I had to collect my thought before writing this post because it can easily get into an heated discussion.
In my day to day job (crowd sims for VFX) we cannot afford to be not efficient, both in pipeline and tools, since we are on the receiving hand of a lot of departments and we work on scenes that in scope make a lot of people pale.
The things that I value the most, nimbleness and efficiency, are exactly what drove me to Defold in the first place.
Now in practical terms we use houdini, but only as a shell. It gives us the building blocks and components to create and refine the workflow that suits our needs the most, and we bend it to our will pretty badly.
I think Defold shares this same principle, and has been very succesful from my point of view on the engine side, with both lua and native extensions, where the community has contributed greatly.
In my mind, if/when the editor is exposed properly, I don’t think the fact that is written in a less approachable language is going to be an issue.
If it becomes scriptable with the ability to add panels, toolbars, widgets, viewport manipulators, access to the resources and an easy way to manipulate custom data strucures in an interactive way, I think a lot of us will start really pushing the boundaries of what is capable of and that will also lift the burden off the main team.
It might also become an easier way to prototype new functionalities for the Defold team too, before moving it to a more performant language if it’s needed.
Having experienced it first hand I know that the success of Maya for example was the fact that, from version 1.0, every single operation happening in the editor was a mel command. This opened the door to artists to develop tools and workflows that shaped the industry we know today.
So I’m happy to see that the team is sticking to their guns, with all it pros and cons. A community version of the editor is also a waste of talent IMHO. A better idea would be for the team to create a branch to start involving interested parties in helping shape the new capabilities.
I’d love to close this with a thought on 3D: do not underestimate the necessity of a solid pipeline both in the editor and with 3d party tools.
There is a reason why fbx is still the king in the area even though it’s a bloated piece of a black box mess: it works with all the major applications!
I’m sorry to say it but I have yet to experience one of the open formats working as expected in all the applications artists use.
There you go! The wall of text is done.
Happy Defolding!