bring back softimage.net

[rray]

Thanks for your support Steven and all.
Just an idea but Oli's OK provided, I'd be in for making rray.de the "official" resource repository for si-community, hosted on the same webspace, changing the name to si-community/resources or something similar.
That would be minimal work -- just an ftp upload -- most work would be adding some links in the header/or use tabs. Donation stuff/hosting costs could be sorted out too I believe. Actual changes to the current situation would be cosmetic but I think this would improve the "community" aspect...

An important thing though is that I wouldn't want to change much else about it because I'm sure it's the format that works best (tags/filters instead of categories and ajax instead of pagination)

What could (optionally) follow as a next step would be a more "formal" submission than the google doc, maybe a thread, and to give someone else the chance to update the site.
(Not that I'm planing to pull out of the business. ) btw all just an idea, just throwing it out there...

[Tekano]

Thanks for your input Steve, its appreciated. But please let me clarify, I personally do not need or want to attempt to make a forum, or another Area. This is not what this thread is calling for nor do I feel that the community needs. I think most of us already agree this.

Neither do I want Reinhardt (think thats your name rray!) to stop what he is doing with rray.de. Im indebted to rray.de for being the ONLY place left standing that has a decent sized and actively maintained list of ICE compounds. what I want is something toward what we already, 4 years ago, had with the softimage.net downloads section. which had an easier ability for users to upload and share, some more categories, as browsing 952 meters of compounds is somewhat unwieldy. And was more visually orientated (rray.de is almost there) and a comments section per compound.

Also, it would definately be moderated by users. Im not intending to kill myself or others over implementing this, Funding, yeah we can expect $0 assist from Autodesk, that is already clear, but Oli is funding this site himself I gather and from what I understand server space and bandwidth is not going to be so much of an issue and its the initial build or setup of the CM system that Im looking at options of now. The love will come from it being reliably around and being super easy to use. if its not an improvement to rray.de (which I see as a personal backup) then there is no point.

I feel at present, what we have in place is not conducive to sharing and is slowly losing out on the amounts being shared. Ideally the main aim is to have an uptodate list of all compounds concentrated in one place that is easier than at the moment to find and share stuff, which, hopefully will increase overall user submissions (and happiness). not too much to ask for and surely we want more folk doing stuff for the community than less?

[rray]

Name's close enough (no "t") .. Sorry btw just realized I went a little off topic concerning your initiative, it looked like a good place to pitch this idea at a first glance

Users being able to edit their own plugin entries would definitely be a big plus over rray.de. Also the commenting-per-plugin feature, which I planed for rray.de too but couldn't do because the domain doesn't support scripts/php.

[Tekano]

ha ok no 't' Reinhard. also I think what you said was VERY on topic actually, thank you for your efforts so far and the offers just made. It does seem like the path of least resistance to improve the current situation over ICE compound storage, and its certainly easier for anyone else about to make further development on this subject. I just feel its a shame to expect yourself or Oli to update your stuff just because I'm whining about it and have a grudge with AD management . Therefore I applaud any actions or improvements you make to improve RRay.de or incorporate into Si-Community but am going to still look into alternatives like making a site that could incorporate the features I am after but still has very strong connection with Rray.de and and Si-Community. there is no harm in looking to see what may be involved and whether it is actually possible or not.

[ximage]

I think Rray is awesome to be frank. if this could be built upon then some how bolted onto the back end of Si community i think this would work.

what limitations has your hosting got Reinhard??

do you think the website would be easy to modify to add comments and user uploads.

one thing that might work is to use a template.

shop templates spring to mind. they are highly customisable, built on wordpress so easily updatable.
http://tinyurl.com/9l8s47s

this is just an example. but it already have comments built in for feed back, recent uploads etc. the only thing it wont have is user uploads? i dont know how hard something like this will be to implement.


by the way tekeno I'm english.

my suggestion are either pimping up rray and bolting it on to this website or using a template and modifying it and bolting it on aswell.

once again I think we would be able to sort something out with hosting, our company has a resellers account with heart internet so we (if needed, even if you need to upgrade for rray) hopefully will be able to help out with hosting.

cheers

[ximage]

http://themeforest.net/item/i-love-it-content-sharing-wordpress-theme/full_screen_preview/698475

found another template that is solely a content sharing site. users can upload delete and edit posts. comments are through facebook which is a bit shite.

?? cheap too.

Daniel

[gfxman]

Great Ideas and Possibilities here, one thing is missing.

