ETR Absolute Transform nodes for Designer

I present you my first set of nodes for Substance 3D Designer: Eterea Absolute Transforms. It consists of 12 nodes, with grayscale and color versions, with which you can perform different types of transformations and deformations to our images. I will now describe each of them briefly (except one, they are all very easy and intuitive).

But first of all I want to thank Julián Rojas Millán who created the initial germ of these nodes. In his ArtStation website he shares an SBS that I downloaded and started to use. But I was immediately bitten by the bug and wanted to know how they were created, expand their features and adapt them to my needs. I talked to him and he kindly accepted that I could share with you my own extended version. Thanks a lot for everything, Julián!

⬇️ Download ETR Absolute Transform

First of all, let’s see how to install these nodes, in case you have never done it before:

INSTALLATION

Once downloaded, I advise you, if you don’t already have it, to create a directory so Designer can load from there all your personal nodes (these and others that you can download and install in the future). You can indicate any place, but I advise you here:

/Users/YOURNAME/Documents/Adobe/Adobe Substance 3D Designer/

Inside this directory you can place the folder “Absolute_Transforms” with the file “etr_abs_transforms.sbs”.

Then is time to open Designer and go to Preferences > Projects > User Project > Library

Click on the little “+” icon and add the directory you just created.

On the other hand, in the Library panel add a new Filter, the icon with the little circle and + sign (you will have to add a Folder first, clicking on the icon on the left, if you don’t want to add it inside an existing folder) and configure this Filter as shown in the screenshot: call it “Absolute Transforms”, Project: User Project, Graph, URL, Contains, “etr_abs_transforms”.

Yes, I know, if you have never done it before, this whole process will seem a bit cumbersome… Later and with more experience it’s a piece of cake.

This way, by clicking on this “Filter” you will be able to access all the nodes for this kit, in their versions for grayscale or color.

USE

In this collection we have two large groups of nodes, the Transformation nodes themselves (Position, Scale, Rotation…) and also the Deformation nodes (Skew, Stretch, Bend…).

In Designer we have a fundamental Atomic Node which is Transformation 2D. It is able to make any change to Position, Scale and Rotation and it acts in a very similar way to the Transform tool in Photoshop. But this node has a special feature, as indicated in the manual:

The settings for scaling and rotation are not absolute, and do not relate to the 2D view directly. If you type in an Angle or Stretch value, you must Apply it, and can then not easily reset it. Best way to wipe the Rotation and Stretch settings is to reset it to default.

It is a node that, in the case of Rotations and Stretch, is more intended to be used manually, using the 2D viewport interface. If we use it numerically, all transformations, except for translations, must be applied in steps. This way of acting can be very useful and convenient in certain situations. But not so much in others.

The nodes presented here, like the ones that Julian did in his day, act in an “absolute” way. When we apply a scale or a rotation, the slider stays there with that transformation value. And we can return to it at any time to modify it. This only happens with the Position, in the original Transformation 2D Atomic Node. Here it’s so with EVERYTHING.

For the rest, before going node by node, I will tell you some generic things that affect all or almost all:

  • For Scale changes and for Deformation intensities I have preferred to use percentage type sliders. Some go from 0% to 100% and others from -100% to +100% I know that in other Designer nodes it is more common to use normalised values (from 0 to 1 or from -1 to +1), but as a creator and artist I generally prefer to think in percentage terms when I think about the scale or the intensities of a deformation. I like to think of “25%” rather than “0.25”, but of course we can also enter floating values to fine tune and having “115.25%”. Oh, and no parameter is clamped: we can go beyond -100 and +100 (although in some cases you may get very extreme results going far away).
  • For the Rotation I have preferred not to use the native Designer widget, with the rotor and the double slider for turns & degrees, but I have included a simple slider that goes from -180 to 180 degrees, because again, I also believe that those are the most common ranges of rotation. I never need to rotate “15 turns” in Designer. If we were talking about an animation program it would be different.
  • In almost every node we can change the Pivot. If we do not change it, in a rotation, scale or any deformation everything will take place with respect to the center, but with the pivot we can make it with respect to any of the corners, the center of the sides or any desired point. In some nodes you may never need to change it… but I have preferred to keep it in all, except for position changes, where it does not make sense.
  • In all nodes (except Safe Rot Ext, where it is not relevant) we can change the Tiling Mode which, by default, is in “Relative to Input” mode (that is: generally active) to “Absolute” mode to remove it completely or leave it only at X or Y.
  • In almost all nodes (except Safe Rot Ext, where it is not needed) we can change the Matte Color. That is, the color that appears when we reduce our image and we have disabled tiling. By default it is black, but we can change it to another gray or color.
  • And in all nodes we can change the Filtering, which by default is Bilinear but we can change it to Nearest. Something very useful in certain occasions, although generally it is not necessary to touch.

