RockNRoll 1.66

[lemec]

I really, really hate writing documentation...

This is um, a freakin' octopus of a plugin. It includes the following features/functions/bugs:

Rolling/flipping geared towards non-lighttable animation
Looping frame advance/reverse
Fullscreen Crosshair
Paper Trail
Protractor Curvilinear Perspective tool.
Mouse/Stylus gestures.

Development on the plugin has come to an end so I'm releasing it for free.
If you find it useful, you can make a donation to my tip jar.

[Gravin]

I could just be over looking something but it appears that the the "RockNRoll.PIE" file and custom tool bin file are not included here?

[CartoonMonkey]

Have you seen Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro for Enterprise 2015?
They pretty much wholesale ripped off your perspective tool Mark!

[Fabrice]

yes, it's very similar to Lemec's 2008 plug-in (originally created in 2006~2007, then added as free TVPaint Plug-in in 2008)

[Paul Fierlinger]

Have you seen Autodesk's Sketchbook Pro for Enterprise 2015?
They pretty much wholesale ripped off your perspective tool Mark!

Interesting wording though; what constitutes a rip-off when it comes to software? All the time I see people here asking, even demanding, that TVP copy ideas from PhotoShop or other software. I happen to be one of those people who don't believe that software should be copy protected.

[CartoonMonkey]

But without software copy protection and people using the software for free, how would the makers of the tools make a living?
I learned a great deal using pirated software in my youth, but professionally, I either beta test or purchase all the software I use, and I'm proud to support the efforts of people who put a great deal of time into creating the tools I use. I'm not at all opposed to copy protection in this regard.

[Paul Fierlinger]

It constitutes industry development. Otherwise you would have only one house with windows; the first one; and one car with an engine. I 've learned that to copyright a book or film, you are copy protecting the copy, not the story because you would then have just one love story and literature wouldn't exist because authors would run out of original stories pretty fast. There is nothing much to protect in software besides its name. Would you like to have CTRL and PLAY copy protected? The Indians came up with three sticks to point to a direction; should the use of arrows have stopped there? Now to copy the wording of a manual word for word is stealing intellectual property, but the content of what the manual describes cannot be protected.

People have tp lighten up. If you invent new software everybody will want and nobody has yet heard of, you have to develope it under ultimate secrecy and when finished, introduce it on the market with a big splash so that yours will sell first and best before the copycats come in with there's -- that's all you should be able to do.

I can copyright my character and style and personality because that's intellectual property, But I can't prevent anyone from using the same story with their characters and dialogues. So originality is still important.

[lemec]

Oh man sorry for dredging/necroposting in my own thread, but I feel it's really important to talk about this:

Few things please me more than seeing GOOD ideas (and not just my own!) being implemented in software and hardware. Heck, if I had things my way, tablet makers would be including MIDI footpedal support in their drivers and drawing and 3D modelling apps would be taking advantage of footpedals. If it meant that I would have to give away my ideas without payment and without credit I would still be glad to see developers using them.

Although it take experience, effort and some smarts to implement a good idea, by far the hardest part of getting good ideas out there is getting people to recognize that they're good ideas; getting people to adopt them. People are very often set in their ways, comfortable with what they know, and uncomfortable with things that are new, and it gets especially difficult to convince people who actually have the facilities to mass produce a thing and bring it to market because they aren't going to easily throw a lot of money at something that could be a risky investment.

There's just so much poorly designed software out there too. Sometimes it feels as if nobody "eats their own dog food" anymore. I feel like a lot of programmers get into programming with the promise of a stable career, they go to school and learn programming well enough so that their code will compile without error messages and without crashing, and if they're particularly good they'll optimize it so it runs fast, but they're not on the receiving end of the software that they create. There are game developers who don't play their own games, cellphone games with terrible controls and terrible feel and mobile drawing programs that run incredibly slowly and have puny controls that can't possibly be clicked on with a thumb and apps with interfaces that are obscured by the users' hands and fingers.

They don't spend time using their software to get their actual work done, and as a result, making software becomes their job, rather than making software tools to facilitate their job. As the adage goes: 'Necessity is the progenitor of invention', and if you don't regularly try to get things done, you won't ever feel the need to invent anything.

[lemec]

... aaaaand I totally missed the original point of the conversation.

All of my driver hacks and plugins are based off of existing code. Everything I do requires some existing framework or software library, and thank goodness I don't have to code it all from scratch or I'd have to learn a ton of ancillary knowledge and spend a ton of time reinventing the wheel.

Thanks to people who have graciously sent their code into the public domain, it means that it takes me much less time, effort and personal expenditure to get a thing done. I would gladly send more of my code out there if it wasn't so poorly written and hacky. But again, I don't really want to be paid to make art tools. Programming is just something I engage in to make the tools. I would like to be paid to draw, though.

And right now, I feel that if I really like using a program, or I really like using a game and I would like to see further development on it, I'd be happy to donate what I can afford. Sometimes people commission programmers to make things that they need, too. And here we all are, artists in need of people to develop software to help us get drawings done. We have our personal, individual needs, and by paying for the software, we give the developer a reason to hear our needs out. It's why I'll always proudly support TVPaint and tell others about the software and help them out with it, because the developers in turn, support me. It's a wonderful exchange.