Ghastly wrote:When will the new version be officially available? I'm not going to pour a lot of work into supporting an unofficial build again. Got burned when the A7 mesh got dumped and I don't want to get burned again.
Yeah, I too felt like I got "burned" when the A7's were replaced by the newer mesh. I had created some models that I thought were quite good and uniquely my creations. I was really put off by the fact that the expressions also disappeared with the introduction of the new mesh because I'd been investing a lot of time and energy creating animations and story lines with the A7. If you remember, the new models also looked like plastic manikins where the A7's had realistic skin done by an artist. I'd finally gotten good with using the A7's in Blender and now they'd gone and set me back by months and months to much lower quality. I couldn't understand why Manuel kept insisting that the new mesh was better and more accurate when the models looked like crap.
Now, there is no comparison with today's models to the A7's, which look clunky and painted in comparison. Manuel was right, of course, but I couldn't see that at the time because the current models were still in development.
That was because I didn't understand how all of this works, and because I was resisting change. I'd forgotten what a wonderful gift these guys were providing when I thought I felt "burned" by change. The truth was that my only investment was the time that I put in to learn how to use this free gift. The fact that they work tirelessly to improve the program means that change is inevitable and that it is not they who should stay put, but me who should go along with the flow and keep pace. These days I never feel "burned" by the changes here, and in fact, I only ever use the nightly builds now, and I find that staying up with the cutting edge releases allows me to understand changes as they occur, and I am no longer frustrated by trying to get them to fix something that has long been resolved. Any models I make now are fluid and replaceable in any application I use them in and I don't get hung up on any one particular "set".
Manuel has come up with yet another leap in model design with his new project, and if I were to scrap every project I worked on just because the models keep getting better and better, I'd never get anything finished that I'm happy with. If you're so stuck on the A7 models, why don't you simply use them exclusively and not use the newer versions at all? There's nothing stopping you from using the older version and nothing forcing you to upgrade....
I miss Manuel here... he always did a good job of putting things into perspective