The great promise in ice was the ability, of the user, to upload his compound, directly from Softimage in softimage.net.
Nothing would go lost that way.
And it is true, there is a lot, A LOT, of good free tools being created and then "forgotten" if they don't go on the amazing rray.de list. A lot of usefull stuff just hosted on the author site, maybe linked in a vimeo tutorial, or on a small topic here or some other little forum.

So the first thing we should have, is an addon, a script, a plugin, that we should all install, that give us the ability to upload, with a description ( + the ability to update on the same location) any set of compound directly from softimage to this new conteneir.

A new version or an addition to rray.de, integrated or simply linked to the new home of the xsi community, witch is, si-community.
xsibase.com should just become a redirect, right now, the site i dying but it was our home for a lot of years.
No more work is needed in xsibase.com, a simply plain, redirect here.

[rray]

Rray.de can't be "made dynamic" unfortunately. Whole of its contents are structured DIVs, and migrating to a db wouldn't make much sense without a connection to the author's user accounts (which is near impossible to make)

Could imagine something "half automated" though.. but still making up my mind about the whole process..

Comments could be possible at some point too (but not right now because the current domain supports nothing but serving html)

[Hirazi Blue]

The following, again, very much IMHO:
I personally wouldn’t add any comment functionality to rray.de or to a new download hub. It looks nice, but it could add a lot of grief, as you’d have to start policing the comments as if your site were a forum and before you know it, your site will have turned into one. Ideally announcing a tool & the subsequent discussion should still best be left to “true” forums, that’s what they’re for/that's what they're good at. In the case of a website where people can actively upload their content, as opposed to rray.de, which is technically more of an archive (but I don't mean that in a bad way), you’d already have to check each and every incoming file.
That’s also one reason why I don’t think uploading from within Softimage is such a great idea. That way you run the risk of some developer uploading a whole lot of consecutive version with one click of a button, while the "site admin" still has to wade through them all. Letting the developer “ think” before he/she “sends”, by not exposing such functionality directly from Softimage, might help the "site admin" tremendously.

[Tekano]

@ ximage im taking bottleofram's advice and not rushing into anything, but yes Wordpress and a template may be an option. That last template looked pretty neat, but Facebook. . Joomla and Drupal may be other options for a really cheap bandwidth / hosting / templates combo from your average buy-a-domain-dot-com. I'm speaking to some friends soon, who are experts on this kind of thing, these guys write their own web dev tools and share them so they may have some interesting things to say on the best way to approach this.

@ rray "migrating to a db wouldn't make much sense without a connection to the author's user accounts (which is near impossible to make)" I don't understand what you mean here. a db is database yes, but you mean author of ICE compound or author of your own web site?

@Hirazi well Im still nostalgic for exactly what we had in the way of functionality. As far as I remember for the doenloads section it was and ended up being a comments section only and was not used that often or moderated that much? but when it was generally it was questions of usage of the compound itself. Not fancy, but useful. If it is something that is abused then yes I can anticipate it being a problem, but as I've no experience as a web site admin / owner with a comments section I am speaking entirely from a naive perspective ;)

[ximage]

yeh i dont want to rush anything either if this does indeed go ahead. needs to be thought out.

the only reason i say template is cus the brunt of the work is done for you and the backbone is there. ok its has facebook comments, but its fully customisable so that can be taken out. its wordpress.
the small company i run here is for animation and web company, my colleague is a web designer and developer so we could hopefully help out that end. the main problems is going to be getting the word out there, getting people motivated to upload there own content, keeping it clean, easy and simple to use. and then moderating it will be the key point.

but overall to be honest i think rray works for the most part and is awesome, just some things go missing when they are not put on reinhards radar so they cannot be uploaded. so really we need to think are we revinventing the wheel. you could run in to trouble with double posts, so i think the moderators would add to a google docs list of plugins (like what rray does now) and then if they are not added by the creator by the end of the month. add it.

also you may need to put down guidelines like search for the plugin on the site first before uploading it, and asking permission from the creator before it goes on. or something of this kind.

i agree with having uploads from within the software might sound great, but also i think that should be avoided for the moment.

regarding "comments section" i think Hirazi is right to a certain extent, cus you can use the forums, but if someone has not started making the plugin when getting feedback off a thread then how will they get feedback? comment section will only get out of hand if people start swearing or getting abusive, or if you get bots on the site.

