Reflections on My Learning Journey

Over the past few weeks, I have explored different ways to contribute to open-source projects. Initially, I started with small contributions, such as adding annotations to OpenStreetMap and making minor improvements to a web extension. These experiences helped me understand how open-source collaboration works and what kinds of contributions are accessible to beginners.

Finding My Strengths and Challenges

Through this process, I realized that I can contribute effectively in areas like UI fixes and documentation improvements. These tasks allow me to get familiar with a project’s structure without diving into complex code right away. When it comes to coding contributions, my ability to contribute depends largely on the project. Some projects have simpler tasks that I can work on, but for large-scale or highly complex codebases, I still lack the experience to contribute meaningfully. This has been one of my biggest challenges—finding tasks that match my current skill level while still allowing me to learn and grow.

Next Steps

Moving forward, I plan to continue contributing through UI fixes and documentation updates while gradually building the skills necessary to take on more complex coding tasks. At the same time, I have started researching projects that align with my interests and skill set. Here are some potential projects I am considering contributing to:

1. Sketchfab
   Sketchfab is an online 3D model library, and it happens to be the one I use most frequently. Their GitHub repository mainly consists of Python-based projects, focusing on developing plugins for game engines and modeling software. These plugins enable seamless model imports, reducing redundant material and skeleton compression/decompression processes. While this is an active and well-maintained project, it may not be beginner-friendly, as contributing requires in-depth knowledge of game engines.

2. Blender-For-UnrealEngine-Addons
   This is an addon that allows for one-click exporting from Blender to Unreal Engine. It involves complex data type conversions and is tightly integrated with the engine, making contributions quite challenging. However, the community maintainers are very friendly and actively encourage contributions, especially in areas like improving the project’s documentation and website, as well as creating tutorials. Maybe one day, I can contribute by making a tutorial and adding it to the project’s wiki.

3. Poly-hammer/BlenderTools
   This is another Blender-to-Unreal export plugin, originally part of the Blender Tools project. After Epic Games discontinued the official updates, the community decided to fork and continue maintaining it under the Poly-hammer organization. The contributing page is well-documented, and contributors are encouraged to help improve the website. While I find the actual plugin development quite challenging, I might start by making small improvements to the website.

4. Twine
   Twine is an intuitive narrative game development tool that allows developers to quickly prototype interactive storytelling experiences. It’s one of the most well-structured projects I’ve come across recently, with clear instructions that make contributing much easier. Most importantly, Twine still needs localization support, which presents a great opportunity for me to contribute. Since localization is both meaningful and relatively beginner-friendly, I plan to start contributing to Twine next week.