You’re right FreeMind, we’ll still miss the Floating Panels.

Though I could live without a few of the items on both lists, I ABSOLUTELY NEED Edge Rendering!
If it has to be made into a comp-node, that is totally fine, AS LONG AS IT LOOKS THE SAME as it does now.

I use FreeStyle, have been since its first builds, however I either use it on conjunction with the current edge-rendering style, or dont FreeStyle at all for certain project IN FAVOR of the blender built-in edge rendering method, as its much preferred in MANY CASES. I REALLY REALLY enjoy the built-in blender lines, even though I’ve been a FreeStyle user for YEARS.

I had to fight to get edge-rendering back in 2.5 initially, I created a thread, and had to draw up support for it, and I hope I dont have to again. Please Brecht, PLEASE, dont take out edge-rendering. Make it a comp node if need be, just have it look the same as it does now. please, please, please

I use this four from the controversial list

Dupliframes
Irregular Shadow Buffer
Shadow Render Pass
Particle Line/Path/Billboard rendering

quite often in my workflow
would nice to have them in blender

@Nicknamz: Yes, it’s down for me too. I checked it with http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com

> Curves in the image editor: replace by exposure slider.
Curves are pretty powerful, so I hope they don’t disappear. Sliders don’t cover all of the abilities of a single curve.

> Dupliframes
Please leave this in! It’s useful in unexpected circumstances.

> Environment Map texture
Used all the time to fake reflections. Please do not kill this.

I second keeping Sticky Textures. There are many uses for them, too.

~ K

Hmmm … interesting suggestion, and certainly one I support in principle. In principle.

From the first list, what is “texture mesh”? Is that the same thing as “noise” where one uses a texture to deform the actual mesh? I use that from time to time and haven’t been able to find it in 2.5. If not, then I don’t mind seeing it gone since I didn’t know what it was in the first place.

And I can see why the second list is more controversial. There are several things there I use, and I’ve seen edge detect used often. Blend sky, dupliframes, sequencer glow effect … wow. I can’t be the only one using these!

But let’s say you folks did rip out some of the underused features for a more stable version 2.6 … what happens when one tries to load an older file that has World Stars activated, for example? Does Blender 2.6 crash, ignore the extra settings, and/or flag the extra settings in the console? When re-saved are those old settings retained?

If you’re going to pull some of this functionality, a tiny fraction of your audience is then going to be forced to switch back and forth between the latest version of the software and 2.49 or earlier.

+1 good point, losing shadow render pass would really mess up my compositing workflow too. I would have to waste a lot of time to try to reproduce such a pass, if even I could. A shadow render-pass can be invaluable when compositing, ask any Maya user(who uses compositing) ;-)

I use these from the controversial list, and quite frankly I’m amazed that one would even CONSIDER removing them:

* Animateable object layers
* Blend Sky (no horizon/zenith, just one color)
* Bounds draw types for objects
* Cubic interpolation material option
* Curves in the image editor:
* Dupliframes
* Environment Map texture
* Fresnel diffuse shader
* Grid mesh primitive
* Invert Z Depth material option.
* Irregular Shadow Buffer
* Particle grid emission distribution
* Particle Instance Modifier
* Particle jittered Particle/Face option and Jittering amount options.
* Particle Line/Path/Billboard rendering
* Particle “Parent” option for rendering offset.
* Sequencer Glow effect
* Shadow Render Pass

>Animateable object layers
yes i use this feature , it’s very usefull for me … ,

maybe u can remove this feature if blender can animate hide unhide object

>Bounds draw types for objects
we still need this ..,

While I might agree with the initial concept of this idea, even a cursory amount of contemplation brings to mind more problems than it would fix. Most of them have already been pointed out on here (Backwards compatibility, the small subsection of the population that relys on even the smallest of these features etc. etc.). And frankly I’m amazed at some of the things that have been suggested to be removed (Shadow render pass especially, that’s a major key ingredient in a professional compositing workflow).

So basically my input is, if you do actually follow through with this you are going to be angering a lot of long time blender users who will probably demand that they be reinstituted, removing a ton of very useful features (That I’m sure some dev spent a lot of time writing) which in terms of advancing a piece of software seems like a few steps in the negative direction.

Basically although it might seem like a good way to cut some corners right now, all you’ll be doing is shooting yourself in the foot right now but eventually that wound is going to get infected (It may take some time, but IT WILL happen) and then you’ll end up losing more than it was worth.