Let’s see now node by node:

Position and Rotation

No big mystery. The first one can only change the position, being 0.5 the default value and the second one only changes the rotation, being 0 degrees the default value.

Scale

In this node you can change the scale uniformly or independently, along X and Y. Or in a combined way, if it’s more comfortable for us. You will see how interesting it is to be able to have the rotation and specific scales that we have given to an element as a value that we can read and alter at any time, unlike what happens with the original Transformation 2D, where we often have to reset the transformation matrix if we want to make any change.

Transform PSR

It’s a node that has the 3 previous ones in one. We can translate, rotate, scale uniformly and non-uniformly. Having this node we could do without the 3 previous ones, but I prefer to keep all of them, because there are many times that we have completely clear that we only want to make a unique kind of transformation to a certain input.

Rot Int

This is a very interesting node that serves to be able to rotate an element that occupies all our image without that nothing of the element disappears. That is to say: at the same time that the rotation takes place, it is also reduced according to the angle, so that the initial square always touches the limits of the image, without going out. If we change the pivot, logically things change, but the result obtained can also be very interesting.

Safe Rot Ext

This is one of the most complex and useful nodes of the set. And of which I am particularly proud: in its first version, made after seeing Szymon Wójciak’s tweet, it only scaled the image when it was rotated so that nothing from the outside would ever “enter”. It is the opposite of the previous node: instead of being reduced, the image is enlarged when rotated. Something very useful, for example, to be able to freely rotate a vertical gradient so that it adapts according to the angle. But then I realized that I could go further, and here comes the most interesting part. But I will tell you about that later, in a section dedicated to this node.

And so far all the transformation nodes. The following are deformation nodes:

Skew

Which performs a tilt of the image on any of the axes. By combining the two axes and changing the pivot we can perform very extreme transformations (in fact we can also rotate the image).

Stretch

Scales the image differently on one side or the other. Again, by acting on the two axes, and even more if we change the pivot, the possibilities are enormous. Try it.

Bend Exponential

It is a deformation that “bends” the image, as if it were an Arabian roof tile. It does so along any of the axes, and initially with respect to the center, but if we change the pivot we can make it with respect to the sides. It is called “exponential” because it basically deforms x as a function of y^2 (and inversely). It is a very “cheap” and simple deformation to calculate, mathematically speaking.

Bend Circular

It is another of the most complex nodes, perhaps the one that has given me more work and headaches. And more out of stubbornness than anything else. In principle it may seem very similar to the previous one, but it is not. Here the deformations always follow the curves of circumferences. When you take the deformation to the extreme it becomes more evident. Thanks to Javier Colominas and Luis Rández with the mathematics behind this. Ahh, and thanks also to Geogebra, where I could study and understand everything that had to happen. Here you have the functional setup. Geogebra is a marvellous gem.

Setup in Geogebra to study the behaviour for the ABS Bend Circular
Graph for “circular_bend” function, the core for ABS Bend Circular
Bulge Gauss

It is a deformation similar to Bend, but in this case it can be applied to one side and not to the other. So we can have one side straight and the opposite side curved. And also can be apply independently to extremes. It was relatively easy to obtain, but it immediately began to “bother me” the fact that the deformation was transforming into a kind of Gaussian bell when it became more extreme… so then I started working on the next one.

