Blender Developers Meeting Notes

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codeToday’s biggest news: the SVN trunk (the main code repository) has now been replaced with 2.5 code, making Blender 2.5 the default development project.

Hi all,

I could only shortly participate in the meeting, had to leave to visit the www.ibc.org convention for a speaker rehearsal session… I gave a talk about Blender and Open Content licensing issues. Which went very well btw!

To continue with off topic: At IBC, the Durian guys Colin (director) and David (concept art) and I spent at least 10 minutes staring at one of these 4k screens there. It’s really 4 times more work to get things textured and modeled for this… oh my, what do we start! ;)

Sunday’s developer meeting topics

  • There’s a bug tracker for 2.5 topics open now. In just 2 days, 47 reports in… don’t encourage us too much please! :)
  • Todo list in wiki: before submitting bugs, first read the todo list in wiki to check if the issue has been reported already anyway.
  • Developers agreed on not moving issues to the “todo” tracker, unless noted down in wiki as a todo item. This wiki section then can also serve as an overview for (new) developers for fun targets to work on.
  • Urgently needed still: roadmap plan for features and todos, also related to the 2.5x series… Ton vowed to have this done this week!
  • New Bmesh project (recoded mesh editing and data structures, also allowing ngons) is progressing well. Developers of Bmesh agree on not rushing it in right now, to give the 2.50 targets (bring back blender to work) priority.
  • Note: the svn trunk (the main tree) now has been fully replaced with the 2.5 code. Thanks Martin Piorier Poirier for the work!
  • Brecht will review the Google Summer of Code project for faster mesh drawing (by Lukas S). Joe Eagar reviewed and OK’ed it.
  • Nathan Letwory confirms the wrong meeting minute note about Collada library increasing Blender download so much… in fact the increase is barely noticable!
  • Raytrace optimize project is nearly ready, but the developer prefers to tweak things this month still.
  • The other GSoC projects will discuss with their mentors roadmaps for merging… or bounce it back to the mailing list for further reviews.
  • UI decisions: we need formal method to get issues here moving on… especially smaller decisions like color defaults. People would love to have a standard theme and layout for video tutorials. For time being we’ll work with Matt and William to coordinate us here, and when needed they should just decide. Topics are always open to be posted on our bf-committers list.
  • Dynamics: Janne Karhu (particle coder) proposes to unify the gravity parameters among all physics systems. He prefers to add a common gravity effector.
  • Meeting ended with some confused remarks about how to name Blender 2.5 releases… is it going to be “2.50 beta”, “2.51 beta” until some 2.6 final? Nobody knows yet, more light on this topic next week!

-Ton-

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    • Benjamin Kay (formerly hitechboy722 / HTB)

      Thats a bom! 2.6? Dint see that coming!

      If a dev could please explain, why cant the final be 3.0? No one even mentions it. Spooky…

      Shouldn’t the gravity settings remain separate to give the animator flexibility? If someone wants to sync they can then use script or settings.(unless i misunderstood)

    • gokudomatic

      they start to play with numbers? that will for sure confuse a lot of people.
      otherwise it looks promising.

    • Blender Outsider

      Thanks for the update. I love to see these Dev meeting notes :)

      Myself and I’m sure many others would prefer to wait longer for official Blender 2.50 than getting release 2.50 out the door to be soon followed by 2.51, 2.52 and so on.
      I think it will be very important that when 2.5 hits that it is as stable and feature complete as possible (At least as complete as 2.49) so that people new to Blender and who is waiting in anticipation to either praise it (or bash it), can get a decent build we as Blenderheads are sure is ready.

      I mean I am sure people are waiting for 2.5 to hit to see if they can pick up Blender now with new interface and Bmesh etc. Releasing the build 2.5 prematurely may put off those people that might have been converted if they tried 2.50 and it was production ready/ stable from 2.5.

      Do you guys agree?

    • http://www.skol.ch/o oenvoyage

      Hi,
      I think Martin Piorier is spelled more like Martin Poirier. Yes french is hard :)
      take care
      o

    • http://joshua.worth.id.au/ yokljo

      I would recommend not making everything have the same gravity, or at least make it an option to use the global gravity or a local set gravity

    • http://www.cgex.net cgex

      Personally I would like to see 2.50 ‘alpha’ or ‘beta’ releases than 2.51, 2.52 because it is a big remake of blender itself. But later, after 2.50 release (As Stable As Possible (ASAP :) )) we may follow the old good naming 2.51, 2.52, etc. But it’s just my opinion.

    • flagus

      This weekly report idea is great. Thanks Ton. You guys are really doing an awesome work!!! Can’t wait to get that 2.5 version :).

    • http://3d-synthesis.com ROUBAL

      I completely agree with yokljo about gravity setting. It is often usefull to tweak gravity to achieve an effect, and in complex scenes with different effects, separate settings are more than useful IMHO.

    • Nik

      I think “beta” is the most appropriate since there is still quite alot of work needed to restore full functionality.

    • Benjamin Kay (formerly hitechboy722 / HTB)

      When will the competition be for the official 2.5 splash? Or have i missed that all together.

