Hello from a hard core Kineme & Syphon user

[aleith]

hi Vade, i'd have expected someone of your software talents to be cashed up on the AI bandwagon these days!

in response to you Qs about mimoLive and elsewhere:

2. i think mimoLive is still the main product offering at Bonix and very much alive and kicking. IMHO it craps all over OBS and even challenges PresenterPro in some respects.

been a while since i've corresponded with Achim who's the main developer of it. i'll let him know about Fabric, but i expect he'd be as cautious in using Fabric as he was about Vuo as the main layer engine, simply bc it's development and direction are outside their control.

3. i'll keep an eye on Fabric and once i get a sense of what it's about i may have some very
   naive suggestions. no doubt i will have UI/UE opinions & recommendations at some point!

as someone who's been attempting to learn to program in Haskell on and off for a few years now i have gained some insights into the advantages of statically typed, purely functional programming, lazy evaluation (all of which QC) etc etc. it's certainly a new way to look at things and the expressive potential and aesthetic of the code itself is really nice after labouring in JS inside QC. i'm still very much a baby novice level Haskeller though, one day perhaps i'll be dangerous. i was thinking to design a Domain Specific Language in Haskell to pump out Vuo nodes in Vuo compliant C code from Haskell source code (Haskell works like a dream for manipulating and parsing lists/streams of data) at one point in time but Vuo doesn't seem to be advancing much any more.

funnily enough there was a Max magazine completion with a big first prize in the 1990s where you had to forecast a new Apple technology and i proposed a kind of "3D for the rest of us" framework that Apple could develop to make it possible, even easy, for non-devs and non-Blender/3D software users to take off the shelf 3D model files and composer them in a scene, maybe adding texture mapping, a bump-map (remember them!), lighting, environment effects like Fog and DOF, camera position/animation but with a Mac App or system extension that allowed you to join these pieces together like 'Lego blocks' not requiring someone to code or get deep into 3D software. QC or its French predecessor wasn't a thing in the 90s of course so i didn't know about Visual Programming languages. it seems like someone could take the Fabric framework and make an App with it that allowed users to import prebuilt objects and scene and compose their own 3D images. i know they all use AI for that now so it won't happen but funny how these things come full circle.

[vade]

hey @aleith !

haha re AI, i am doing some of that, or trying! See https://ozu.ai :)

Re Mimi, yes sorry, i meant mimiComposer or whatever their re-implementation of QC is. I learned about it a long time ago, and frankly heard nothing since.

I think its an interesting approach building QC piece for piece being able to re use plugins etc, but my concern is while QC was great, it lacks a lot of things we'd want today, like materials, better shader support, instancing, better lighting / shading, etc.

Def curious about it, but alas, i'll be focusing on keeping Fabric growing for now :)

Re functional programming, i think its great for event driven systems, but for realtime, high performance stuff, copying memory around is a no no and quite slow.

Chris Lattner knows more about programming than i ever will, and had some thoughts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nyg_IXfnvs

I dunno, above my pay grade, but swift is generally really nice and im not wanting to trade tooling and ecosystem for more niche tools which will require bridging or what not.

re DSLs' - my concern there is about another barrier to entry, ie having to learn a new language to make things go, and also making a barrier to community growth etc, but I also am highly opinionated about these things :) I dunno, its tricky! Were you suggesting a DSL for Fabric / Satin, or just bringing it up in passing?

"3D for the rest of us" is a great way of putting it, we def want to help build that! And yes, Pixel Shox Studio was fucking awesome. I remember seeing that for the first time and having my mind blown.

. it seems like someone could take the Fabric framework and make an App with it that allowed users to import prebuilt objects and scene and compose their own 3D images. i

This is the goal! it should be doable with a bit more effort :)

they all use AI for that now so it won't happen but funny how these things come full circle.

I think theres a world with both tools can live and work together, we shall see!