Bulge Parabolic

With this one, something similar to the Bend Circular happened to me, I ended up taking it forward by stubbornness. I wanted to obtain a deformation where the curves were always parabolic and where it did not appear that effect “Gauss bell” that appears in the previous one. With this node also Luis Rández gave me a hand with the mathematics, but it was decisive the help of Esger in the Substance Designer Discord.

Play with all of these nodes, changing the pivot, to see how the deformation changes drastically.

And of course, if you feel like getting into the world of Pixel Processor I encourage you to inspect its graphs by opening the SBS directly with Designer. But before you touch anything, make a backup!.

Let’s go now with some notes more specific to the Safe Rot Ext node (I sincerely believe that one of the most useful of the pack).

Safe Rot Ext. The details

This node rotates the image while enlarging it. After creating it I realized that by using it in combination with certain images I could get tileable results. Which was a surprise. A tileable image is no longer tileable as soon as you rotate it. Unless we also zoom it, with certain kind of images. Marco Vitale has a very interesting article on this subject in ArtStation.

Pixel Processor graph for the ABS Safe Rot Ext node

Of course, a noise, a dirt, grunge image or organic noise will never be tileable once we rotate it, except if we zoom and rotate it 45 degrees. But there are many images, modular type, with repeating structures, that can be rotated many angles, if we also scale them. And this is what this node can do automatically for you.

If we connect a Tile Generator, a Mesh 2, a Fibers 2, a Weave 2, etc… those kind of images with repeating elements can be safely rotated (keeping the tileability) using the “Rotate with Safe Steps” mode of this node. But for this it will be very important that first of all we indicate to the node how many tiles the incoming texture has. With a Tile Generator it is obvious: if it is 10×10 we will indicate 10. But with other nodes, like Mesh 2, if we give 7 to the tiling to our node we have to increase it to double, 14 (because the internal modularity is 14), and then yes, we can change the slider “Steps for Safe Rotation” to rotate.

As a curiosity: in a 10×10 Tile Generator we can find exactly 40 possible rotation angles (10 for each 90 degrees) in which the texture remains tileable, once it is rotated and scaled conveniently.

Tiling for Safe Rot can be equal to input tiling…
…but sometimes you must double it, depending on specific cases

MORE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Apart from the aforementioned Julián Rojas, creator of what is the germ of these nodes, I would also like to thank:

Andrei Zelenco, a wizard Designer user who I like to consider as “the god of Pixel Processor and FX-Map”. In his ArtStation you can see his incredible creations, totally procedural, using those tools. Andrei created a Facebook group time ago, Inside the Node, together with another great guy and master, Marco Vitale, where both share a multitude of complex and interesting setups using the most technical part of the program. Thanks to several tutorials shared in that group by Andrei and others I have been able to learn enough about Pixel Processor to be able to develop these plugins.

Luis Rández, friend and professor of mathematics at the University of Zaragoza, who helped me with several formulas in a couple of nodes (Bend Circular and Bulge Parabolic). And also to decipher a very strange issue with function nomenclatures in Geogebra.

Several people who have helped me on Twitter with some mathematical formulas, such as:

Javier Colominas – This smart guy helped with formulas for the starting version of circular deformations.

Pedro J. Molina – Thanks for the “uni-step” function needed to change the pivot of the circular deformations. Although I would learn more about “uni-step” later, from Luis Rández.

Szymon Wójciak – Who gave me the idea to create the first version of Safe Rot Ext.

Several Substance Discord users, such as Esger van der Post, Luca Giarrizo and others, who helped me with their technical advice.

And I’m sure I’m leaving someone out… Many thanks to all of you.

I hope these nodes will be useful in your work with Designer.

Frame Colors, plugin for Designer

Here is my second plugin for Substance Designer: “Frame Colors”. After the first one, “Print Modified Values”, I immediately started with this new utility. The purpose of this plugin is very simple: to quickly change the color of selected frames choosing between various predefined samples in a palette.

⬇️ Download “Frame Colors”
Frame Colors in action

How to install it

Once you have downloaded and unzipped the ZIP file, move the main folder “etr_frame_colors” (which also contains a .json file and another subfolder folder with the same name) to where you normally have other Designer plugins installed.

