Nevercenter Activity?

#1

Anyone been to the Nevercenter Silo Facebook page recently? After two years of silence there was a post about a tutorial on DigitalTutors. In response some folks responded as one might expect.

They then responded with this:

Yikes. Feels like reading our own obituary around here. We’re not so keen on the idea of resting in peace–much rather do something like what Jaye suggests.*

Jay - send us an email to support@nevercenter.com and we can look up your registration details and provide you with a fresh download link.

*(We do recognize and appreciate the viewpoint of everyone who wishes updates would come faster. It has been a long time. We wish we’d been able to get things out sooner, as well. Just want to add that, lest anyone feels ignored or thinks we don’t care about it.)

Jaye Cline Rise from the dead, Silo!

So possible hints on an update? Thoughts?

#2

Nah i dont believe they’ll update anything. I’ve said that before, i think the original developers are no longer associated with nevercenter. They might not even have the source code anymore.

If Silo is to be updated one day… it might only happen as a result of a massive interest from us, because it would require a big investment. I dont see this happening, the 3D industry is completely monopolized and the big companies would never let Silo surface again (back in the day Silo was used to model the cars in SEGA & Sonic All Star Racing and a few other big titles, but nobody knows that, right?).

#3

Those things might be true and yet at the same time the newest post on the Facebook page is this.

So…I don’t know. I get the feeling they are playing around with the idea at the very least.

#4

Nah, last update was about three and a half years ago…only thing that has happened since then is the relocation of the user forum. So I would not get my hopes up if I were you. They like to keep dicking the users around with BS just to keep whatever revenue they get from Silo flowing. Nothing more.

#5

I always find these “Silo isn’t getting updated” threads interesting, because that assumption is definitely wrong.

There is an update in the works already. I would know, because I’m helping out the Nevercenter folks a bit with it. I can’t share many details yet; but it will add another platform, 64-bit support on some platforms, and fix a good handful of bugs.

outburner: the originals that started Nevercenter are still there, and they definitely haven’t lost the source code. I’m staring at it right now. :slight_smile:

#6

That’s great news :). It’ll be nice to see Silo moving forward again. I’m relatively new to it, but I’ve found I’ve been using it more and more at work to do certain things quickly - esp retypo.

#7

Mike, you’d better not be foolin! - After years of wait, it just would not be funny!

But this is fantastic news and thank you for letting us know! :applause:

#8

No joke, honest. They are fairly minor changes (see the Facebook page for confirmation that the update is coming), but there is a major platform addition. I’ll leave it up to nevercenter to provide any more info or screenshots, etc.

My goal is to try to have a release wrapped up by the end of the month, but no promises. :wink:

#9

Great news Mike! To be truthful a few updates, 64bit support, and bug fixes would be amazing.

Go Mikey go!

#10

The blame for these wrong assumptions lies solely with Nevercenter…but good news. Still love to use Silo :slight_smile:

#11

You just made me into a religious person.

Could this move be considered as a ‘resurrection’ of Silo and a move towards a ‘next’ version, or a service release only?

#12

Heh, we’re not worthy! :bowdown:

The intention is to work towards regular (feature) updates, but I’m not in a position to promise anything. There is a lot of focus on internal cleanup and improvement under the hood right now; all software needs a good internal scrubbing from time to time. As for future plans, those are in flux, but there are actually plans (if that answers your question). :slight_smile:

#13

That sounds amazing… i for one, kept using Silo almost exclusively for all those years (in fact i’m modeling a gas station right now). We dont need many new features, just a couple of basic ones that were skipped in the last version. Keep Silo zen as it has been until now. But first flush out those pesky bugs :smiley:

Keep us updated Mike!

#14

This is all very interesting, keeping my fingers crossed that it’s true.

Steve

#15

I hope Silo expands to support more formats. Especially rigged formats even if Silo itself doesn’t do rigging.

#16

So, mikefarny…will it come with Arnold integrated? Or a SiloToArnold bridge? :wink:
Just kidding. Looking forward to 64-bit support.

#17

Thats probably my biggest challenge when working with Silo. I use OBJ to export back and forward, but sometimes the UV mapping gets destroyed (also it doesnt support 2 UV sets, etc.). Formats like DAE or FBX would be great.

#18

Would love to see a boolean modeling tool as well.

#19

Heh, nope, nothing to do with Arnold or rendering. :wink: My personal role in this is just as a bit of extra help; Silo is still Nevercenter’s baby through and through. So don’t expect too much inside baseball from me, so to speak.

#20

I just did a boolean subtract (select two objects, go to Modify -> Boolean -> Boolean Subtract), so either it’s already there in 2.2 or you’ll see it in the next release. I haven’t gone back and installed a vanilla 2.2 to check if it was there already or not.