What is the right and wrong way to sell your plugins?

renderiza

Hi,

I am seeking advice in this topic so I can learn from people that have more experience than me. At the moment I am creating a script that I was thinking of selling it for two or three dollars but to tell you the truth it just doesn’t feel like the right thing to do. I am kind of convinced now that I will release it for free soon in hopes that people will like to try it.

What do you think is the right thing to do and have you ever been in this state of thinking?

Thanks

Chris Fullmer

Probably lots of different opinions on this, but here's a few of mine.

Well, if its a good script, people will buy it. If people don't think its worth it, then they won't buy it. No harm done.

You can sell them online from your own website. You could advertise here if you wan to advertise it. Can I ask what your script does?

You could also make a free version and "pro" version. that way people can test the simple version and if they really like it and decide they need more functionality, then they can download the full pay version.

Chris

renderiza

Very good advice thank you.

@chris fullmer said:

Can I ask what your script does?

Its called "Rain" and the script allows you to have animated rain & thunder with sound so you can present your own projects with it.

I was planning to release it little later so I could fix some thing but I will put a beta version up in DropBox so you can test it yourself. Actually you helped me figure out how to make the sky bright when the thunder hits by teaching me how to reach a page by name which makes me want to release it for free even more.

Here is the link;
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3q9aa57384xo253/Rain%20v1.0.0%20Beta.rar

Chris Fullmer

It sounds cool, don't release it for free because of me! I'll check it out.

Chris

Chris Fullmer

I'm getting this error:

Error; #<NoMethodError; undefined method `definition' for #<Sketchup;;Edge;0xb2d606c>>
C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8/Plugins/rain.rb;140;in `push_frame'
C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8/Plugins/rain.rb;139;in `each'
C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8/Plugins/rain.rb;139;in `push_frame'
C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8/Plugins/rain.rb;60;in `initialize'
C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8/Plugins/rain.rb;140;in `call'
C;/Program Files (x86)/Google/Google SketchUp 8/Plugins/rain.rb;140

I did see it raining and saw the thunder though. Very cool. I do not hear the thunder though. I could hear a sound effect when I reset the plugin.

Very cool concept,

Chris

renderiza

Hi,

Thanks for letting me know about does errors I got to see them also in the ruby console.

The sound effects need a lot of work, I have been trying to record rain to capture the right sound but it is still a work in process. I am hoping to the gods I can get a good thunder sound so I can put it right after the thunder animation but for now the only thing you should be hearing is a rain sound with few thunders here and there. The reset sound will be replaced eventually.

Thanks again for trying it.

iichiversii

This sounds very interesting, I'm a strong believer in more animations in sketchup and weather effects would be a great feature, will this feature be compatible with other 3rd party plugins ie render engines, key frame animation.
Also can it be exported with a animation to avi?
Please share a video if this feature at work

renderiza

Very good questions…

For alternative rendering engines I went ahead and tried LightUp and you can see the rain animation but it doesn’t show the thunders or the wet spots in the floor. Seem it doesn’t update the object is visibility while in LightUp render mode. I guess you can modify the code to make the thunder not rely in visibility but rather position to make it work inside LightUp. I have not tried Twilight Render but I have a feeling it might not work.

As for implementing other animation plugins I can say I am a very happy SimfonIA Animation Tools user and constantly use it to make a rough animation before translating it into code. Let’s say you animate something with that plugin, it can play the animation while the rain script is running but lag is something to watch for if you make too many simultaneous component animations.

As for other plugins that transition between scenes for animation I can imagine being a problem with how I use scenes styles to simulate the brightening of the sky when there is thunder. Maybe if that feature is eliminated I don’t see way other animation plugins shouldn’t work.

To export animation to avi I use Active Presenter for screen capturing since I currently don’t know how to write a movie exporter for my plugin. The export movie option in SimfonIA only works with animations done only inside that plugin. Maybe in the future since with SimfonIA the key frame data stays with the object I could leave it as an option for people that have that plugin as well for them to use their movie exporter.

I will eventually make a video of the rain plugin’s features when it is little bit more polish.

Thanks

renderiza

Hi,

I was testing the process of screen capturing the animation with Active Presenter and I am not so happy. The resolution setting had to be very low because if not the resulting video would have lagged very bad even though inside SketchUp there was no lag at all.

Renderiza