2011 Economic Report

[Samo]

Donations of money.
In 2011, the YafaRay Project has got 71,35 $ in donations. In comparison, in 2010 the YafaRay Project got 1034 $ in donations. In general, our opinion is that donations does not work further than for a very small group of committed users, and that this is probably true for other FOSS desktop projects. Donations is not a regular and constant source of income right now.

Donations of services.
In 2011, excellent hosting services were provided again by Altasis (Michele Castigliego aka Subcomandante). Although the comparative cost of such services is unknown, they could probably get in the range of a high-range Virtual Private Server hosting plan. Services donated by http://www.altasis.it/ are crucial for the survival of the YafaRay project right now.

Expenses
yafaray.org and yafray.org domains 1 year renewal 21.35 $
2011 Winter Contest prizes 150 $ aprox
2011 Summer Contest prizes 120 $ aprox
_______________________________________
Total expenses in 2011: 291 $ aprox.

Reserves held by SPI as of 2011-12-31
YafaRay Earmark 4,762.58 $
More info at: http://lists.spi-inc.org/pipermail/spi- ... 03003.html

Future Plans
Establishing a regular constant stream of income through the sale of educative material and a Code Sprint are the main targets for 2012. The idea has been already proposed to the SPI board for selling training material using SPI legal protection. Another idea for 2012 could be stablising a special donation campaing for the Code Sprint.

Regards.

[abhifx]

excellent plan. plus yafaray needs some publicity. sonething akin to blenders movie project could be done

[HobbyLightandMagic]

Movie project sounds good.

[povmaniaco]

Reserves held by SPI as of 2011-12-31
YafaRay Earmark 4,762.58 $

Great ... this amount is just twice, my whole fortune.
And I would like to be joking
Greetings...

[allan_james]

I realize that there are a lot of archi vis work done in blender and yafaray. why don't we do models and scenes like evermotion but for blender and yafaray. this can be sold easy to raise the required cash I believe this can be a hit. I can participate in modeling textureing and making even whole scenes.
What do you think guys?

[Samo]

Copyright of most of the archivis stuff done with YafaRay probably does not belong to the artist doing it. This is the reason too why we can see only just a fraction of it on the forum.

[allan_james]

@Samo I know what I suggest is for those who are willing to participate in this project we will model furniture, trees, kitchen stuff, bathroom stuff...etc. we will put material and texture then sell in volumes like Evermotion Dose. but this will be for yafaray not V-ray.
A lot of the archi bis artist suffers when working with blender & yafaray through texturing and obtaining realistic materials if its cost effective and with good quality I think this will not only raise the right cash for yafaray but also will act as an amazing marketing tool inviting new users to yafaray. I personally suffer when working with Evermotion or other copy right models.
but if its done from the begging in blender and yafary what the artist or architect will do is just append or link from a .blend file this will be a great option for a lot of people.
I hope this idea will get the needed attention as I always wanted to do something like that but I don't know what feedback this can get

[ejnaren]

Wow that is a great difference...!
Do you know why it is that great a difference..? I mean I know that it has seemed like Yaf development has slowed somewhat but that is a lot of difference still!

<idea rant>
I think allans ideas are great! How about doing a full finished viz tutorial project and sell it as a dvd/ book or even eBook..? Blender + Yafaray is the greatest tool for Aarch viz jobs in the oss world.
You find it many places and I would love and 100% buy something like this targeted for blend + yaf:

http://shop.3dtotal.com/training/training-ebooks-3dsmax/lighting-la-salle-3dsmax-vray-ebook.html
http://shop.3dtotal.com/training/training-ebooks-3dsmax/environment-lighting-3dsmax-tutorial.html
http://shop.3dtotal.com/training/training-ebooks-3dsmax/la-ruelle-lighting-3dsmax-vray-ebook.html
http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info_n.php?products_id=134

I would even help anyway I can creating it (and I am sure many from the community would. Making models, donating textures, pre-funding etc.).
You could do a kickstarter promotion and if you reach the goal hire one of the great blend+yaf artists to do it as freelance job + help from community.
</idea rant>

PS one last thing: Check out this thread if you want a guy trying to sell Yafaray for the arch community:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?241453-Arquitectos-archviz

[mookie]

What are the future plans for Yaf(a)ray itself?