Just my 2 cents.

Some of the features that are proposed are still required and I would hate to miss them.

Field rendering:
This is still required even for HD that supports both progressive scanning and interlaced scanning. If blenders implementation of fields is not supported for the compositor then the solution would be to start support for it, not drop fields al together. I’m not sure how “specialized tools” would fit into this pipeline. It seems to me that it would mean rendering at double framerates (50 fps instead of 25 fps interlaced) and then using a video editor to create interlaced frames from the 50 fps footage, quite a lot of overhead.

Controversial list features I use:
- Environment maps
Still the best way to get quick reflections for background objects. Its also handy for getting quick blurry reflections. Removing environment maps wouldn’t be such a problem if you could use other image textures for Cmir like you can with an environment map texture. Non environment map textures just effect the Ray traced color reflection, environment map textures actually provide texture based reflections.
- Dupli frames
I use it for similar puposes as the array modifier, only you have more control with the vertices. If this could be merged somehow with the array modifier I would be fine with it.
- Animatable object layers.
This is basicly used by me as animating visabillity of objects.
- Bounds draw types for objects
I only use the Box drawtype for empties that are used for mapping textures.

I think, texture/sequence plugins should not just be removed. What has always made me mad is the way I enabled them. I.e. for textures I select type ‘Plugin’, then I’m provided with a file selection dialog where I first must go to the directory where the texture plugins are and there I must painfully guess from dll’s file name the plugin i need for my purpose. Definitely this is mega-stupid workflow!
What I think is there should be a standardized way to enable plugins (e.g. in the config) and, once enabled, they immediately appear in the texture type selection menu. Naturally, plugins appear in the configuration interface, once the plugin’s dll file is placed into corresponding directory (which may be specified in the config too and may be more than one i.e. other directories added). Even more there should be well documented plugin API, so 3-rd party developers could write their own plugins, which is common practice in (e.g.) Autodesk.
Also it would be super if there were plugin API for nodes and modifiers!

*All edges option for meshes – I use blender more often for modelling, version 2.4x disappointed me that you can not see all the edges in the object mode. And when this option was implement in trunk, I immediately switch to 2.5, and use it for now, do not remove this option.

*Bounds draw types for objects – I use blender for render and some models have a very large number of polygons, viewport often works slowly, and this option allows me to a quick navigation in the viewport.

Yes Field rendering and related operations have not worked for a while and it has been a pain. I had to de-field something in aftereffects recently so I could get a reasonable output in blender. Also I tried to render something with fields and had it confirmed to me that it didn’t work.

Fields are part of the TV spec and having stuff moving at 50fps is a treat. If you were to tell a games player they had to play at 25fps they’ed go balistic.

If Blender wants to be used for Compositing and Editing it has to support fields.

Secondly, Sky Blend. Not sophisticated but I use it all the time.

Dupliframes useful.

FileBrowser – I like the current setup and filters in 2.5. Its a real shame that the Filebrowser settings aren’t saved in the blend. If they were you could use them like bins for the sequence editor.

Edge rendering- I have used it and it would be a pain any other way.

Many thanks
L

From the first list I support removing pin floating panels, snap always, outline/origins etc to preferences, the file browser and optimal display defaults.

I have tried to use some texture plugins with pre 2.5 without any luck. It is something I would like to have working and would only support removing it if a new improved plugin system for 2.5 was to replace it.

The other items I have no strong opinion on.

Hi,

I must give thanks for your work, Brecht and other developpers, but I think that this approach is completely wrong, at least from the POV of a long time Blender user. What I like in Blender is it’s flexibility. For example, I never used professionally the Fields rendering option, but ever feel comfortable knowing that it was here for the day when I’ll need. It’s useful not only for broadcast TV, it’s useful for whatever video that should go out of a computer!!!

I think you’re approaching this issue with a so tin POV. An architecht told me, for example, that seeing the color of objects in the 3D display was useful for him, since it makes easy to classify objects by material/type, no matter the actual color of this material. Why I should only rely on groups for that, for example? This need is probably distant from the needs of an animator, but both profiles find answers to those in Blender features. With this cur of features, you will turn Blender in a “one way only way” to do things. Simply, you (and me, and no one) are unable to imagine and realize the different usages of Blender features, so if these are here is because that solves something to someone.

