What’s coming next ?

A simple question, with a simple answer. r|shaders development was really slow, I worked at this project in the spare time, and with full time involvement in freelance jobs and family stuffs, it was really complex to have right time for it.

I made a mistake to have not right time for it, but it was good to see how much time it takes to make it alone during other projects. Last time I worked at a plug-in for 3ds max was simpler, I worked on it with a team so timing was a secondary problem, more resources, more time. So the good thing is that future projects will be managed in different ways.

Alpha / Beta / Release. Next projects will pass thru different phases, and it must be done in this way to have a better workflow. In Alpha stage I’ll work on main features and main design, it will be possible to have some sneak peak published just to show what I’m doing. When Alpha stage will be over, I’ll move in Beta stage, the product will be pre-ordered at lower price, people can propose to be part of internal beta team. At the end of beta product will be delivered, development timeline will be scheduled at the beginning, and this time I’ll try to have more time to stay in line with it. Timeline will be public just when it is compatible with the project status, and when I’m sure about it.

So, the questio is still “What’s next?”. I’ve different projects in my mind, let’s see it in order :

- Deep Ocean shader : it is will work in progress, this new shader is expected to be released before the end of 2011 ;

- r|shaders next 2.0 : actually I’m starting to think about it, what feature I can add, what I can fix or change, which shaders can be added, so I’ve no timeline for it, but you can be sure that it will be released in the future ;

- codename Majordomo : I’ve worked at this project on the design process since years. It is a complex software, some features are internal to 3ds max, some others are stand-alone. I decided to start working on it, step by step, splitting it in different sub-projects/software, so I can work on it in a flexible way, it can be released without the need to wait 10 years, and users can start adding it to their workflow/pipeline. Some tools regards project management, some are about rendering passes, some are about shot pipeline/workflow management, so what I can say is that I’ll start to work on it and during 2012 I’ll show some sneak peak about it, and hope to release one of the tools I’ve in mind.

If you have suggestion, requests or something else, please contact me at a.cangelosi@rebelthink.com