Please join Second Life to the Blender Development Fund
Journey Bunny
I've meant to ask about this at 3 past Meet the Linden Events and keep forgetting, but I'm downloading an update right now and saw the Donate button, so while it's on my mind...
Open Source projects supporting one another is key to our mutual survival, right? Blender's Founder publicly asked for greater donation support earlier this year. The software that helps SL world-building remain free is receiving donations from less than 0.1 percent of its users.
We need Blender. Blender supports us. Really! The DAE file format--the one and only format for importing mesh into Second Life--was discontinued in 2016, and Blender's Devs decided to carry it forward another 10 years specifically because Second Life, a fellow Open Source projeect, relied on it and needed it.
I know SL is small and throwing money around isn't easy, but the conrporate fund memberships have 6k and 12k tiers that should honestly be a drop even for LL. Heck, it's a non-binding membership and can go "on hold" if the $ becomes an issue. But going through the corporate fund means that LL would get a designated board contact and designated developer liason as well. Linden Lab could actually have a direct line to the communicate about the tools we need.
And, if LL is looking to increase its visibility? Second Life's name beside Epic Games, NVidia, Meta, Adobe, Ubisoft, Wacom... Anyways; it is a small investment in something very core to Second Life's needs, so a little spot in the back of my mind would feel more at ease if LL were to join Blender's fund.
*I should disclaim, I have nothing to do with Blender's operations, development, etc nor with LL operations. I'm just an enthusiastic user of both, requesting an alignment that benefits each.
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marxman1313 Resident
I do agree, but it is worth noting that Blender discontinued .dae support as of 4.3 so it is at the same time more important for Second Life's continued existence to find a way to support a different file type that Blender does support. Unfortunately, this potet raises another two issues that I can think of issue.
Existing .dae file mesh needs to remain stable in SL, and while I'm not the most knowledgeable on either topic to my understanding other, possibly more popular options do not compress items anywhere near as much as .dae which is important when dealing with a user base of such varying skill an experience and in many cases a sheer lack of effort if not also morals.
Bottom line: LL needs to focus on optimizing, then updating SL for the modern day & future before it should put money into supporting, and showing that it supports a program that no longer supports it in its current form. If that process is completed then absolutely, if they can spare 6-12k, they should support it and even put effort into a campaign to get SL users comfortable with Blender.
Lucifera Morningstar
marxman1313 Resident The current plan for SL is to move to the glTF format at some point, which Blender already supports. And 4.3 is when the .DAE format got marked as "legacy," and won't be removed till "either 4.5 LTS, or 5.0" so they do have some time to get this in place.
marxman1313 Resident
Lucifera Morningstar Pardon me then, I misremembered.