So, if you ask for removal or not, it will be all the time someone that needs that or that other feature. Perhaps is a better approach to consider what features are REALLY needed to remove because another added that conflicts with or shifts the first one. And then, simply remove it, without asking to the world.

Simplify the interface?…. ummhh, 2.49b interface was perfectly fine for me, if 2.50 changes focused, among other things, in interface, simplify it isn’t remove features. It is, well, simplify. “Would this feature be a good thing to add if it wasn’t there yet?” for World Stars, for example… I don’t know if it would be a good enough thing to add…. what it matters for me is that is here and I like it.

What come to your mind when yout thought to remove Dupliframes? sincerely, I’m a little affraid with the way Blender is evolving in some aspects (there is no doubt that is evolving, and should do…).

Personally, few among your two lists are features that I agreed we could live without. Agreed in the issue of sequencer and texture plugins and perhaps another one or two.

Thanks for your work,
Raimon

Cubic interpolation material option

I use it for every material. Should be active on default. Only delete this function if there is a better one. I remember when Ton came up with this feature. It `s hackish, but sooo useful….

* I use animateable object layers very often to let objects suddenly appear/disappear in Animations.

#1sequencer plugins: I strongly object cos I use most of them all the time! If they are removed how/when are they going to be replaced? Also, some of the plugin effects are not easily accomplished through compositing.

#2. relative paths && hiden files: they are easily customizable so I don’t mind

#3. curves in image editor: curves afford more control than sliders

#4. sequencer glow effect: consider this: if someone wants to use Blender as a video editor then such effects are a must. No novice will learn the compositor to produce a simple glow effect.

I understand that from a programming point of view maintaining old code is more troublesome than rewriting it from scratch, but removing features without a clear plan for replacements is a recipe for disaster.

Just my 0.2 $

Vertex normal flip – it is useful dont remove it !!!

The “t_terrain PlugIn” enables Blender to give a terrain vegetation and/or snow in dependence of slope and altitude. It’ s easy to use and there is no real alternative in Blender with any node setups or stencil. Last Time I had the hope of an improvement for this plugin, with more options of procedural textures like musgrave, not only “clouds”. And now it should be removed. Please don’t do that!
Improve it, and it will be the solution for the still missed feature to generate realistic looking terrains with snow and different vegetation in Blender.
Would it be another possibility to bring the code of the plugin from “c” to “python” and restart it as an addon?
I’ m not a coder.

Have a look and many thanks

Bernd

- Fields rendering: is anyone actually using Blender to produce content for TV with this option?

Yes, we are at the MOMENT not at a point where all is progressive. Interlaced animations still look better on conventional TVs, and also many hobby users still use DV Cams and also record andimations (back) on them.

- Dupliframes: not only usefull for Animation but can also be used as modelling tool, I used it often in my 10 years of Blender and surely will in future

Carsten

I think somehow this has to be done. Blender now, seems to be made of pieces (Frankenstein-like). Dont know much about the code but this is not good either for the user. It is dificult to find some features, for instance. And at some point Blender must get rid of those pieces that make no sense. And probably the 2.5 version is the best point to make the change.

The good news is that no matter what they remove, the old versions of Blender are still there, isnt it? I’m still using 2.48… and if you need an old feature you can run it in an old version…

•Sticky texture coordinates: some video game and Blender exporter use sticky (UV per vertex and not per faces)
•Classical shadow buffer: they produces better result than Classical-Halfway on some scene. Example :
•Optimal display for multires and subsurf enabled by default : ok by default but dont remove this option (not optimal is usefull to show distribution of dense mesh.
•Object Color: ?? this is vertex color ? if right, vertex color is usefull not only in game mode, particulary for some mesh visualization and operation in viewport.

Brecht,

Looks like it’s time for the Blender Foundation to put up (another) donation challenge meter thingy… and invite every Blender user here to donate to hire another coder or 3 to keep these features in 2.6.

Great to see more users come out of the woodwork and validate how important Blender is to them and explain how they use Blender.

Ton,

how many Euro would we need to raise to make 2.6 feature complete for all these users?

Do not remove “Flip Normals”.
Boolean modifier produces wrong results with complex objects. Flipping normals and usage of Boolean modifier in reverse brings good results.

Hello… with virtual egg on my face….

