BerconMaps 1.2, free advanced procedural maps for 3ds max

[MasterBercon]

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=6&t=711212

[stilgarna]

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=6&t=711212

Very Good !!!!

as usual !!! Thanks a lot...


Best regards...

[^Lele^]

That gradient ramp with float key positions, alone, is worth cash, in my book :P.
Could you comment on its performance compared to the max's own gradient ramp?
That one is known to have bugs (animaed keys not updating) and to be slow as hell in general.

[MasterBercon]

Well mine is as fast as it gets and works with animated keys. But it's not initially meant to replace maxs gradient ramp map because I was too lazy to start implementing all those functions. I might extend it at some point. For now its just color variation between objects/particles/matIDs.

[^Lele^]

Nice to hear!
Well, do implement those modes, and let's ll say goodbye to the old digimation gradient ramp! :P

[MasterBercon]

Heh, yeah. If I'd get even small compensation I'd be more eager to do it. Now it just feels stupid working my ass off for open source project when I could be using that time to do something I get paid for.

For example: http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...ad.php?t=43599

Implementing all those features wouldn't even be so hard. But it'd take 50-70 hours to do all that (designing, implementing, testing). Wasting that much time for free just goes against my principles as it wasn't what I originally planned when I wrote the maps.

[YoyoBoy]

Wow! This is great! I might even be able to stop using Simbiont with these.

[^Lele^]

Heh, yeah. If I'd get even small compensation I'd be more eager to do it. Now it just feels stupid working my ass off for open source project when I could be using that time to do something I get paid for.

For example: http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...ad.php?t=43599

Implementing all those features wouldn't even be so hard. But it'd take 50-70 hours to do all that (designing, implementing, testing). Wasting that much time for free just goes against my principles as it wasn't what I originally planned when I wrote the maps.

Oh man, i SO hear you
I made a whopping 200$ with the scripts.
While i lost count of the downloads when they passed the 50k mark.
So on average, that has netted me a gorgeous 0.004$ per user.

It has landed me a dream job, though

[beestee]

Thank you very much sir!

You are far too generous!

Implementing all those features wouldn't even be so hard. But it'd take 50-70 hours to do all that (designing, implementing, testing). Wasting that much time for free just goes against my principles as it wasn't what I originally planned when I wrote the maps.

I wonder if you could set up a visual guage or progress bar, visible on your website, that could track donations. Use that as the benchmark that would need to be met for you to justify working on the next feature or set of features.

[duke2]

What i'd suggest is charging I dunno, $49 for the full thing, with a free version which is everything except the Gradient (and whatever other advanced things you add in the future). The copy protection could be the same as LPM, which seems to work fairly well.

Also the full version would come with a special compile for rendernodes - doesn't require a license and reads the plugin settings but can't write them).

[duke2]

Thank you very much sir!

You are far too generous!



I wonder if you could set up a visual guage or progress bar, visible on your website, that could track donations. Use that as the benchmark that would need to be met for you to justify working on the next feature or set of features.

That is also a good idea. "When it gets to $200 i'll do X."

[duke2]

Hey Bercon, check this out - sounds cool and would be interesting to see implemented

'The Synthesis and Rendering of Eroded Fractal Terrains'
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...=rep1&type=pdf

[MasterBercon]

I've decided to give a try to donation approach. You can donate for the development of these maps at http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~jylilamm/BerconMaps.shtml

The more donations I get, the more I allocate time on developing these maps. The maps will stay open source and I have no intention of selling them or making seperate commercial "pro" version. They'll be free for everybody.

I already did some tests in implementing functionality of Falloff and Gradient Ramp maps into mine.
http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~jylila...radient_10.jpg
http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~jylila...radient_11.jpg

You are also free to give me feature requests and such if you think the maps lack something or there is some cool map you'd like to see in 3ds Max.

So depending on how much donations I get I'll decide if its worth continuing development of these maps.

Thank you,
Jerry Ylilammi