Blender Developers Meeting Notes

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blender-sourceBlender developers gather on IRC every Sunday to discuss ‘decisions, actions or progress reporting’ in Blender development. The notes are published on the developers mailinglist. Ton has offered to make sure that these notes are readable for non-devs as well from now on. We’ll publish them here on BN every Monday morning.

2.49b update?

  • Still no real news… Windows Python needs update (missing __future__ module).
  • Campbell proposes to update all to a 2.49b: BGE not freeing objects, python mesh code using uninitialized variable, fbx issues, windows player export broken, …
  • Peter mentions a sound bug in Windows that would need fix (tracker #18956)
  • Proposal: make a 2.49b for all platforms before end of august

Google summer of code

  • Lukas is nearly done with his faster mesh drawing, now moving to final tests and user feedback. Link.
  • Windows build available, other platforms should follow. Link.
  • GSoC Collada results were shown at Siggraph, by Collada founder Remi Arnaud, reading textured Spore (game) models and armatures in Blender. Arystan, Chingiz and Nathan did a great job on providing us the demos.

2.5 project

  • Thomas Dinges made a UI layout guideline proposal, feedback on bf-taskforce list. Link.
  • On Siggraph we’ve made useful contacts with an Intel driver developer and an ATI representative, to ensure we can smoothly use same buffer swap system for all versions of 2.5. Follow-ups will be done this week.
  • Python 3.1 move: all signs are on green now; but for using Scons building, you’ll still have to keep Py 2.6 around until Scons also migrates. This isn’t so much a problem, since we’ll include the library and includes in our svn, so you don’t have to install python 3.1.
  • Campbell will remove the ugly compatibility #ifdefs tomorrow, be warned! He’ll be around in IRC to advise or help.

Other current projects

  • FFMPG: doesn’t yet build for win64
  • Discussions are pending whether or not to keep ffmpg in svn, it depends on patches getting accepted there. Will come back.
  • Jörg has his new Blender 2.5 sound system ready, reviews were positive, so a merge with 2.5 branch will be done soon. Will need attention from the various platform maintainers for correct building.

Siggraph wrap-up

Everyone who was in New Orleans just had a great time! We met with a lot of very interesting people, and it was cool to see confirmed how many people use Blender already. Most striking was the interest from support/integration/consultancy companies to business with Blender. That’s the open source bizz model that works excellent, and will do wonders for us all!

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    • http://www.ubuntu.com/ Socceroos

      Interesting stuff. Nice insight into what’s happening behind the scenes.

    • Shiretoko

      This is the best decision Ton made!
      All the blenderheads want to know what happens during the Sunday developers meetings, it’s their beloved software.

      Please do that for every meeting.

    • http://www.martinlindelof.com Martin Lindelöf

      but do hang around in #blendercoders to see sunday meetings in action :D

      faster mesh draw ?! in the GUI 3dviewport ? sweeeet. it’s already fast in 2.5 :D but ‘faster’ … droool, can’t wait for an build

    • Gryphon

      @2.49b update:
      I get “AttributeError: ‘module’ object has no attribute ‘reduce’” when I try to use the “Skin Faces/Edge Loops” tool in 2.49a. I’ve already solved the “No module named functools” error by moving functools.py to the correct place, but no dice on the new error.
      Is all of this fixed for 2.49b?

    • Nik

      Hey, those devmeeting updates are really nice, keep them comming!

    • Grandmaster B

      That information is really interesting, both for software developers and artists.

    • Code

      Very Nice! Thanks a lot!

    • http://www.dustyghost.com dusty

      COOL!!!

      Any news on Go-Z????

      I just need to know if you got over the legal issues of this yet? Let alone the logistics of the SDK?

      Shall I come to the IRC session to wind you up about it? ;0) LOL

    • http://www.blender.org ton

      Dusty: I’m in email contact with Pixology about Go-Z. This is still an issue to tackle. Our booth had so much action all the time, I’ve had hardly time to visit other companies.

    • txrx

      Thanks for posting, most enlightening. Also give us a heads up of any areas to expect significant updates in terms of preparing any builds being introduced into production I would assume. :D

    • http://3d-synthesis.com ROUBAL

      Happy to read that.

      A 2.49b bugfix release would be really welcome and useful. My bug report #19037 has still not been taken in account, and there are two bad bugs to solve : Static particles system (hair particles) not refreshed at frame change when using an animated texture, and Dens button (Density) not active in the Particles section of the Map To panel. This last bug appeared in 2.49.

      Thanks in advance to solve these problems !

    • http://jogai.nl Jogai

      They were always readable. Good to give it more attention.

    • http://3d-synthesis.com ROUBAL

      @Jogai :I dont understand your sentence. What are you talking about. What are you meaning by “They” and “it” ?

    • Jeff

      That was helpful to read. Didn’t realize the change to python 3.1 wasn’t done yet and I couldn’t build using that version. Changed the config to use 2.6 and was able to successfully build it again.

    • Horst Hinz

      A new sound system would be urgently needed – I haven’t managed to get usable sound output from any Blender version for about the past 3 years – sound was always either stuttering like it came via shortwave radio from the moon, completely out of sync, or simply crashed Blender as soon as a sound strip started (especially if FFMPEG was involved).

    • http://www.dustyghost.com dusty

      @Ton:
      Thanks mate, it’s why I didn’t email you directly as I know how stupid busy you are.

      I don’t like to harass people when they are already doing their best.

      I REALLY hope they give us the green light. Pixologic, a company that gives us free upgrades on their software, I can see them letting this happen. But here’s me with my fingers crossed anyway!

      Waiting with baited breath…..

      Dusty :)

    • http://www.sympodius.net sympodius

      It’s great to get this info. Thanks BlenderNation.

    • xenon

      did someone mentioned pixologix? it means that sculpting will be improved?

    • http://www.montagestudio.org Jean-Sébastien Guillemette

      Xenon, nop they are talking about Go-Zbrush if I’m not mistaken. It’s a new feature of Z-Brush that makes the transfer of zbrush sculpt to other software easier.

    • Faquin

      Excellent idea. Thank you !

    • yoff

      @ROUBAL He means that the weekly meetings minutes were always readable.
      http://www.blender.org/development/coding-guides/irc-meeting-minutes/

    • lomac

      Great Idea with bringing the mailing list updates to Blender Nation.
      I keep forgetting to read the mailing lists.

    • xenon

      Hmm it should be nice to find some info how zbrush works:) My search over net not gave me any clues, they must heavily protect their trade secrets…

    • Jahmaica

      “Most striking was the interest from support/integration/consultancy companies to business with Blender.”

      What type of support ? If someone can help me on this one, please =)