I complained earlier about the ‘Quit’ dialog box. I just realized that this ‘feature’ seems to be only on the Mac version of Blender 2.5.

I just ran Blender 2.5 for the first time using Windows 7 on Oracles’ Virtual Box, and the “Are you sure?” dialog box didn’t show up when I quit.

Am I wrong here, or am I missing something?

– comment removed –

Actually, the things on the “controversial list” aren’t so rarely needed. I actually use all of them, some more often, some rarely – but they do have their points. The other things are ok for me to remove, but please keep the controversial list, as long as there are no alternatives.

Thanks, keep up the great work!

All is great!
BTW… Brecht for President ;)

Removing any from the “controversial list” would be an act of madness, I use practically all of them regularly. Especially animatable object layers, the sequencer glow effect and dupliframes – these are fantastic features. I’d feel restricted to current versions of Blender if they were gone. I mean, seriously… remove animatable object layers ?!?! No ! Don’t do that ! Bad Brecht !

I would also keep the texture and sequence plugins – I use the old warp plugin quite often, amongst others. Maybe there are now better ways, but it works for me. I’m not clear from the description whether these are intended to be removed completely or integrated in some new way, but I’d miss them quite badly if they were gone.

Blenders world stars should not be removed, rather they need an upgrade. Trying to create star fields that don’t flicker horribly when animated is a nightmare : “but if you want something that actually looks good, you should use a texture” – you can’t if you want to rotate the camera much. If we had proper star fields we could create better things than 80′s space animations…

@Zavigny I’ve always used Windows and I have never been asked if I want to quit. I didn’t even know the feature existed. I’ve wanted to have it for a long time though. Maybe as an option so everyone doesn’t have to use it, but I would really like to have it.

Too many times have I closed Blender by mistake when I haven’t saved recently. The most annoying is when I’m surfing while using blender and the browser by some reason isn’t fullscreen, so the cross is a few pixels away from the top corner. Then when I try to close the browser I close Blender instead. -.-’ This has happened several times and is not fun at all…

Anyways, my point is that if we have this as an option, everyone can choose. If they want it, they can have it and if they don’t, they don’t. To me it doesn’t seem like a hard thing to do, especially as it already exists on Mac.

Hi,

-I absolutely need Billboard Rendering for Particles! Please don’t remove…

- The shadow render pass is also important to me.

-Also I find “3D view lock to object” very useful at times.

- Fresnel shader comes in handy once in a while.

Hopefully I am not just repeating said things from above (probably so) .
Most of the stuff from the controversial list have been very usefull to me. The environment map texture can be quite handy, also the Particle Grid emission distribution, the sequencer glow effects and especially the Particle instance Modifier are very useful. I don’t see also why I shadow render pass should be removed? The invert Z Depth seems to be the only option right now to draw solid/wireframe meshes, isn’t it?

I have been using the sticky textures a lot and would think that something else, as easy to use, would be good too. But this feature is just great for ‘groundwork’ e.g. for and in cameramappings.

Things from the controversial list that I think could be removed:
Particle Line/Path Rendering
Particle Jittered Particle/Face option and jittering amount options.
Particle “Parent” option for rendering offset.

I agree with the list: make all the suggested changes…EXCEPT:

“Blend Sky (no horizon/zenith, just one color)”.

The two color option is useful to add interest to otherwise sterile technical product visualizations – we’re not all using Blender for fluffy character animation! You see many technical catalogues using two color blended backgrounds for visualizations of nuts, bolts, electronic components, etc.

Do not get rid of edge rendering. I do use it, and have pulled off some pretty convincing toon effects with the new edge renderer. And not all of us as that good with the compositor as to do it in the nodes. Freehand is unstable and doesn’t give me what I need. I don’t have an issue with everything else but please do not get rid of edge rendering

I wouldn’t remove any of all these features, besides maybe the World Stars (really ugly but it should be replaced by something more functional), I used almost all of them and sometimes they also saved the day…

Shadows Render Pass is basic to compositing, why to remove it? Besides the fact that it doesn’t seem to work properly, I mean (but maybe the problem is more in the multiply option of nodes).
And why to remove the sequencer Glow effect?
Dupliframes: the only way to quickly model a spine with every vertebra different from the other.

Thanks for the feedback, we’ll take it into account, I don’t have time to respond to all the individual points here. Also, people seem to be complaining about e.g. Particle Instance modifier or Dupliframes even though it wasn’t on the list anymore when this article was posted..