    • Marcus

      I strongly agree with Blender Outsider:
      The Blender users want to have Blender as soon as possible, but releasing the 2.5 version prematurely MAY push new users away for good, and CERTAINLY will give arguments to those people who love to bash Blender.

      I mean, Blender users who want to work with Blender before official release can take the builds from graphicall.

    • Gupachio

      “Blender 2.5″ has been heavily hyped out there, so it would be a really good idea to add the “beta” part to the name for the first release if it isn’t completely stable and ready for prime time use. If not, blender will be in the exact same situation as KDE 4.0, and that would not be a good thing to say the least.

    • http://mercer-pa.myminicity.com/ ewomer

      the diffrence is kde4 is a BIG commitment while if blender2.5 dosent work out for you you can just use 2.49 until 2.5 gets stable.

    • paul_

      Blender 2.50VE – VROOOOOOOOM EDITION! ;D

    • tyrant monkey

      I hope there is no 2.5 until its feature complete and tested, what Gupachio is kinda of true 2.5 is been talked on many forums(lightwave, modo etc) so to release an uncomplete version and call that 2.5 could be damaging.

      A lot of people who might want to jump to Blender will be expecting something that is feature complete. A 2.50 that comes out when Durian is completed for example will have been more extensivly tested.

      these foundation projects like orange, peach, or apricot always uncover many bugs that most average users wouldn’t run across but people in production could

    • txrx

      @Blender Outsider, agreed. Stability is king in making people’s initial experiences with 2.5 one they want to repeat and persist with.

      Thanks for posting the meeting notes. Like these minutes of the meetings being reported here. :D

      What other GSoC projects are there being considered for merging into 2.5?

    • j09

      Here’s another vote for making 2.50 a complete and fully working release, even if it takes extra time to accomplish this.

      Other than reasons already mentioned, blender should stick to its current naming scheme: a stable, and fully working release for each 2.41, 2.42, 2.43, 2.44 etc, with small “bugfix” releases (2.42a, 2.48a) only as needed, and RC builds available for community testing before the official release.

      It is a good idea to sync this 2.5 project up with the Durian project, so that the Durian team can push 2.5 to its limits and make sure it is production-ready.

    • Gupachio

      @ 13 ewomer

      I don’t think you get what I’m saying… KDE 4 was hyped up to be the second coming of Jesus, so when KDE 4.0 was release everybody and his dog downloaded it and found it to be utterly useless and filled with bugs, and that scared a hell of a lot of people away from KDE forever.

      So what went wrong? The KDE guys failed to communicate the fact that KDE4 != KDE4.0 and that KDE4.0 was only a testing thingy mainly for developers.

      Exactly the same thing will happen if Blender 2.5 is released in an unfinished state without some kind of “beta”-name attached to it.

    • http://www.blendercross.org madturtle

      i agree with Guapachio: let the developers do there job. If there ready – release!
      Pushing the quality of an release should be an main goal – frustrating fast shots it give enough!

    • oxigen

      Yeah, good news as always! :)

      Blender 2.5 alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, kappa, …
      & brand new shiny stable Blender 2.50!

    • Blender Outsider

      @ Gupachino – Exactly what I am getting at and it seems the blender community mostly feels the same.
      2.5 Alpha, 2.5 Beta, RC,1 RC2, whatever etc. but please not FINAL 2.5 if it’s still not “Production ready” :)
      2.5 is arguably one of the most important releases for Blender yet, and the eyes of the industry is watching closely. ;)

    • Gupachio

      @Blender Outsider

      Indeed, and since Ton already announced a 2.5 release soon (was it in October? … I forgot) it can’t be hold back until it is rock solid as some people suggest, so a “beta” is in order. However it is a fine balance, IMHO all that talk about renaming the final release to 3.0 or something is just crazy. The whole blender naming scheme as it is now is very good, no need to fundamentally change that… But this is a very special case.

      It would be mind-numbingly stupid to repeat the whole KDE thing.

    • Doc. Gonzo

      let the developers do there job. If they’re ready – release!

      I disagree with this sentiment, 2.5 shouldn’t be released until it is fully documented, it was bad enough for 2.49 to be released with nothing but a developers overview of 3d texture painting, don’t release 2.5 without FULL DOCUMENTATION! No developers outline on a feature, actual solid documentation with perhaps a few _useful_ tutorials.

      Any less than full documentation and the 2.5 effort to improve the UI will have failed as it will leave users in the same boat as the current UI.

    • Icono

      Gupachio:

      Total Agreement with the KDE statement. Same thing I think of everytime someone says anything about it. And let’s not name it 3.0.

      Why can’t 2.5 be 2.5 and 3.0 can be 3.0.

      I mean, at this rate we’ll be at Blender 9.43 at Blender 4.1. It’s not the name, it’s the package. If someone downloads it and doesn’t know the awesome they just downloaded, the names not going to matter. Awesome by any other name is still awesome. Even if it’s named 2.5, hell yeah.

