We need to start talking about the future of UTAU's engine development before it's too late

Cign said:

I've been aware that this is a problem, but I've been disheartened and worried that my lack of programming skills would prevent me from being a part of the solution. But what I do have experience in is graphic design, and thanks to Lethe reminding me I think this might be something I could help with.
Graphic and advertisement design is the one thing I have workplace level experience in, albeit for mostly displays and commercial venues. I'd be ready to help with colour schemes, aesthetics and UI design, logos, that sort of brainstorming. It might be the biggest this I've ever done but I feel like it would be my duty to help in anyway I can.

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Lystrialle said:

To be honest, I'm actually really interested in helping out in a team for this (having been brainstorming ideas about this for over a year and even written a ton of design concepts for something like it). The only thing that's making me worried about potentially spearheading a project like this is that someone like me, who just got out of a class that teaches you how to do basic C++ and nothing beyond that, easily ends up being that "Ideas Guy" who ends up putting tons of work on the table and ideas without doing any actual programming legwork and it makes me feel really bad. :/

I, personally, am very serious about this venture, however, to the point where I'm willing to put every UTAU project I have on hold in favor of something like this, since I feel like it'd provide a much more significant service to the community than the few covers I barely have the motivation to squeeze in at this stage and my own personal UTAU that I'm the only one with real stake in.

But do we have enough devs, or, more importantly, interested devs?

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SarcasTec said:

We can always use a good logo and some nice looking icons. And website design, do you do that? Cause if whatever project will come out of this takes off a website will be needed.

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cubialpha said:

So it sounds like we're having a roll call for continuation/revival of UTAU development? Do you think masao would be interested in taking up the cause with you? Make this happen y'all. If you come up with a hub or a kind of "flyer" or some recruitment post, I will share the sexual relations out of it. That's about the best I can do to help.

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MillyAqualine said:

Same as you, I'd lvoe to take part but sadly my skills and knowledge is more than limited (no matter how much documentation and tutorials I read down but again it's complex so) so instead I'll just give the link around

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SarCaustic said:

I am going to add this in first, then the main post.
The fact Utau still works isn't by luck, being written in VisualBasic6.0 it was written on a legacy and unsupported language from the start. VB6 was discontinued in 2006.
But Utau still works because Microsoft chose to keep it compatible it still and should probably still remain so for up through the next Windows release.
That being said, Utau is still on an old codebase regardless and still very buggy and is in need of a successor.

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Imo, people shouldn't aim for an utau-equivalent, but something superior.

One major flaw in see with attempts to replace it is that they end up limiting themselves/holding themselves back trying to be a 1:1 drop in.
We need something that is backward-compatible so we can load old utau projects and voicebanks but maybe not replicate all the functions exactly.
For example the ability to parse an oto.ini but not edit it because it can be considered "legacy".
And you can do that without dropping support for things like resamplers.

Some ideas because I suck:

-Basic interface for early versions. "keep it simple stupid", don't cram all the functions in buttons on the top and sides. Add functions as you go, not all at once.
-separate envelopes and volume/dynamics editing. Because as we all know, as soon soon as we start editing envelopes the smoothness of the render can be affected. Also it's cumbersome.
-continuous note editing/tuning. Since separating each note slows things down immensely.
-midi-style pitch editing, maybe with control points and bezer curves on top of free handing.
-automatic note spacing/linking. Be able to ignore slight gaps between notes while also removing the need for rests.

Superficial things like logos and themes should be at the bottom of the list and functionality and stability should go first.
...and don't bother with mobile versions, phones and tablets aren't fast enough generally and unless you are also willing to make an engine from scratch to be compatible it's probably not worth it

If possible it would also be a good idea to discuss things with people who make or have made backends (the resamplers and wavtools) to get their opinion on how aspects such as commands and temporary files should be taken care of.

Also another idea is to make sure it's inherently multiplatform, without the need to make multiple versions in the future.
You could use Mono (mono-project.com) and an open source GUI framework like Gtk to build the front-end portion at least. Just throwing stuff out there.

Just random stuff thrown out there, some stuff I only mention because it's always brought up in threads like this.

EDIT: Other projects like Cadencii, OpenUtau, ect doe exist but it may not be the best idea to use those.
Open Utau is an interface with no functionality (other than already being able to open UST files) so that may be an alright option but Cadencii surely wouldn't be. Being more of a way to use Vocaloid 1 and 2 in the same UI, Cadencii is already quite bloated and clumsy. You'd have to do a ton of scraping and throwing away most likely.

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Alphys said:

If this actually becomes a thing I will spread links and stuff like wildfire since that's really the only thing I might be good at. I'm glad this thread was made, though. Regardless of whether or not UTAU is going to last for more windows updates, UTAU desperately needs new updates itself. I would hate to see this program die because, aside from family and people I trust, this program is my safe space. I feel calm when I use it and it makes me so happy.

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Info said:

But Ameya still works on UTAU. He just released the multi-track plugin a while ago and he said it would be integrated into the program itself as a normal feature, so an update will happen and if UTAU does become unsupported I'm sure Ameya would bring out a fix, just one isn't truly needed right now.

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