Over on Google+, I’ve been in a little discussion with Nina Paley about trying to pull together a small team of developers to rework the Synfig UI to make it more animator friendly. It’s my belief that the odd, non-traditional UI is the main thing holding back wider adoption and use of Synfig as an animation tool. I know some of you have talked about what a new Synfig UI might look like in other threads on this forum. What I’d like to talk about now is how we could entice a small group of developers to take this task on, maybe via our own Google Summer of Code-like program. Nina Paley has indicated that she’d be glad to lend her name and encouragement to such a project if it would help get it off the ground. She also happens to live at the moment near the University of Illinois which has a sizeable computer science department. So how can we get a UI revamp project off the ground? What would it take to get some developers actually working on a UI redesign? Discuss!
Hi Matt!
As you should know I’m 100% busy (in my free time) on add the Cairo render to Synfig. It is not a short term task. I hope that I can have it finished or at last usable on the next LGM 2103 in Spain.
I’m fully compromised with Synfig so count with me for any contribution from my side where I can help once I get ride of the Cairo render.
-G
I know (and appreciate ) that you are constantly working on some aspect of Synfig. I’m hoping that we can come up with a way to enlist a few more developers for the specific task of revamping the UI. What do you think it would take to put together a small team? Maybe an impressive-enough short animation that shows what animators could do with Synfig plus a brief outline of the problems with the UI?
I think it would be great to bring this idea to fruition. If it’s not possible to find enough developers through discussion boards like this, then maybe Nina would be willing to talk to some students at the college near where she lives?
The project would require someone to serve in a leadership position – preferably someone knowledgeable in C++ and/or the Synfig code itself – in order to facilitate an organized development cycle. Genete, you said you’ll be busy for quite a while, right? So you wouldn’t have time to do something like that? What about as a general consultant?
Yes, in fact, GSoC is some how the same.
The only combination for success on that kind of project is to have three ingredients:
One good animator. Nina is perfect for that but we already have some others that are already compromised with the Synfig project (zelgadis, rylleman, ricolandia, among others) that could do similar task.
A coder leader that knows C++, the Synfig’s internals and that is committed with the project. I think that I’m the only one that fits the profile at this moment.
A (set of) student(s) that join C++ knowledge, passion for animation, and a lot of free time.
Usually the main problem is the lack of position #3. As far as there isn’t anyone that fills the position #3, I do both positions #2 and #3 but with the drawback of the “lot of free time” part.
I’m fully committed with the Synfig project so anyone can count with me for the roll of consultant, organizer or facilitator or whatever. If needed, I even can walk the streets like sandwich man with the Synfig’s advertisement .
If someone else warps up the needed ingredients I mentioned before, I gladly will take the leadership/consultant task. Even if due to that the Cairo render project gets slower!
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