Future of Gimel Studio - Roadmap v0.6.0 beta and onward

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Please give your feedback on the future of Gimel Studio :)

Now, before I continue I'd like to say: No, I don't plan to give up developing Gimel Studio any time soon. What this is about is having a clear vision for what Gimel Studio should become and how to get there.

I recently came across an article talking about why Open-Source projects "fail". An interesting statement was made:

"The reality is that most open-source projects never get any outside code contributions. Most fail. This has always been the case. For every Drupal, with its incredible community involvement, there are 98 other projects that are an abandoned labor of love by one or two developers."

So, actually this project is really blessed to have contributors in the first place. So, thanks to all those who contributed in some way!

Most Open-Source projects fail because of either: Lack of time, interest or money (or all of the above) or problems due to lack of planning and lack of vision. Actually, I would say that all of those have something to do with lack of planning and vision in some way.

I will admit that right now, there are a lot of ideas for the direction and vision and future of Gimel Studio (many of my own and quite a few from various others), but none are very well-established so far. Some line up, but most of them are not focused into any one area. If there is one thing that leads to disaster; it's not knowing where you're headed.

So, this is kinda my "give some feedback on what direction would be best for Gimel Studio to head as you see it". First, in general, then in specific.

Is Gimel Studio to be focused into the area of web developers, blender artists, both (perhaps), color grading, other various things....etc, etc? Also, while we can certainly work towards supporting workflows for all of these (if we want), what should be priority?

So, I guess the idea is that the Gimel Studio project will probably not thrive unless there are some clear goals, target audience and focus. And yes, it might sound silly, but I feel that it is important.

Feel free to comment your thoughts.....

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I will be posting a draft of the development roadmap soon.

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Near-future goals

• Switch to numpy.ndarray backend instead of Pillow Image backend

• GLSL GPU Render Engine

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I've been posting different future goals and features in the Roadmap category.

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So far, the roadmap seems to look like the following:

• Switch to numpy.ndarray backend instead of Pillow Image backend
• Use OpenImageIO for image read and write+ image manipulation (possibly)
• Implement GLSL GPU Render Engine
• Add G'MIC filters and effects (doesn't yet have full Windows support, though)
• Switch to themable widgets, make UI changes/improvements

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My thinking out-loud is:

• v0.5.x series

  • Get Blender Addon up-to-speed (as promised)
  • Finish off polishing/bug fixes to prepare for merging the GPU engine branch in v0.6.x series, etc
  • Work on MacOs support (help needed!)

• v0.6.x series

  • Merge branch: GPU Engine and OIIO integration (tons of work needs to be done before this happens though...)

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Please join the Gimel Studio discord for discussing the roadmap.

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The next generation of Gimel Studio is at https://github.com/GimelStudio/GimelStudio. You are welcome to join in planning and development!