I would like to point out though that in the bigger picture, poorly implemented or little used features do take a lot of time. I’ve spent months debugging and investigating problems related to these kinds of things, time that could be spent elsewhere improving other areas or adding new features. In working on the render engine for example, the quantity of code and poorly implemented features has been the main thing that makes it difficult to make improvements.

That said, don’t take the second list too seriously, as written on the page, I didn’t expect these to get a lot of support, so they’re unlikely to get removed.

@brecht. :D I was wondering what was happening there. The field rendering isn’t a deal breaker thinking more on it more. :)

The autosmooth function in mesh normals panel could be removed too. Since Edgesplit Modifier i never used it anymore. Especially because autosmooth has no preview in the 3D Window.

brecht,

the second list went to a different page.

The updated list is here:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.5/RemovingFeatures

Please don´t remove EDGE RENDRING I use it alot, it´is a neat tool, I have been using blender since 1999, for work. This is very frightening that very useful tools are going to be taken away from us.

This was always going to be a controversial topic, but seriously… stars?
Are you kidding me?
What, do you need them as a background for your extruded chrome logo animation?
What is this, 1993?

Yeesh!

Maybe someone should write a 90s retro-cheese plugin for Blender to satisfy the users who want that stuff.

With the resources and time available, getting blender to a clean and stable point seems to be the priority, particularly as it has undergone such a radical ground-up change. If a lot of old features need to be re-written anyway to fit comfortably in the new version, then I guess they will be done depending on real need in new code. They may be needed, but for the moment, the basics are important, and particularly stabilty and consistency to encourage greater take-up professionally.

On the subject of basics, for my money, the internal renderer has benefitted from a really decent speed bump in 2.5, but I personally would like to see the speed of rendering refraction pushed to compete with the likes of the Maya internal renderer. For this one feature (and perhaps also a vital hypergraph scene node editor and a component editor (they would utterly transform Blender for professional use)), I would migrate from Maya fully. The refraction rendering speed is still a deal-breaker in my opinion. One can always use an external renderer for this I suppose, but they can be fussy to use if a job’s got to be out of the door in a hurry.

I do a lot of architectural visualization in my work and so one of the reasons for using Blender is that it provides fast results in the initial phases where I’m able to produce sketches very quickly for the client. The beauty is that, while I’m still working in the same application, I can go on further to produce the final, high quality result without messing around with too many other applications in the pipeline.

* World stars:
– I wouldn’t cry if it was removed but on the other hand, stuff like this is a very good way to impress and convince a newcomer/hobbyist that Blender actually does enable impressive renders with little hassle. The good thing is that the stars actually *behave like particles* in that it’s not just a background. As the camera moves through space, the stars move too. I have previously used them for an underwater scene too but actual particles are better for this.
* Object Color:
– I didn’t know the purpose of this until now. I’ve got a high number of chairs that would need slightly different coloring according to the customers graphical profile. This solves that issue. Thanks!
* Edge Rendering:
– A “must have” in arcviz! A compositing node for this wold certainly be useful. Along with compositing nodes for wireframe rendering. It can not be removed, however.
* Snap always for Translate/Rotate/Scale:
– I *never* do any arcviz without this switched on. Should be kept as a user preference.
* Relative paths user preference and Remap Relative option for save operator:
– I guess this can be switched on by default. I never use anything but relative paths.
* File browser should hide hidden files and filter types by default.
– Agreed. (The *horizontal* scrolling with short list display of files is just lacking, though. The total number of files should be divided by the number of columns that could fit horizontally inside the file browser. Then allow normal, vertical scrolling of all columns at the same time. Like in 2.5 but just vertically.)

Controversial List
* 3D view lock to object
– I work very much with non-organic objects and so I very frequently need to align the viewport to a window frame, a desk a ledge or some other detail to be able to use vertex tools properly.
* All edges option for meshes.
– I use “Edge Lenght here. It literally wouldn’t be possible to use Blender for any dimensionally dependent stuff without this.
* Animateable object layers.
– I use it to make furniture appear/disappear.
* Blend Sky (no horizon/zenith, just one color)
– I use it for the reasons mentioned by others.
* Bounds draw types for objects
– I’m actually using this right now. Working on a large floorplan I’ve set the general Draw Mode to BoundBox for all the furniture on the floor while keeping all walls as Wire to see what I’m doing while keeping it all running snappy and nice.
* Curves in the image editor.
– For tweaking nice results.
* Environment Map texture
– I’m use this for fast glass or metal.