    • Gryphon

      Could 2.50 RC1 maybe be released on schedule, but with a longer testing period before RC2 and the final release? Give the community time to learn the features, get some documentation in place, etc. I never expected 2.50 to be a totally final release, but I’d prefer to have most of the work done by, say, 2.51a, rather than 2.6.

      So that’s my two cents.

      @Doc. Gonzo:
      FYI, if you type <u>useful</u>, it should give you your underline: useful.

      Nevermind. I guess not. But I think <i></i> still works for italics.

    • sgergg

      Please let it be 2.5, people could get wrong impressions with numbering increasing.
      Putting beta should do the trick anyway.
      Releasing Blender 2.5 feature complete and stable should be a priority.
      Not getting ready as fast as possible.

      I agree completelly with the KDE 4.0 fears. Don’t want that situation to repeat itself.
      Stability and documentation coverage matters quite a lot to new users.
      They can be put down by a simple little detail, name of a button not matching.
      To experienced users this seems silly, that’s why they are called experienced.
      Please don’t do anything prematurely.

    • FillBill

      There are so many worried posts that the 2.50 will be out full of bugs. Is that opinion based on knowledge about the present state of the 2.50? I mean is it some developers opinion?

      It is so long time that the guys are working hard on it, why should it be now that far from a “ready to use” version? Typically, one expects just a few bugs that wil be corrected quickly, as it was for 2.49. No?

    • Cire

      How about naming the first release 2.5oooo0 … then each successive release can count down to a stable official release like so: 2.5ooo0 … 2.5oo0 … 2.5o0 … 2.50 !!!

      :)

      Seriously though, 2.50 is a big deal for a lot of people … long-time users & newer ones, eager watchers & negative naysayers. Beta means the same thing to all of them, so it makes sense to use the designation if the initial release is rightly to be viewed as such by a significant portion of these groups.

      2.50 beta (rc1) … 2.50 beta (rc2) … 2.50 beta (rc3) … 2.50 final (Ka-blam!) … or something like that.

    • Gryphon

      @FillBill:
      Of course the devs are working hard, and of course they all deserve a nice big cake for their efforts. But how often are core parts of a software package rewritten from the ground up? Mac OS X rewrote its core, and it launched full of bugs. Windows Vista rewrote its core, and it launched full of bugs. How can you expect any huge open-source package, even the best one there is, to rewrite its core and not launch full of bugs?

    • http://www.blendercross.org madturtle

      @DocGonzo
      let the developers do there job. If they’re ready – release!
      I disagree with this sentiment, 2.5 shouldn’t be released until it is fully documented,…..

      Hmmmh … okay an complete Documentation of the 2.5 release would by nice, but developing was every time much faster then the documentation…..we will see!

    • FillBill

      @Gryphon

      Though Leopard had bugs, it was “ready to use” as it came out. I was one of the first to buy it for my laptop. The main issue for me was a bug with keyboard. Patches to fix the bugs were released quickly. In contrast KDE4 is a piece of dirt. I have to use it at work on fedora, and the package is shameful.

      It is important that the first version out is used by many people enough efficiently so that many bugs are quickly discovered and fixed.

    • flagus

      I too think that using Alpha or Beta would be more convenient, if the release is still on test. The use of number for really stable versions would be good.

    • coyoteknight

      I don’t see where the controversy lay. It should go Alpha, then Beta then just straight 3.50… 3.50 is what Ton said to be waiting for and even had people pronouncing it “three point fifty” to make the point that this is what was going to be the magic release. If they don’t use the usual naming convention it will confuse people and that is just a bad idea. If they come out with 3.50 alpha in October, no one will bitch and moan about it; frankly beggars can’t be choosy, and this is as free as it gets so we’re all beggars.

    • Blender Outsider

      ^^ you mean 2.50?

    • Vladimir

      Precise measurements.

      Not sure where to post, but it would be great to add precise measurement (mm, pixels, meters) in blender. As a designer in CAD modelling it would help me a lot to make experimental modelling in Blender. Because first I use blender for shaping and after I use Solidworks.

      Thanks alot.

    • Gryphon

      @FillBill:
      Woah, woah, woah… who said anything about Leopard? Mac OS X v 10.5 didn’t rewrite it’s core. It was a little buggy due to all of the new features. I was talking about v 10.0, (Puma?) which, following Mac OS 8 and OS 9, was a completely different OS based on a whole new core. And 10.0 was very buggy.

    • coyoteknight

      “^^ you mean 2.50?”

      LOL, oops… shows me for typing that out at 1 in the morning… yeah, 2.50

    • Vladimir

      Yes I meant blender 2.5

      to make things like: 1. If I change one side to “a”, another side to “b”, then “c” is slf calculated. 2 Or for example if I make: these circles all are of equal size, then if one circle is size “z” then all other circles become size “z” automatically. 3 Or for example I can set up that this and this side are paralell, or assign other geometrical properties like in CAD programs. This makes life easy.

    • Blender Outsider

      ^^ You mean crop circles? :)

      Just kidding.

      That will def. be a cool feature.