Looking Back on RetopoFlows Development
Three years ago I got on a call with Patrick Moore and Wes Burke to discuss an idea while walking my dogs in the Southern California neighborhood where I was living at the time.
This idea was a thought on how we might kickoff custom tool development for Blender in a way that was sustainable, effective, and able to bring the tools I’d been envisioning for years to life. I’d grown tired of seeing so many great add-ons come and go, with nearly all of them fading away or breaking due to not being maintained.
Patrick was already an accomplished Python coder, having helped build an initial version of Pie Menus that played a pivotal role in what would eventually evolve into the Pie Menus we have in Blender today.
That phone call was the start of what would become RetopoFlow and ultimately lead to the creation of the Blender Market.
In 2013 there were hardly any examples of paid, or otherwise commercial add-ons. The few that existed typically went by the donation model, or took a temporary sale approach to raise initial funding. This was all well and good but invariably these projects ran out of funding or otherwise fizzled out. To tackle this project how I wanted, we needed a continuous revenue stream in order to keep funding the development.
Building a product is only the first step, maintaining the product is the real challenge. Our goal was never to make money (although that’s always a nice perk), our goal was to create an ecosystem that could become self-sustaining.
The outcome of the SoCal call between Patrick, Wes, and myself was that CG Cookie would fund initial development up front, out of pocket, and then look to release a commercial product in 3–6 months. The aim being to bring in enough revenue to pay for both the initial and on-going development.
In August of that same year we demoed our work at SIGGRAPH and then released the first version of Contours to a mostly warm welcome. It did well, selling 994 copies in just over a year.
The next year Jonathan Denning joined the team and in October 2014 we released Polystrips, a second tool in the same vision. It did pretty well, selling 129 copies over two months.
These two tools were the manifestation of our idea to create a sustainable development ecosystem that didn’t previously exist.
As with any project, though, there were challenges. One such challenge was foresight.
Upon releasing the second add-on, Polystrips, it became abundantly clear that these tools belonged as one, being separate pieces of the same pie. And so, just a few months after the Polystrips release we made the difficult decision to merge the tools together, re-releasing them as a single add-on, RetopoFlow. Which brings me back to where we are today.
RetopoFlow is beginning to come into it’s own as a production-ready retopology toolset for Blender that’s pushing the boundaries and exploring new workflows. It still has a long ways to go but I’m thrilled with how far we’ve come.
From it’s initial release to today, RetopoFlow has sold nearly 1,000 copies (not counting the initial sales for Contours and Polystrips) and collectively has brought in $68,300 of revenue.
With that revenue we’ve been able to keep up the development, paying for Patrick and Jon’s time, while also funding three separate development sprints.
These sprints have been a crucial part of our success, as they are where we bring the team together for a few days at a time and sprint through new feature development, laying the foundations for work that’ll set the pace and direction for the rest of the year. In Jonathan Denning’s words:
…this is where the magic happened, I mean, each tool basically got its start or direction during a sprint
I have no qualms saying that these sprints are largely responsible for making RetopoFlow what it is today.
In addition to RetopoFlows progress, this experiment is what ultimately led to the creation of the Blender Market. Our add-on was an internal proof-of-concept to test the waters, evaluating the demand and need for a more effective method of maintaining and distributing add-ons for Blender professionals. But I digress, that’s a topic for another day.
Entering 2016, I’m more certain, and more excited than I’ve ever been that this project is paving new roads for our team and for Blender. As I write this, we’re putting the final touches on v1.2.0 and laying the foundation for v2.0.
This year will see a continuation of our development efforts, working to bring a full retopology toolset to Blender that sets a new standard for speed and workflow while retaining complete control over the final mesh.
Beyond new features, though, I look forward to finding new ways that we can better leverage our efforts to contribute back to the Blender Community and Blender its self. Among other things, I’d like to see us contribute more code and design back to Blender, to release more re-usable snippets and resources for other developers, and to continue pushing the Blender Market to succeed as a mechanism of sustainable development for independent tool designers and artists.
As a final note, I’d like to give a shoutout to a few key people that have helped make this project a reality:
- Patrick Moore for willingly taking on, and making my crazy idea a reality
- Jonathan Denning for his steady head and code wrangling experience
- Wes Burke for believing in me and agreeing to us funding the expedition
- Paweł Łyczkowski for his excellent icon design and workflow input
- Ton Roosendaal for his ever-lasting optimism, energy, and advice
- Chris O’Bryan, my neighbor for speeding up RetopoFlow ~100x
- And the Blender Community as a whole for making this possible, even when we didn’t always agree :)