If you have never done it I recommend you to use this directory:

/Users/NAME/Documents/Adobe/Adobe Substance 3D Designer/python/sduserplugins/

Then start Designer, open Preferences / Projects, click on the vertical tab “User project” (inside Configuration / Project Files) and then on the horizontal tab Python. Click on the little + icon on the right and add the above directory. And as indicated in yellow, once this is done you will have to restart Designer.

Once Designer is restarted, the plugin should be loaded. But just in case, open Tools / Plugin Manager and check that the checkbox of our plugin is enabled. Doing this, by the way, you can activate or deactivate any plugin.

As soon as you install it, you will not see it appear in your top bar. To do this you must first create a new Substance Graph. Do it. Now you will see a new little green frame button appearing in the main toolbar. And this one can enable or disable the big group of color samples immediately below. I recommend to close the Atomic nodes to make room for this (after all, I particularly never add them from here, but using the space bar)

How to use it

It is very simple: select the frame or frames you want to colorise and press any of these small color buttons. You can use a “lasso selection” to select a bunch of frames and also nodes, don’t worry: the plugin will recognise frames, discarding nodes or any other graph element, and will apply the color.

As you can see, default blue is marked with a dot. I recommend to use the first vanish-subtle colors with big frames, the ones that are behind a big group of nodes. And leave the more vivid-strong colors for those frames that are used as a call for attention in some special or important node.

DISCLAIMERS

SHORT: I have done my best to create a stable and robust tool. But use with caution, please. I recommend to create a copy of your graph before proceed to comment your nodes using this tool.

LONG: THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Print Modified Values, plugin for Designer

I present you my first plugin for Adobe Substance 3D Designer: “Print Modified Values”. The purpose of this plugin is to add a Comment, as a “child” of a node, containing the information of those parameters that have been modified.

In February 2023 I will teach a Designer course in my town (I will share more information soon) and in the preparation of the contents for that course I immediately realized how useful this tool would be. I searched and asked around, but found nothing, so I got down to work myself.

After a lot of work, here you have the first version. I hope it will be useful, especially to those of you who like to spread the word by sharing screenshots of your Graphs. It is certainly saving me a lot of work, hopefully more than it has taken me to create it… 🤪 In any case I have learned a lot, not only about Designer API, but also about the internal structure of the application itself.

⬇️ Download “Print Modified Values”
Print Modified Values in action

How to install it

Once you have downloaded and unzipped the ZIP file, move the main folder “etr_print_modified_values” (which also contains a .json file and another subfolder folder with the same name) to where you normally have other Designer plugins installed.

If you have never done it I recommend you to use this directory:

/Users/NAME/Documents/Adobe/Adobe Substance 3D Designer/python/sduserplugins/

Then start Designer, open Preferences / Projects, click on the vertical tab “User project” (inside Configuration / Project Files) and then on the horizontal tab Python. Click on the little + icon on the right and add the above directory. And as indicated in yellow, once this is done you will have to restart Designer.

Once Designer is restarted, the plugin should be loaded. But just in case, open Tools / Plugin Manager and check that the checkbox of our plugin is enabled. Doing this, by the way, you can activate or deactivate any plugin.

As soon as you install it, you will not see it appear in your top bar. To do this you must first create a new Substance Graph. Do it. Now you will see 2 new little buttons appear in the toolbar: the one without color can activate or deactivate the presence of the other one, in orange.

How to use it

It is very simple: suppose we have a Splatter Circular node that we have modified and we want to write down what parameters we have changed. We simply select it and click the little orange button. Automatically a Comment node will be added as a “child” of our Splatter (“child” means that when we move the node, the comment is moved with it).

You can also use “Q” as a keyboard shortcut instead of the button, as it is much more agile. I have chosen that letter because it evokes “Query” (ask the node about its own parameters). If you don’t like this shortcut or it conflicts with another one you already have, you can change it by editing the __init__.py file located inside the “print_modified_values” subfolder. But be careful not to touch anything else, if you don’t know what you are doing 😉.

