Planetside Software Forums

News => Announcements => Topic started by: Matt on May 07, 2014, 08:27:55 PM

Title: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: Matt on May 07, 2014, 08:27:55 PM
I'm sure that some of you who read Jo's announcement from yesterday will have questions about how this affects the future of Terragen. This is the post I'm talking about:

http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,18276.msg177276.html#msg177276

We are a very small team to begin with, so this is a big event for us. But there are many things I'm excited about, some that are currently in development and others that I'm eager to get started on as soon as possible. I'm grateful that Jo will be able to stay involved with Planetside and the Terragen community, but this certainly affects our programming bandwidth. Recognising this, we want to get more programmers involved directly with Terragen soon. One of the ways we're going to do this is by releasing an SDK this year, to allow independent programmers and third party software companies to make plugins to extend Terragen's capabilities and tools to enable better ways to work with Terragen. We'll share more information about this in the coming months. This is going to be very good for Terragen. There are some other ideas we're considering, but the SDK work is already in progress and is definitely something you'll see come to fruition this year.

Having an SDK will be great for Terragen in the long run, but that doesn't mean we're going to sit back and leave it to other people to keep Terragen moving forward. I have a vision for Terragen that extends through Terragen 4, Terragen 5 and even beyond, and I'm determined to make it happen. With Jo stepping back to a more limited involvement, it's the end of an era at Planetside, but it's also the beginning of a new one and I'm excited about many things. Some that are in development already (like the SDK), some that are still on the drawing board or just in the ideas phase. We've always been an international team, but as part of the next chapter I'll be looking to build a team here in Los Angeles, a place I have come to call home (for all there is to love and hate about the place!). I think this next challenge will be extremely rewarding for me, and I hope the energy I derive from that will show through in the products we develop and the support we can give to the people who use them.

Cheers,

Matt
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: TheBadger on May 07, 2014, 08:49:14 PM
Too many interesting things to comment on in the OP post! Sounds like big big stuff! Sounds great!

But the obvious thing to ask for clarity on is, so Planetside is now an American company?! Well that just makes me happy!
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: Hubert_Holin on May 07, 2014, 08:49:57 PM
The SDK will more than welcome. One thing I definitely look forward to is adding Python support to Terragen (I do hope I will have time to do so, and that the SDK will have enough in it for this to be technically feasible). Of course, this still is no replacement for having a talented developer in house, especially one such as Jo!

Bonne chance

Hubert Holin
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: AP on May 07, 2014, 10:07:44 PM
I would love to join the team but I am no programmer, that is for certain.  :)
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: yossam on May 08, 2014, 01:01:37 AM
Sounds very promising............best of luck.  :)
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: Dune on May 08, 2014, 03:43:45 AM
Thanks for unfolding your plans, Matt. And I am sorry too that I'm not a programmer. I hope you'll get together a good team and further development will result in an even more staggering software!

Good luck!
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: Kadri on May 08, 2014, 10:19:03 AM

I am no expert on those things but i wish the SDK was finished already since now.

Matt i know you won't-can't share it but i wish i could see
what you meant here  "I have a vision for Terragen that extends through Terragen 4,
Terragen 5 and even beyond, and I'm determined to make it happen."
This makes me feel good and i hope the new team will be bigger and we see faster what your ideas are :)
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: zaxxon on May 08, 2014, 10:41:44 AM
Intriguing news indeed. Most of us here are pretty well invested in the continued development of Terragen and I wish the greatest success for you and Planetside going forward.
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: jaf on May 08, 2014, 01:48:47 PM
Will it be possible to have a SDK public alpha/beta phase?  It may interest casual users that have programming interests and be a good way to "mold" the product.
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: Oshyan on May 08, 2014, 04:39:34 PM
We will be starting with a private alpha phase for the SDK, but a public beta may be possible in the future. The eventual goal of course is to make the SDK widely available.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: kalwalt on May 31, 2014, 01:02:20 PM
This is great! I think the SDk will open new frontier for the software itself and help in the usage of it, One of the big achievement will be to develop .tgo exporters for the most popular 3d modeling softwares. It depend on what kind of SDK and which degree of access that will be permitted to a developer. I can't say that I'm a developer, but  i have an experience in programming ( C++,C#, and javascript) i like to develop little applications with OpenFrameworks openframeworks.cc  (http://openframeworks.cc), if it will be available an SDK i'd like to contribute in such a way, into my limits of my knowledge. Please, keep informed us on it! :)
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: PabloMack on August 30, 2014, 03:34:57 PM
Quote from: Matt on May 07, 2014, 08:27:55 PMWe've always been an international team, but as part of the next chapter I'll be looking to build a team here in Los Angeles, a place I have come to call home (for all there is to love and hate about the place!).