I feel that the number of Yaf(a)ray users gets lower every year. Perhaps new webpage design along with new look of the gallery would help a bit? The greatest works ever done in Yaf(a)ray that would be easy to spot right at the home page?

[povmaniaco]

I think, quite honestly, we should publish a new version (or release candidate) That would be a good incentive for people who spend part of our daily leisure time, the development of YafaRay.

[_Mo_]

Perhaps new webpage design along with new look of the gallery would help a bit?

Re-designing the webpage wont help, imo (and I personally like the Yafaray page how it's now )

It's plain simple: Yafaray development is stagnating too much. As per original schedule, 1.2 should be out a long time ago. The best course of action is to release 1.2 ASAP, and make a lot of noise when it will be out (doing a "release competition" would be nice, maybe targeted at archviz / productviz, or with broad topic, so it would attract new users.).

[stoneage]

Agree. New releases, and some visible development progress.

I keep seeing people write on blenderartists they don't like to use Yafaray because development is too slow and stability is a problem. I'm not agreeing with them, but people on the outside see Yafaray as something that still hasn't had a stable release. Also I think Cycles is distracting some potential users.

There are also some important bugs still outstanding that make life a little difficult. Glossy reflection isn't working correctly, normal mapping isn't usable......

Having said that, probably most of the professional quality work made with Yafaray is simply never posted here or on blenderartists. People using it to make a living don't show their work on forums.

[Samo]

I think, quite honestly, we should publish a new version (or release candidate)

We can not make releases candidates with known bugs, that would be a shortsighted strategy IMO. I believe a good beta is better than a bad release candidate or a bad stable release. We can not obviate the fact that there is significative bugs pending to be fixed. Unstable releases would doom this project much faster than lack of developers IMO.

There is room for improvements about how the betas are released though. Maybe we should shift to installers again instead of using special Blender builds.

What are the future plans for YafaRay itself?

I don't think there is a plan, only day-to-day work. There are many people commited to work on YafaRay right now, but the fact is nobody is skilled enough to work on YafaRay core structures at the moment, except from small fixes.

I can't really say much more. I am very proud of the work done so far. I have come to realise that it is worthless to rush things out, YafaRay will progress as long as there are people willing to work on it. Of course it will not progress as much as people would expect or wish, but we can do little about it. I can not make people work on YafaRay against their disposition. Besides, Blender is an special case in the field of FOSS desktop projects, comparing every other FOSS project with Blender development pace is a common mistake and a terrible idea.

I am optimistic about YafaRay, I believe I will do well against Cycles, as long as we do things right. I think the code sprint could be a very good thing for YafaRay right now. The idea is to motivate this new generation of developers (Olaf Arnold, Povmaniaco, Gabriele Ferreri, Rubdos, etc) interested in YafaRay. As soon as I find hosting premises for the code sprint, it will be oficially announced.

[mookie]

Re-designing the webpage wont help, imo (and I personally like the Yafaray page how it's now )

How about redesigning a gallery then? I think there are some really great Yaf(a)ray renders that deserve to be well presented at the homepage. Something like this would be really nice http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/.

I understand that developing Yaf(a)ray is really hard when it's a non-profit work. Perhaps it would be better to eliminate existing bugs, forgetting about new features and launching new official Yaf(a)ray release?

PS Samo and other people involved in development - you did an excelent job so far, just get rid of those bugs and we will show Blender community that Yaf(a)ray is not dead yet.

PS2 As a member of Evermotion team - I don't think that selling Yaf(a)ray scenes/models is a good idea, I doubt if there's a need for such product. But I may be wrong.

[_Mo_]

How about redesigning a gallery then?

Well, the homepage always shows a few renders from the gallery, which are rotated when you refresh the page. There are also the "now in the forum" thumbs below the menu. The gallery could be animated like in in your example, but should be kept minimalistic and non intrusive (I personally hate everything with a flash interface, which takes long time to load and prefer static html pages). I just don't know who would do it (spending money on it should be out of the question - $$ should be rather given to core coders)

But only releasing a stable new version will really move things forward. We would then need to promote it on other forums & sites. Make a release virtual party, a release competition, something to keep the word going around... free hats & cake for everyone.. rendered of course