@Tekano have you built websites before then, to this level of complexity?

cheers

[Hirazi Blue]

@Tekano - To make one thing absolutely clear: I don't want to appear overly skeptical, which I am not (although I am aware, it might sound that way). My last post was mainly to point out some pitfalls, I think you should consider before rushing into functionality you do not absolutely need IMHO. Keeping such a site simple (to maintain in the long run) will be enough hard work as it is. In an ideal world a comment system would be nice, the Internet, however, as we all know, hardly is an ideal world...
;)

PS You mustn't forget the old Softimage|NET could "easily" maintain a comment functionality, because it already had all the forum functionality, with members, passwords and moderation in place IIRC.

[rray]

I don't understand what you mean here. a db is database yes, but you mean author of ICE compound or author of your own web site?

I meant the author of the compound/addon, so he would be able to edit his own entries. That would be a huge effort because there also must be a way for the author to "claim" his user account in case he didn't make one yet. Also sometimes it's more than one person.

Did you btw want to create a repository for ICE compunds only, or also for addons/shaders/tools etc.? If it would be for compounds only, I think something like a "web compound manager" plugin could be cool, with no web interface at all, but with the ability to upload/edit/search&view compounds from a UI inside Softimage. They could be indivdually activated/deactivated and would appear right away in the compounds list. I think this is something that might have the chance to start from an empty repository.

@HB -- good point about the commenting, for most addons a thread also already exists somewhere. I think avoiding the in-app-upload spamming could be done partly automatically by some sort of versioning/update functionality, but this would again be adding to the complexity.

[Tekano]

@Tekano have you built websites before then, to this level of complexity?

cheers

I havnt built anything to any level of complexity my friend is the Chairman of this company http://www.lshift.net/ who have built some extremely complicated stuff! and they even have coded some open source web tools called 'Icing' so serendipitous for our ICE compounds storage dilemma! Perhaps what they do is somewhat overkill for our needs but anyway will see what they have to advise about proceeding with this.

[Tekano]

I don't understand what you mean here. a db is database yes, but you mean author of ICE compound or author of your own web site?

I meant the author of the compound/addon, so he would be able to edit his own entries. That would be a huge effort because there also must be a way for the author to "claim" his user account in case he didn't make one yet. Also sometimes it's more than one person.

Ah I see. well isnt this just a matter of having an entry for the name of the compound uploader and also the author name if its different. If the original author wants to connect or to edit compound details that they have made but someone else has uploaded - once they have an account then the original uploader or moderator can redirect the author name to the proper account name or pass ownership of edits back to them or just delete their entry and allow the author to upload the compound again. if that makes sense. and not sure its going to be a problem, its such a small community in Softimage niche land that I really dont see this as being much of an issue.

Same as double entries. our immediate problem is the amount of sharing entries shrinking per month rather than there being too many and doubling up!

regarding whether it should be ICE compounds and / or Materials / Plugins / Scripts well for simplicity sakes it might be best to stick to just ICE compounds for now , although my original rant still stands, nobody is sharing materials either and it may be a good incentive to try and reignite the sharing philosophy again with this initiative but am concerned about biting off more than we can chew

Also if we made something that worked from inside softimage as a plugin sort of like SIBL? http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/software.html , really cool concept rray - would we not need a separate plugin for every single version of Softimage? this seems like even more hassle on top , but again Ive never authored a plugin either

[Hirazi Blue]

I think something like a "web compound manager" plugin could be cool, with no web interface at all, but with the ability to upload/edit/search&view compounds from a UI inside Softimage.

I would sincerely hope not: some kind of minimal web interface (even with less functionality) would be nice/necessary for the dying breed of users who run an offline workstation (like me). A built-in functionality to generate Netview-friendly webpages, however, usable from with Softimage's own limited webbrowser, like the XSIBase has been doing for years, might be an friendlier option to all...

regarding whether it should be ICE compounds and / or Materials / Plugins / Scripts well for simplicity sakes it might be best to stick to just ICE compounds for now , although my original rant still stands, nobody is sharing materials either and it may be a good incentive to try and reignite the sharing philosophy again with this initiative but am concerned about biting off more than we can chew

Limiting the initiative to ICE compounds might be look easier, I however would strongly advise against it. If you want to establish the one-and-only new download hub, it should cover all possible content. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to unify the upload/download "business" as similar sites would/could/should still have to be established/maintained to cover all the bases and therefore it would make the effort quite pointless, if I may be so blunt, and would make the effort to be accepted as the "place to be" all the more complicated...

(I moved this post ever so slightly)