Blender Developers Meeting Notes

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codeI think everyone’s recovering from last week’s 2.5 alpha 0 release, but there are still some interesting updates.

Ton Roosendaal writes:

Hi all,

The Alpha release went very well, congrats to the dev team and everyone who helped out! As usual after a release, meetings are short, not many new things to mention. Here’s some notes:

  • We will need a shortlist of targets for the next release (2.5 beta 1). This will be the first release with 2.5 project specifications frozen and tested (the event/tools recode). Ton will ask Matt to construct this list.
  • Brecht will merge his and Nicholas’ blazing fast new Sculpt and Multires cache work in about two weeks.
  • Other project merges (BMesh, NURBS) will need to be evaluated for feasibility yet
  • Brecht and Matt will come with a shader upgrade proposal, to modernize our shading methods. It should become more physically accurate, and ready for BRDF (bidirectional reflectance distribution function) methods.
  • If you are interested in helping out with 2.5 work, Campbell has a huge todo list he’d be happy to have some help doing! Check blender.org ‘get involved’ for entry points.
  • Erwin (Bullet) Couman’s Blender compliant BSD licensed game engine is making good progress, Charlie Rose has joined in helping development and adding Ogre Support. http://gamekit.googlecode.com

-Ton-

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    • RNS

      Great !!!

    • naag

      blazing fast new Sculpt? Hell yeah! Since I am really using 4-5 out of 2349756139714 brushes in Zbrush I wouldnt mind to see NICE sculpt in Blender. In fact that is main feature that I am waiting for. Good luck with that guys. Now sculpting in blender is more like help in modeling but not really ready for some serious sculpt at all…

    • Silence

      After reading this http://bmeshblender.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/status-update-5/ I don’t have high hopes for the integration of Bmesh :(

    • Spencer Dupre`

      Oh boy, so now there’s a BSD licensed GE? I’m interested in what technical advances it has achieved, but I can already here the cheers from the “how do I copyright my games” people.

    • http://TweakingKnobs.com Tweaking Knobs

      Awesome !!!

      go blenderrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

    • Temujin

      Someone else need to pick up Bmesh. I feel the current developer does not have what it takes to finish it.

    • Jonathan

      Blender!!! > Autodesk XD

    • FillBill

      May be some tutorials, where the easiest stuff would be explained to newbies to 2.5, should be made public? Just examples: How to load new fonts for text in 2.5 (no more “load” button? Is there a way to get Yafaray as a render option? … For the 2.5 experts, that should be quick and it helps.

    • http://www.blendercross.org madturtle

      …show moves on, still busy. This people are great!!!!!

    • Proxy Manheim

      Bmesh isn’t mission-critical at all, I for one won’t particularly care if it isn’t included. I like modeling in Blender 2.49 more than I like 3dsmax, even with the limitations of its mesh structure.

      On the other hand, I’m pumped that the sculpting speedup is finally going to be implemented, I’ve been waiting a long time for this! Is this going to be available on graphicall?

    • lokimonster

      @Proxy Manheim
      Bmesh isn’t only for end users, Bmesh is for devs too.

    • Marcus

      People still don’t seem to realize that BMesh will make modeling and retopoing a lot faster, and that it makes pathway for the development of other modeling tools/ operations.

      For example:
      This development is paused until integration of Bmesh:
      http://www.wxtools.com/wp/archives/21

      Watch this demo video of BMesh in action (and notice the comments):
      http://vimeo.com/6430167

      The only question is if the current developer of BMesh can finish it, and if the community should donate more for this.
      For example, of 200 people would give 10 dollars per month. progress would be ensured (according to the dev’s blog).

    • MmAaXx

      wow, how many good news :D

    • Don Quixote

      I agree with Ton. The Alpha release really went very well. I was surprised with quality after using many pre alpha builds from the graphicall.org

      Good work. Thanks to the developers!

    • Afief

      @Proxy Manheim:
      I agree that for organic models, but when for example modeling an arch or a window into a building you bet that I don’t want to care about edge loops and stuff. I want to model the arch out and not worry about all those extra edges when I start modeling all the stuff that’s connected to it.

      Edge loops and complete control *is* important, but there are times when you just don’t need/want all that kind of detailed control.

    • http://www.yagraph.org yagraph

      To every Blender user : Please help (donating, coding…) the Bmesh dev (joeedh) to finish his hard work, the schedule is short !

      see here : http://bmeshblender.wordpress.com/

    • Dorro

      Great to hear Snailrose (?) has joined with Erwin’s efforts. The Ogre engine is great but was sorely disappointed by the lack of development of pyOgre recently (or so it seems on the official site). Huge potential if official down loadable ports of this project for the consoles, Android etc. with blends as downloadable content. Thanks guys. Was not happy with lambasting of BGE in recent threads.

    • Axis33

      Please include texture baking in alpha 1… I am missing it greatly for game development, thus still using 2.49. I really like the look and feel of Blender 2.50! Thank you devs!

    • http://gamekit.googlecode.com Erwin Coumans

      >> Great to hear Snailrose (?) has joined with Erwin’s efforts. [...]
      >> Huge potential if official down loadable ports of this project for the consoles,
      >> Android etc. with blends as downloadable content.

      Yes, it is Charlie / Snailrose, and some contributions from others.
      Main focus right now is to extract all data from the .blend with good compability.
      GameKit is using a mixture of BSD-style components, including Irrlicht, Ogre, Bullet, LUA, Python, Oolong for iPhone etc. Downloadable content as .blend files would be nice indeed, it is a formidable file format.

      Cheers,
      Erwin

    • skulpter

      “Brecht will merge his and Nicholas’ blazing fast new Sculpt and Multires cache work in about two weeks”

      Thank you. Hope for zpheres 2 and some hard surface brushes like the Polish Brush in ZBrush 3.5 R3

    • Dorro

      Hi Erwin. You made my day! Big fan! Could the Gamekit could be licensed/compiled with the official SDK for each platform once only for each platform and approved by the powers that control each platform. ALL Blender games (or BGE based content/movies/themes etc.) could be considered downloadable content for the Gamekit and should save Blender game developers huge amounts of time and money? Then all that would be needed to become a developer for any platform Gamekit is available for is Blender. A BlenderAppStore could be a great way to generate funds for the Blender Foundation for development including BGE/Gamekit. Ciao

    • alysius

      “Brecht and Matt will come with a shader upgrade proposal, to modernize our shading methods. It should become more physically accurate, and ready for BRDF (bidirectional reflectance distribution function) methods.”

      AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
      ….. spechless….

    • tundra

      i’m really looking forward to the next big alpha release :)

      and hopefully it will contain new voxel sculpting tools :)