United3dArtists Archive

This is a heartfelt plea to Simon (if you are reading here).

Is it possible to let us know if there is likely to be any update to Dribble, even if it is just one last version that addresses any existing issues? Similarly, will there be any updates to match those in 3Delight?

If there is no more then so be it. I would just like to know...

Regardless I would like to thank you for what you brought us while tS was still in development.

I think I hit every problem in the first two days using it, TBH I was ready to offer it up as a prize or something exploding cars and other weirdness, but I was busy and the attention span of a fruit fly at the time so I left it until I could give it some time
I guess my biggest grumble is render times, compared with the other renderers, but I'm starting to get nicer stuff and an update would be great, I guess a big help would be if the issues and fixes where over here, most of the problems I had where old news over on the ts forum, but quite often tucked away inside threads (thanks to everyone that pointed me in the right direction)

It might be a good idea to have a dribble bugs thread. I have a few that I know, but I was hoping they would be fixed by now. Give it another week or so and then maybe it will be a good idea to post issues and workarounds etc in a special thread. I'm still working on a few tutorials I started ages ago, but they were for an older version of dribble that had less bugs.

Dribble can also not seem fast compared with other renderers, but it's main strength is the lack of overhead for quality settings like high aa and dof, that often kill raytrace renderers.

To be honest, I use it for fur and displacement. It has reasonably good SSS as well but I do have Vray which (with enough tweaking) does nice SSS, albeit not up to commercial quality.

Is Simon a member here?
We should find him and ask him if he could give us any updates he might have.
He promised us that awhile ago but did not deliver.

This is on my list of things to do.

Edit:
He IS a member now!!...

Great "little" news Steinie. I also wait for an update or at least a bugfix.

dribble is the plugin with the most potential in my eyes. The only reason that i don't use it is the list of bug's. For tS6.6 it has exactly the things that i miss. Pretty cool Motion Blur, HDRI, GI, Fur (ok, would be cool if it has physical properties but is ok), Displacement etc.

I had so many ideas for cool animations in mind for what i would need dribble's features but with all these bugs at the moment it is not really useable.

And for simon: "I WOULD PAY AGAIN FOR A BUGFREE VERSION"

Hi guys,

Mick alerted me to this thread, so I signed up last night. Now that I'm approved, I can respond

So, some straight shooting. Aside from you guys, I have very little motivation to work on dribble; I rarely use trueSpace for my projects, and I'm not even using 3D stuff right now. When I do, it's all real-time stuff, not offline rendering. And considering I'm the primary caregiver for our kids while my wonderful wife works so hard at school and work, I only get chance to sit down and focus on anything after 10pm, by which time I'm only usually in the mood for a beer and some videogames.

I don't see myself working on dribble in the next few weeks at least. However, I'm the kind of person that works in cycles - I might not be into it at the moment, but I will be sooner or later. There are plenty of things left to work in with dribble that can hold my interest.

I know this isn't what anyone wanted to hear, but I don't want to string anyone along either. (At this point I should emphasize that whenever I've said in the past that I'm working on X for dribble, it's not been a lie or exaggeration! For example the darktree stuff, there is a dribble shader for it already it just doesn't hook up to anything)

So, dribble's not an orphaned project, I'm just up on child welfare charges. To make a start, later today I'll release the source code for the custom 3Delight shaders dribble uses. This should minimize the amount of frustration when 3Delight releases a new version and makes the compiled shaders break, and allow for any tweaking you may desire.

Oh, and a dedicate dribble bug thread? SUPER USEFUL. (I know I'm English but there was no sarcasm there, honest)

I understand Simon, I'll wait anxious to a new version...

Cya

Here you go Simon "Dribble Bugs"
It is located under the "Bugs and Workarounds" Category.

viewforum.php?f=46"

All Dribble owners please post your bugs there for Simon's use.

My personal expectations are that we can use Dribble for a few more years and that it keeps updated to the newest
3 Delight version... I dont expect big features implemented.... but thats just my view... it would be cool to keep going for some time...

So, dribble's not an orphaned project, I'm just up on child welfare charges. To make a start, later today I'll release the source code for the custom 3Delight shaders dribble uses. This should minimize the amount of frustration when 3Delight releases a new version and makes the compiled shaders break, and allow for any tweaking you may desire.

That's excellent, thanks.

SiW wrote:later today I'll release the source code for the custom 3Delight shaders dribble uses.

I changed my mind. Screw you guys, I'm releasing the whole thing.

Damn, wich I could code. Still, what a bonus for those that can.

Cheers Simon, you are a star...

I would also in this thread say a big THANK YOU simon. It is really a great present that you give to the comunity.

Now, a few day's are gone and the waves of excitement are lower. I, as a software developer himself had a look in the source code. It seem's to be written very well and also good commented. I'm thinking a bit around the last few day's and this is what i wan't to tell the comunity:

The idea of dribble - "converting a scene from tS into Renderman complient" - seems to be a very strange and hard nut. I have a bit of fear that the comunity would be unable to find anybody who can continue the development on this great piece of software. Maybe i'm to fast in thinking and also a bit to negative in mind.

I write software since nearly 15 years now and the 3D thing is (especialy plugins) very new for me. As a "starter" of developing plugins for tS6.6 i had problems to find anybody with experience. For now i found nobody with more experience that i collected by myself in the last month's. And the source of dribble is a huge and complicated thing, especially all the Shader stuff.

I have no idea if the development can go forward in this "opensource" way and with this step you (simon) absolutly say to us "i am finished with that". Don't missunderstand me. If you finished with that it is ok and, again, a great gift from you to give the source for free.

