Blender awarded 6 GSoC projects

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SoC LogoThe projects that will participate on the Google Summer of Code 2008 have been announced, and again Blender was awarded with 6 projects!

Here is the list of approved projects:

  • Lightcuts for Blender
  • Editable topology for multi-resolution meshes
  • Freestyle integration
  • Automated testing framework for import / export scripts
  • ShrinkWrap Modifier
  • Improving Python Editing In Blender

If you want to know more about each project, visit this link. Now all we have to do is wait, till the end of the summer!

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    • http://www.zanqdo.com ZanQdo

      All of them are kick arse, good luck guys!

    • Marcus

      I love this!

      What a surprise that the Freestyle integration is finally done! I think results will make some jaws drop in the industry just as Big Buck Bunny did.

      Does the multires thing mean that changes on a high resolution level will change the low resolution mesh?

    • http://www.mumeli.org/en/ Serge Gielkens

      Great news. Good luck to the coders!

    • amoose136

      Freestyle WOOT!

    • Marslyr

      Wow,

      They all sound great, but I am sooo excited for freestyle!

    • http://www.svingo.com Christian Lehmann

      That’s great news. I just read over the lightcuts paper and this sounds very promising. All the best to all coders.

    • http://www.freezingmoon.org Dread Knight

      Whohoo!

    • http://www.letwory.net Nathan ‘jesterKing’ Letwory

      Congratulations to all accepted students. Good luck with your efforts.

    • http://www.smick.net smick

      I can’t believe freestyle got it. Heck yes!!! I was worried it was forgotten about, that’s why I mentioned it in a previous GSOC posting to stir the waters a bit.

      I guess that doesn’t mean that over the summer it will be completed, no guarantees at this point, but I’m pretty excited for the potential.

    • Gryphon

      @Marcus: Currently, multi-res meshes allow you to move verts around, rotate, scale and so on. After the project, we should be able to do things like extruding, cutting, duplicating, spinning and the like in a multi-res mesh. It’s really quite exciting… and Brecht is mentoring the project!

    • Dusty

      Woop!!! :)

    • Dusty

      Oh, I know this is probably not part of the 6 challenges, but I would love to see the retopo tools work a bit like ZBrush (wait!! just wait to here me out!! :) ) in the fact you can “stick” new verts to the outside of a model you are working and rotate.
      If you could get the paint topology feature to stick like that to the outside of the mesh so it rotates around the model, rather than just sit on top based on your view, that would be a REALLY cool feature!

    • http://www.leviathan-avc.com Thomas Vecchione

      I was wondering when this was going to get posted. I saw it some days ago and did a double take on the freestyle integration, you have no idea how happy that makes me.

      Seablade

    • tmr232

      That is soooo cool. I just can’t believe it. 6 projects, and all of them so cool. I can’t wait for the improved scripting…

    • http://anecdote.org.uk Joel

      Finally, FreeSyle integration, yipee!!!!!!!!!!

    • http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Hoehrer Höhrer

      Very nice selection of projects :) – I’m just sad that some of the previously suggested projects didn’t re-surface from last year.

      Werner

    • http://www.pirx.at marin

      Yippee, Freestyle made it in :)). Great news!

    • Sorbus

      Freestyle and shrinkwrap! Great! Blender is really coming of age now :)

    • http://home.deds.nl/~mp/ ysvry

      all great projects, freestyle is my fav as it gives more styles to the render pallet.

    • bob

      Freestyle!, that’s so cool!

    • http://www.digitalfxartist.com Digital FX Artist

      Sounds great! Hopefully these projects will get completed. Blender has had many projects fall through the cracks in past summers, hopefully this will be the year that they all get done and implemented in Blender.

      One idea I wanted to interject…

      Since I come from a Maya background, I have always thought a node based modeler and animation system would be a nice addition to Blender. Hearing what is in store for the multi-res mesh, this would be a great area for node based modeling. First of all you would have a node that creates your base object then you would create a subdivide node that sub-divides the mesh or adds a level of resolution, then each time you want to sub-divide the mesh further you would simply add a node to the end of the node list. You could simply go back to each node, click on it and that would take you back to that level (resolution) of the mesh. You could then edit that level and see the changes all the way down through the different resolutions. As for the extruding, cutting, duplicating, spinning, etc. You could easily make each of these nodes which would alter the model as needed. Each node would have an input for an object. This would consist of all facets of the object (i.e. vertices, faces, edges, center of the object, etc.). Each node in the list would alter any one or more of these facets depending on what the node does. The node would then output a complete object (i.e. vertices, faces, edges, center of the object, etc.). At the end of the list you would always have the Output Node. This node links the object to the scene. This would look and work similar to the current material nodes system. A mater of fact, you could use the current material node system to test the idea out to see if people would want to use it further.

      All of this could also be a set of modifiers, of course, but I know nodes would give a lot more flexibility and would allow you to share settings between objects. And since nodes are more of a tree structure instead of a linear set of modifications, you could do a lot of things modifiers can’t.

      If you are interested in hearing more of my rantings and ravings on nodes, please email me.

    • Tony

      Awesome

    • http://www.eofw.org Jarod

      Sounds great! very great!
      lightcuts look very cool to me!

    • Slowboy

      Is Lightcuts edging towards something like FPrime for Lightwave? If so, that sounds great!

    • zapman

      nice! good luck to all involved and thanks for your efforts guys and gals! :)

      can someone please point out to me what it’s about freestyle? never heard of it and you get quit unsatisfactory results when searching the net :S

    • zapman

      sry, I missed the link; so THATS freestyle.. :B

    • aws357

      I have great hope that the Bishop-Van Lommel project comes to term. Both are great coders. :)

      Improving python editing would be sweet and would allow more people to begin coding their own scripts :)
      How about using the node interface? Display piece of codes as nodes…

      The rest is nice, but the two above give me great anticipation as they have a lot of chance to be completed.

    • vilda

      dusty-shrinkwrap modifier actually could allow the retopology which you speak about.

    • Dusty

      Ah! Well thats quite exciting for me then! Thanks vilda!

    • Toontje

      All 6 projects are cool.But the coolest of them all is lightcuts. I’m always fearful that projects don’t get finished, but there is already some preliminary work done for lightcuts.

    • tikki

      2 years after you announced freestyle integration with blender it’s finally happening. oh well, better then never

    • http://inkweaver-review.blogspot.com NathanKP

      Awesome. I can’t wait to enjoy all the new features that will be programmed.

      NathanKP – Inkweaver Review

    • http://www.creaturefeature.info Ataru

      Oh sweet! I cannot wait to see the Freestyle stuff… too awesome.
      I didn’t know what Freestyle was until I looked it up… so I feel like posting the link for anyone as far behind as I am…
      http://freestyle.sourceforge.net/

    • Gryphon

      @aws357:
      A graphical python programming interface would be tremendously helpful… you should put that idea on BlenderStorm, if it’s not there already.

      I think the BSOC project is supposed to be improvements to the Text Editor, to make it better for both simple text editing and python coding.

    • ArtIsLight

      YES!!! 2-3 are great! Praise God… looking forward to FreeStyle…

    • http://www.freewebs.com/wickes Roger

      At the risk of sounding way off the wall, NetBeans is an open-source integrated development environment http://www.netbeans.org/ that runs multi-platform. You could Swing it to Python so that it understands the syntax. Or, you could start with Komodo http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_ide/komodo_edit.mhtml which is already a Python IDE, and just add in the Blender API support.

    • http://www.instinctive.de Alexander Ewering

      Freestyle Inc. must really have a huge marketing department!