Durian: Blender Development Targets

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durianDuring their first week-long workshop, the Durian team have gone over the requirements for new/improved Blender functionality. Brecht did a write-up on the Durian blog.

Brecht writes:

Today we discussed Blender features, trying to get an overview of the things the artists really need to complete the project. This is only a rough overview, we didn’t discuss all topics yet, a more complete and detailed list will be compiled later, for developers interested in getting involved.

You’ll find lots of interesting things on the list such as improved sculpting performance, the B-Mesh, improved physics and rendering of scenes with much more detail (which is emphasised by Brecht so I guess ‘much more’ means insane amounts of detail).

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    • http://www.anicator.com AniCator

      What was that? Did someone just say motion tracking? DID SOMEONE JUST SAY THAT!?
      &volumetrics&cloth&thenewanimationsystem

      I yayz @ that. :)

    • ijstaart

      >> Rendering scenes with much more detail is one of the targets.
      >> This requires changes throughout the rendering engines, from
      >> per-tile geometry subdivision, to image and shadow tile disk caching

      Omg, I think I’ve just guessed the secret feature Brecht is working on: per-tile geometry subdivision == micro polygons == micro polygon surface displacement == actual render time displacement without the need to subdivide meshes (so, without a displacement modifier) before feeding it to the renderer? :D

      Together with all the other features, plus the photon mapping / final gathering that Matt Ebb (and Farsthary?) is working on, plus the rest of the new stuff that’s in Blender 2.5, Blender 2.5 will become one heck of a killer app!

      You guys should be really, really proud of yourselves! (and so should everyone who’s making it possible to continue development on Blender by supporting it financially!)

    • Alex

      4K resolution = 4096×2048, 4 times larger, 4 times longer. Why? Movie theaters?

    • http://hamsterking.com JoOngle

      wow…fantastic stuff by even more amazing code-wizards coming up!

      (I’d love for hair/fur painting to become more intuitive too, as it is now…one usually
      paints right trough the mesh, and fur nearly always become to even or too fuzzy or too unruly,
      painting hair should be as easy as just “painting” it right on following the normals and edgeloops etc..
      and a way to tilt it towards the mesh, rather than having to rotate the thing 1000 times and flatten
      it manually which ends up as a mess anyway) …off topic note rant there…sorry, great work anyways guys!

    • http://www.geckoanimation.com Laxy

      Its like reading my wishlist for Blender.

      Now to get my cryofreeze chamber working so I can wake up in a year when this is closer to reality.

      @Alex – 4K is what digital cinema cameras like RED film on, and it basically ensures a crisp and clear transfer to 35mm film for use in theatres without digital projectors. And looks damn lovely to boot!

    • Olaf

      Impressive list. It will be interesting to see how many of them get implemented.

      I myself would like to see a lot more improvements to the non-organic modeling tools. Easier to use boolean tools would be great and ones which give consistent results. Better quad support instead of those nasty triangles which mess up the model all the time. Easier and more intuitive lathing tools.

    • wysiwyg

      amazing! if blender can do all that within the next few months, there would be no reason for anyone to use any other program

    • Johan

      I would love to see them set NURBS as a development target. It would be interesting to see what tools are upgraded once they start making movies which involve cities (architecture on a broad scale) and vehicles. It’s all very well if they want to make a good movie, but if the movie context is kind of going to determine which tools need development they might want to think about a backdrop for a story that is going to challenge Blender’s tool-set and not beef up already developed tools. Just an opinion folks.

    • Gryphon

      @Johan:
      I totally agree that Blender’s weaknesses should be a consideration when deciding what the next movie project should be. Supposedly, the primary goal of these projects is to enhance Blender through its use in a practical project, so that’s an important part of the approach. However, I don’t think that should be the only consideration. I wouldn’t want to see, for example, a movie project designed to improve Blender’s meta object tools and vertex painting options… at least not at the expense of an amazing new movie and some great new features.

      Correct me if I misunderstand what you’re getting at, and like I said, I’m completely with you most of the way. I also wouldn’t want the team to get so focused on releasing great movies that they forget to develop the software. But given that that’s the whole point of these projects, I doubt we’ll really have to worry about it any time soon. ;)

      Oh, and if NURBS improvements would make it easier to do architecture and vehicle modeling, then +1.

    • Herr Kaleu

      Smoke? Volumetric smoke! Woohoo!…

      Thanks for the great work you guys do! Keep on the good work!

      Cheers,
      K.

    • http://rexprime.com rexprime

      this list is the ultimate feature request list, i am hoping they can accomplish 25% of this stuff, this is a very ambitious list…

    • http://www.seanjmacisaac.com SeanJM

      Sculpting tools upgrade is MUST, I look forward to those upgrades.

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

      I’m blown away by that list. I really do hope they complete it all though. I’m sure they’ll be roping in support from outside developers.

    • http://www.johantri.com johantri

      YAAAYYYYY !!!! ^_^ i just dont know what to say, just YAAAAYYYYY !!!!

      and i still can edit my comment !! ^_^ WWOOOHHHOOOOOOOO… this is crazy

    • http://www.youtube.com/robbielosee Robbie Losee

      This is the part of Durian that I am the most excited about. (Even more than that cute little lizard in David Revoy’s concept art.)
      http://www.davidrevoy.com/temp/timelapse-pictures/

      Seriously, I can’t wait to see the new developments described here.

    • http://www.blendergameartist.com xsinick

      Qoute: BMesh: n-gons and the associated modelling tools would be useful, but they are not a must have for this project. Still it may be worthwhile to use the Durian project as a way to get BMesh tested and completed, we’ll have to evaluate the status of this project in October.

      Now this is what I’m talking about how is Bmesh not a must?

      Please someone explain why the easy come easy go view on Bmesh?

      I need more insight in to why the main focus of blender is not to has killer modeling tools to have better looking models.

      Send me alink to show A class polygon modeling using the current trianglees only implimentation with no drag select. ?

    • ralmon

      Wow, the list is a very huge task for such a time frame. Still It would be great if those are integrated to Blender. More novel approaches could be done with those tools at hand.

      I do hope that one day there would be some development so that using Blender is easy and easier but also quick and quicker. That is develop techniques that makes Blender even more easy and quick to use than it already is. Maybe just laziness in my part but still that is my most wanted innovation. Who didn’t?

    • brecht

      @xsinick: This is a list of things that we need to complete Durian, it is not an evaluation of what is need for Blender in general, B-mesh is a very important project. The modelers in this team have worked with and without n-gons, and there are plenty of examples of great models made in Blender, for example:
      http://www.youtube.com/PonderStudios

    • http://www.blendergameartist.com xsinick

      @brecht : Thanks man . I think I just need to learn new modeling methods then.

      Any links to tutorials would be appriciated. we need a central place for blender tutorials.

      I own: blendergameartist.com and blenderbase.com , for now I would love to keep blenderbase.com and just jam pack it with tutorials and such maybe a forum…

    • http://www.renderphase.com Pixel

      The list states they’ll use the new animation system in 2.5. Will all of this movie (modeling/texturing) also be done in Blender 2.5?