DISCLAIMERS

SHORT: I have done my best to create a stable and robust tool. But use with caution, please. I recommend to create a copy of your graph before proceed to comment your nodes using this tool.

LONG: THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Originality above all: bank plagiariz(ed) Nature by Numbers (SOLVED)

— IR A VERSIÓN EN ESPAÑOL —

UPDATE October 15, 2014: I am pleased to report that, after the release of this news, both the National Bank of Greece and also the audiovisual company creators of video contacted me in order to fix this situation. And we have finally reached an agreement: production company has licensed the use of the original images from Nature by Numbers, and has committed to rebuild the promotional video using my images, with its color adjustments and customized postpro. So finally everything ended well ;-)

Four years ago, when I finished and I shared my animation Nature by Numbers, I never imagined that it would be so successful and eventually had such a repercussion. It is a curious thing happens when you create something: you never know how it will be received by the rest of the people… Sometimes you feel very satisfied and proud of a new project, but it remains completely ignored. And sometimes you think you’ve done something too rare and personal, that will not catch interest at all, and it happens just the opposite. This was the case for NBN, certainly: a video that today has nearly 4 million views on YouTube and a million and a half on Vimeo, which has been linked from many websites and it has brought me many satisfactions and surprises.

The last surprise, not exactly happy, is that someone plagiarized part of it. And I use the word “plagiarism” quite properly, I think. Because is not that they have used images of the animation to create other content (I mean a “copy-paste”, something that has also happened before), but they have re-created completely new scenes “slightly inspired” in my work —read with ironic tone—. And it’s not a video made ​​for a small company in the middle of nowhere, in the other corner of the world. Nope… This is a promotional video for the National Bank of Greece.

Tomorrow I will send a small note to the gentlemen of that financial institution. Especially, to translate to them the originality and professional attitude of the company that manages his advertising account (since I prefer to believe that the bank staff does not know anything about this issue).

By the way, thank you very much to Alexander Selkirk, who put me on the track of this fact, through Twitter.

I leave you with a few screenshots, so you can compare because how knows… maybe it’s only my imagination ;-)

00_nbn_vs_nbg01_nbn_vs_nbg02_nbn_vs_nbg03_nbn_vs_nbg04_nbn_vs_nbg05_nbn_vs_nbg06_nbn_vs_nbg

The promotional video, hosted on YouTube was deleted after the publication of this post, although I keep a copy, for posterity, logically ;-)

And here is “Nature by Numbers”, with its original music by a genius, Wim Mertens:

About Colorway and Colimo. Chat with Víctor Feliz (Motiva)

[ Ir a la versión en Español ]

UPDATE, July 18, 2014

The day after this post was published, several forums and mailing lists started threads on this issue. Some examples: this topic in Modo oficial TF Forum and also this one in NewTek, or this one in CGSociety, or this thread in a Softimage List, and more…

Brad Peebler (co-founder of Modo and President of the Americas at The Foundry) made a couple of interventions (here and here) to explain “their side of story”. He expressed also his point of view on this same blog (look comments here, below).

Two days ago Brad also sent me an email where he wanted to reach out me personally to explain their side of the story. I answered, offering my blog in order to update this post with that notice (still waiting for his response).

Brad also expressed his desire to spoke with Víctor directly, and both them finally contacted yesterday by Skype, to try address this issue and smooth things. And finally this topic was added to Modo Forums were you can see a link to a new interview with Víctor Feliz on TF site (no mentions to Colorway/Colimo “affaire”, though).

brad_forums_1

 

It seems that all these differences have been finally polished and that looks great :-)

brad_forums_2

 

<— END OF UPDATE —>

As you probably now, The Foundry has recently released a new product: “Colorway”, a tool that makes possible to review and control ‘looks’ in our final renders in real-time. Users (our clients, for example) can also review and make modifications within predetermined material and lighting options.

Here is the teaser for Colorway:

The first time I saw this announcement I immediately have a counterposed feel:

Happiness, because another great tool was released by a company that owns the main application I use on a daily basis since 7 years ago (Modo), meaning that this one will be even more powerful, because the direct connection between both products.

