I wrote a blog about some of my experiences at the then-new MIT Media Lab in 1985. Unlike the experience of the author, I was more of a lone late-night hacker (in the old sense of the word).
Perhaps I'm viewing the past through rose-colored glasses, but I wish there were such efforts at innovation in the computer field today. Maybe the last attempt at doing something truly different was the Connection Machine.
I hope for the sake of my former colleagues at Weta that those transferred to Unity can simply be transferred back to Weta.
The point of production pipelines being bespoke (at least past a certain company size) is a relevant one. The main workhorses of large scale production (Maya, Houdini, Nuke, etc.) are extremely customizable and extensible. Over years (decades in the case of Weta) companies develop highly complex workflows and associated tools based on these applications.
That is why the Unity deal never really made sense to me. The idea that Weta's tools could somehow be packaged up and delivered as essentially shrink-wrapped consumer-level add-ons to Unity was a naive one at best. I'm not entirely surprised to see it fall apart.
No. Unfortunately this is something they’re philosophically against as they feel you should just build from source if you need it. They’re worried it could undermine the spirit of the GPL if people were sharing compiled plugins instead