But i would be very sad if this is "the end" for this realy good piece of software. It was (and is) in my eye's the last bit of hope for tS. In other words: i have all what i need for modeling but for rendering i have to use what we have (in my case lightworks) - there will never come new stuff, except there was/is dribble - and i had the hope that this could be the future. Now this future looks darker then yesterday as i had the still hope of a update/upgrade/new version.

Thinking this forward i come to the conclusion to ask 2 things here to the comunity and to you with a bit in mind:

1. Who believes that he is able to develop dribble for the future?
2. If we found nobody for 1. what should/can the comunity do to bring you on a point that you say "ok, i do it" (we could collect money or cookies )

In other words - what ever happens for the future - please don't let dribble die. Thanks DesignDevil

You know, I noticed that Daz Studio 3 also has a 3Delight plugin.
For those that use that, I wonder if that couldn't be an alternative.

I think many of the bugs (but I'm not sure) could be fixed by updating the truespace renderman shaders, and perhaps some of the parameters in the rib file. Renderman isn't really that hard to learn, but I am just starting.

I don't think this code will be of great benefit in the short term, but I will definitely have a look at it tin the future, especially the renderman aspects.

Daz studio does have decent 3delight implementation, but it has the major downside that you have to buy daz advanced and/ or a boatload of plug-ins to make it up to dribble standard. And you also have to use daz studio, which I think is very clunky. If I had to use any of Daz's products to render with, it would be the one, but thankfully I don't........

Benji wrote:I think many of the bugs (but I'm not sure) could be fixed by updating the truespace renderman shaders, and perhaps some of the parameters in the rib file. Renderman isn't really that hard to learn, but I am just starting.

I don't think this code will be of great benefit in the short term, but I will definitely have a look at it tin the future, especially the renderman aspects.

Daz studio does have decent 3delight implementation, but it has the major downside that you have to buy daz advanced and/ or a boatload of plug-ins to make it up to dribble standard. And you also have to use daz studio, which I think is very clunky. If I had to use any of Daz's products to render with, it would be the one, but thankfully I don't........

I don't have an opinion about clunkiness yet, but it does not seem that the 3Delight plugins for DS
need to have the advanced version. The renderizer plugin doesn't even require Daz Studio 3;
it can work with DS 2.3.3. something....

I wonder if it would be possible to just export your whole scene to DS3....

The render Throttle plugin which is cheaper, does require DS3, but not the advanced
version. Looks like both can be used with the free version of DS3.

Benji wrote: And you also have to use daz studio, which I think is very clunky. If I had to use any of Daz's products to render with, it would be the one, but thankfully I don't........

The idea behind Daz studio is to be a rival product to Poser and not a full production suite.
What it does it does very well . but it doesnt do everything.....
I dont even render with daz studio I export the animations from it.
and that works better then the Truespace Collada....
I wish Dribble can be kept going...

The renderizer plugin doesn't even require Daz Studio 3;
it can work with DS 2.3.3. something....

Render throttle gives you access to the shading rate parameter, something we have already. The Daz version of 3delight is stuck on 0.2, which is really unnecessary for draft renders, and is why many users complain about it's speed.

Renderizer is for outputting daz scenes to to other rib renderers, and provides some advanced 3delight features and exposes more shaders (although I think it may be incompatible with other third party shaders). Basically, this pluigin has received some mixed reviews, and I would only personally bother with 3delight anyway, making it mostly redundant for me.

I do agree there are many cool rendering plugins for daz studio 2.*(plus), with things I wish we had in Dribble. Relight and Surface Mask Creator being the most interesting to me, however they have a big downside - they cost. I worked out that to make daz studio 2 as functional as dribble, more or less, would cost me over 200 bucks. And that still means no fur, and I would also miss out on the plethora of other goodies I love in truespace.

I think if I was hell bent on using 3delight, or I was looking for an alternative to carrara and wanted to stick with daz, then yes Daz studio is a potential option and is definitely underrated as a renderer (much, much nicer and more powerful than Cararra or Bryce imho, if you buy the add-ons).

But why go out for milk when you have a (albeit buggy) cow at home?

DesignDevil wrote:But i would be very sad if this is "the end" for this realy good piece of software.

You raise good points, and I'm very aware that just making the source available doesn't ensure dribble's survival. My prime reason for releasing it was to say "look guys, be safe in the knowledge that even my head explodes and I'm removed from the face of the earth, there's still at least a chance that dribble can be rebuilt by SOMEONE to work with 3Delight a year down the road". I didn't want to say "yeah another version is coming" again when I don't see myself being able to do that in the significant future.

I will say though, benji's right - the majority of fixes will be in tweaking the shaders and the RIB output. dribble is actually a pretty simple chunk of coding, it's just that there's a lot of parameters and shaders and stuff to slog through when you're adding something. I do plan on posting some quick docs for adding an element to the interface and referencing that in the code and so on, so that should help kickstart things.

Simon, could Dribble code be used to export a tS scene to an other renderer ? ... Maxwell for example ?

I would think so Emmanuel... Dribble basically takes data from one format and converts it to another to feed 3Delight. It could be modified to create output that could be consumed by other tools.

As for continuing development of Dribble, it really will depend on who in the community want to invest the time to learn the code and study the formats and ongoing changes to 3Delight etc. Given the likelihood that anyone doing it would be doing so for free or small amounts of revenue it will be some time before anyone really plunges in.

I bought VS 2005 to start learning the TS SDK so adding Dribble to the list of things I will be studying will likely be part of the process. I will be doing this at a very slow pace owing to other commitments but I will be doing it over time.

Emmanuel wrote:Simon, could Dribble code be used to export a tS scene to an other renderer ? ... Maxwell for example ?

Sure, though there's no mystery to writing an exporter for something. It's basically "go through the scene, write out each part in the right format". One thing to point out about dribble (and Renderman in general) is that it makes use of a client library instead of writing out data to the file manually, which does mean there's another API to learn.