Sadness, because this “new” product remembers so much to another tool that has been out there from some years ago: “Colimo” from the small but smart company Motiva. A firm leaded (and composed exclusively) by a couple of good friends of mine, Víctor Feliz and Alejandro Suárez, working hard on their small studio in the south of Spain.

Here is a quick presentation for Colimo:

But, hey, this is the “Real World”, one were competition exists and that is good for us, the users. It isn’t?

However I knew some interesting facts since time ago about Víctor, Alejandro, Colimo and Luxology (now The Foundry). I knew that Víctor and Alejandro were in near contact with different persons from Lux/TF several times on the past years.

And since I read a comment in Facebook by Víctor, a couple of days ago, were he didn’t show himself specially happy with this situation, I decided to contact him and maintain a small chat to get more details on this issue.

Here is the transcription of that conversation:

Cristóbal: When was your first contact with Luxology, Víctor?

Víctor: In April 2010 a retailer of Luxology in Portugal (Paraglobal), contacted me to see if we could create a version of Colimo for Modo. So I was introduced to Brad Peebler (co-founder at Luxology) and we started to work with a beta version of Modo 501. In September 2010 they released Modo 501 to the public in Madrid and Luxology invited us to come and show Colimo 1.0 (unreleased for public on that moment). We accepted, of course!

Cristóbal: How evolved these first contacts?

Víctor: Brad is a great guy and invited us to go to Bordeaux (France) to talk with more calm and to present other developments. In December 2010 we were showing a more evolved version of Colimo and the foundations of another project that would later become RealPerception OFX.

Cristóbal: All that means that you started a close collaboration?

Víctor: Well, not exactly, after that first contacts we received almost no other feedback, except for some emails related to diverse subjects, like trying to create another different plugins for Modo, but that stuff never arrived to see the light (this is the bad side of R&D: sometimes projects die on the road…)

Cristóbal: This means that contacts stopped completely on that moment?

Víctor: Nope! There is an extra important detail: much more recently, in May 2013, I was introduced to Bill Collis (CEO at The Foundry) and he asked me to tell them more details about Colimo in a video-conference with him, side by side with Andy Whitmore (who was the presenter for Colorway some days ago) and his “Chief Scientist” Simon Robinson.

Cristóbal: Yep!, that is an important fact! They seemed really interested on your work.

Víctor: Yes, but then the time started to run, and giving the fact hat I didn’t received anymore news from them regarding to this subject (even if we spoke about other projects) I just assumed that they simply were not more interested on Colimo.

Cristóbal: Until past latest week, I assume…

Víctor: Exactly. Now we arrive to July 2014 and magic!: Colorway appears. Bill Collis regularly and quickly answered to me by Skype, but no more actually. Although I must admit that Brad Peebler is standing up for himself, even if he don’t finds ethical problems with what has happened.

Cristóbal: I understand why you are not exactly happy, now… Some final words, Víctor?

Víctor: I want to stress that my “anger” is not because the competition, not at all!. It bothers me that they requested the meetings, asking for functions and other details, when they had this in mind (create their own product so similar to ours).

More details: this week they showed also a “Colorway Presenter”, a tool that allows to final user (the client) to change only some predefined options, and this is extremely similar to one of features we showed to them in our meet in Madrid (and they liked the more), the “Export to Web” in Colimo.

Obviously we have been too trusting and naive. Maybe because Luxology / The Foundry seemed so cool and nice people, specially comparing with other big companies.

In fact, it’s not “angry” but “perplexity”. And I wonder what the Lux/TF fans would say if this movement would be made by Autodesk, for example.

Finally: I understand that final users only want good tools that works fine for their needs, and Colorway, of course will do it’s job perfectly fine, I suppose. And all these disagreements between developers is not something of their interest… But this is something very sad even for the final users, because third-part developers can loose their interest on creating new tools for TF apps. In fact I had some other interesting ideas and proof of concept tools for Modo that finally, well… won’t see the light. I mean: the final users also loose something with all these issues.

Cristóbal: Thanks for you time, Víctor. Just a small advice: don’t show again an original idea to big companies, even if they look so cool and nice. Keep it closed under four keys ;-)