I think it makes sense to be located close to "Hollywood", the epicenter for the filmmaking world. I recently got a quote for an SMD pick-N-place machine from a manufacturer located in the Los Angeles area. Too bad we were just there last year. We might have had a couple more places we could have visited while there to attend the SVP meetings.

http://www.smtmax.com/
http://www.vertpaleo.org/
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: KlausK on January 06, 2017, 08:28:12 PM
Two and a half years have almost gone by since the last post in this thread
and I was wondering if there is any news regarding the SDK?
Now that I`m a proud owner of TG4 I WANT IT ALL!  :o hahahaha...
cheers, Klaus
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: Oshyan on January 09, 2017, 04:07:15 PM
The SDK is still available privately, upon-request. So far only Daniil/Blinkfrog has created something public, but others have access, whether for their own internal projects, or other things they're experimenting with. We are working on updating the SDK for Terragen 4 as well.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: KlausK on January 12, 2017, 05:23:03 PM
Oshyan, thanks for answering and sorry for the late reply.

I am by no means a programmer so surely no help to bringing the SDK forward in any way.

A little bit of C++ and Python programming here and there in 3dsmax (way back) and Softimage
but, mostly scripts and little extensions to help my workflow in the scripting language available
in the application. More of a on and off thingie...
I`ll leave it up to planetside to decide wether it makes sense to make the SDK available
to me at this time or not. I`m not in desperate "need" of it - simply curious.

cheers, Klaus
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: Oshyan on January 13, 2017, 12:21:00 AM
Since the SDK is still essentially in "beta", we will tend to err on the side of caution for anyone not well versed in graphics-related development in C++.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: DannyG on July 12, 2017, 05:16:06 PM
Who determines the criteria for who is well versed VS who isn't? Being that there has been only 1 person that has released something with the SDK, one would think you would want this to as available as possible. I am not saying give it to any Tom Dick and Harry, but someone with coding experience may spawn an idea or new concept that can be built upon by Matt, Daniil or another Alpha tester with experience. Simply locking the door isn't going to help anything. As mentioned Matt is a one man army from a programming standpoint. So his plate is full. Seriously! Even by today's slower forum standards this Forum is  crawling,. Unfortunately you can hear a pin drop in here most days. Not saying there aren't some lurkers, but the community needs a boost man. NWDA does have a challenge we are planning as soon as the VR challenge is finalized... but ?? I don't know. I am just saying what many are emailing about. I had to say something.
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: Oshyan on July 13, 2017, 07:45:30 PM
Actually we've had several people request the SDK. We have not turned anyone away, we just want to have the chance to discuss the functionality and limitations, and their intended use first. So far no one but Daniil has chosen to release their work publicly, but that's not because we're limiting anyone.

If there are interested programmers who want to experiment with the SDK, we invite them to contact us, by all means! And we regularly mention the availability of the SDK to people in support inquiries when relevant.

As to the busyness of this forum, it ebbs and flows certainly, but in terms of sheer number of posts and topics on average the activity here beats World Creator, World Machine (by a mile), and E-On's main public forums. I'm not sure about Cornucopia, but so much of the discussion on there is about their store items, which aren't exactly directly relevant to the core software discussion. We will hopefully see an uptick in activity with the 4.1 release and SIGGRAPH, but in general environment creation tool discussion is down all across the web (or at least more distributed, e.g. some on Facebook, some here, etc.), and I think we're faring reasonably well by comparison to other apps in the same space. But we certainly share the concern you have, and do keep an eye on it and try to encourage activity as we can, consistently referring people to the forums in support interactions, newsletters, and other communications.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: Dune on July 14, 2017, 03:04:57 AM
QuoteSo far no one but Daniil has chosen to release their work publicly
So they won't get any feedback from the alpha testers, which I think is working great in Daniil's awesome plugin. Too bad, actually (and making me curious too).

Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: rshirsagar5 on December 16, 2020, 12:46:31 AM
This plan sounds great...so best of luck in the future.  :)
Title: Re: Some thoughts on the future
Post by: amandas on December 18, 2020, 03:33:59 AM
Hi,

this is a great news, TGN opening up for programming community. I think business-wise this is a smart decision, thumbs up.

Unity/C# developer here with a basic C++ knowledge (wrote a simple raytracer in the past), working also with VEX/Python/JS. I do a lot of R&D for some companies. Would love to check out the SDK, but I can't guarantee fast feedback, so many commitments.

Best regards