to go in to make their project of the moment better). Look at Silo as a dead product and everything else they put on from now is gravy
They were talking about moving the rotation snap to an update after 2.2, so as to be able to get out the bugfixes that are so badly needed in a more timely manner. Now we're so many months later, and those haven't materialised. You can't blame anyone for reading this announcement as being less-than-stellar news.
I'm sure they'll add things in when they need them for their game, but given the amount of time in between updates (and how unstable the product is for some people) they can't be taking Silo very seriously anymore.
That's exactly what I took from it. I think they are possibly eyeing up some the Milkshake features and will provide a way of getting Silo built assets directly into their possible engine.
I think its a smart move, design by committee, over the internet, with mostly anonymous users can get pretty nuts. Especially when you have the wrong kind of people injecting their demands/ideas.
I first bought Silo 1x purely on the strength of the re-topo and sculpt tools that were shown in the vids for 2x, because at the time the tools were relatively revolutionary for the price point (at least i didn't see anything that offered re-topo around, apart from a few topo gun beta vids)
In the end, i got what was promised...my only wish is that they make a x64 bit version so i can throw more polys at it.
The sad fact, to me at least, is that silo now offers nothing that other applications don't have as a standard feature...they have lost their selling power to a large degree and i do not feel that i can recommend the program to anyone now.
This type of thing bums me out a little and its just another reason for me to stick to Blender :P
People are either really gunning for them to fail and trying to blow this out of proportion or we've got some real drama queens talking out of their asses just because they like the attention.
The announcement doesn't change the fact that Silo continues to be the best modeling option I have. Until I see another app that supports the crazy-assed tweak-centric workflow I have I'm sticking with it. The only one that could come close is blender 2.5, and even then, I doubt that adding key and mouse customization will be enough.
I've customized the shit out of my mouse config in silo so that I can use my mouse to do edge sliding, normal move/scale and other tweak-related functions almost exactly the way I use the tweak tool, right down to being able to toggle them using sticky modifier keys and taking advantage of the highliting pre-selection, which lets me just click/drag on shit and let it go when I'm done. No other app I use allows me to work this way. It goes way beyond 'standards' for me. Fuck standards. They hold me back. I want to make my own workflow and Silo delivers on that end.
Ultimately all they really did was tell the bitchy users on their forum to either be happy with what they have or move on if you don't like their pace of development. Essentially they are making it as easy as possible for those people to move on and hopefully find another product bitch about. =]
Nowhere did they say they were dumping the product though.
i have tried hexagon, silo and modo... and i ended using modo since first version. Being a modeller, silo for me was not enough (bad perfomance in viewports and without the tools i need).
Let's see what happens, time to time.
Im sure they are working their asses off but the updates that have been promised have not arrived in a timely manner and it has been quite a while since the last one was released.
One would think that the main application of Nevercenter would be the main priority and making the loyal user-base mad isn't the best way too achieve any sort of future.
The same sort of thing is happening to Hexagon right now...Since Daz bought the application from Eovia a few years back there have been 2 or 3 token updates that added more bugs than they fixed and slowly but surely people are moving onto other, better supported, applications.
I really love Silo but word of mouth is a very powerful thing, and one that is hard to turn back if it goes stale and declaring an application mature publicly isn't enough to pacify the vocal user-base who feel that the application is now being ignored and who are waiting on bug fixes etc.
i hope that Jam and Feed realise this and at least fix the most serious bugs before they continue to work on other stuff.
I really do hope that the other projects turn out well for them, just not at the expense of Silo :S
Well that's true, and I'm sure they are going to update when they can, but you have to admit it's been awhile since the last update. I'm lucky that none of the problems have been show stopping for me (annoying yes, unworkable no).
I'm honestly surprised to find that I care, not really a normal reaction to an app like this for me. I've already got way more than my money's worth out of it, so I'm in no way worked up about that. I guess it's just that I'm really impressed with how Silo is put together and had hoped they'd be putting the last tweaks to it soon -- rather than leaving the timeline ambiguous.
I'm not looking for lots of new functions but...it'd be nice if my UV's didn't explode when I hit undo. I'm just looking for bug fixes right now frankly.
Also that weird issue where some verts become "corrupted" somehow and shoot off a mile away when you subdivide is very annoying.
I look forward to seeing what they come up with on this game engine. Sounds intriguing.
Still using Silo after all this time, since 1.4. Not the most stable of apps, but I'm the most productive in it (granted, all I do is 3D blockouts for paintings). It's paid for itself many times over.
The game engine tidbit has me hopeful. After working on that, it means that when they do return to furthering Silo as a modeler, development will be done with all those things in mind. Bugs and crashes first though, seriously. If they have any bugfixes done so far they should just release an update now, as-is, if it's stable at all; the way they haven't, makes me think they might be wanting to rewrite most of it from the concept up.
♥ Silo, busted as it is. Doesn't mean they should never update it, though.
edit: by the way, does anyone else have a broken vertex merge tool? I have to weld two verts at a time manually; vertex tolerance for welding groups of verts has not been working for me for quite some time. Sometimes I load the model up in another app just to do that one thing, which is pretty sad...
After selecting the group of verts you want to merge, deselect one of them and then weld.
"
You have been banned for the following reason:
you know why"
Yeah I think I know why, cause the truth hurts your wallet.
I wanted to make another account to Yell a bit, but that would lead nowhere. Anyway i find this attitude completly wrong, you can't expect people to say nice thing when updates are promised for so long and someone come to say a nice "**** you" after grabing your money.
The least they could do is let people express their anger, but no they go the ban road, I doubt people will react better after that...
Sorry fellow polycounter, the rage is here. I will stop now