I’ll donate more, though to keep up the good work :)

Cheers, Jarl

“It seems to me that a lot comments are written by hobbyists.”

Really? I’m a professional Blender user so that’s a blanket statement if ever there was one. and even if it did come from hobbyists, so what? Does that make us Pro’s any more entitled?

LOL…
“Does anybody use field rendering?” Well… Does anybody use Blender … ??? LOL.
Why not remove everything, that’s the most easy to maintain, and has 100% no bugs.

How come a developer is allowed to ask these questions anyway? Is that an OpenSource thing?
People invest time into learning a tool and then get features taken away. Bad.
I’m sure that some features are really lame and just take space and brake the system.
Specialy when jumping from 2 to 2.5.
My advice is to keep everything and start thinking about 3.0. Have a really really good idea to whom you are aiming the tool. If its a tool for hobbiest programmers then add and remove features whatever.
Better to remove the sequencer and node based color correction ( just silly to rerender 3d for 2d correction ).
Have user based “Modes” : Model Mode, Color/Texture Mode, Rig Mode, Animation Mode, Scene Mode, Director Mode ( reference other files for shot creation ), Render Mode, Post Mode.

Anyway…

* Texture and sequencer plugins:

Maya has it. But plugins is a renderfarm hell. Better would be to glue code to the file.

* World stars: for 80ies space animations this may be useful, but if you want something that actually looks good, you should use a texture.

The 80′s do look good. Maybe it does not end up in the final render, but some parts of the work is testing ideas.

* Fields rendering
Field rendering save 50% of the rendertime. But 720P or 1080P seems to be the new standaard.
Then again, 1080i takes loads of rendertime, specialy with the proposed rendering of 1080p and deleting 50% of the pixels. ( real silly idea in my opinion ). So yeah, if its buggy, fix it.
Maya has no field rendering that works, but Maya has a nice motion blur, so… hmm…

* Object Color: for games this is useful, but otherwise I think it’s a bad feature, so I propose to only show it in game engine mode.
I
dont think anybody uses painted objects. Shaders and maps seems the way to go. I doubt people use full color objects in games. Vertex color baking seems to exist in Maya but I think everybody goes for lightmaps.
Some people use colors to organize their scene. I rather use layers.

* Edge Rendering: this is nice in theory, but you can’t actually create good looking toon renders with this. A proper NPR engine like freestyle is much better. We can also make this a compositing node, I have a patch for this I wrote some time ago, though not sure if it is worth having at all.

Yeah, its not very good. But removing stuff because its not very good… hmm…

* Classical shadow buffer: always use Classical-Halfway.

If it has the same result, remove it.

* B-Bone Rest: at least remove from the UI, and perhaps even the code.

Never use it, so I dont know.

* Sticky texture coordinates: doubt this is much used in practice. Corrected perspective interpolation however is useful, could be added back as an option for UV’s.

Maya has it, its often used for matte effects. The blender version is far better than the Maya one.
But a UV over multiple objects projected from camera could work to. Again, the Projection Object as Maya has could be a valued add to blender, But UV’s have the advantage of reusing a single shader on multiple objects.

* Pin Floating Panels: there aren’t any, so option should not be there.

Well no, there should be floating panels, but I get your point.

* Snap always for Translate/Rotate/Scale: seems not necessary, just enable snap in the 3d view header if you always want to snap.

No idea what this is.

* Some Time Offset features: the time offset value itself it still useful, but do we need the Edit/Particle/Parent options?

Need is such a weird word. I think in general features in blender where added for a use. Maybe I’m wrong and blender got a programmers hobby with feature just for coders fun?
Time tools are very important to animators who work for clients and are under time pressure.
Being able to change an animation to clients wishes quick are ver valueble. Blender misses bunches of these tools. Most of the time its even better to start over after a meet with a client. Being able to have time lattices and bake the results would make blender an animation tool and not just a nice poly modeler.

* Outline Selected, All Object Origins and Relationship Lines in the 3d view should become user preferences.

Agree. And also added visual adds to 3d space would help loads of users. As realtime shadows.
And a real depth selection tool ( not that crappy z buffer box that makes backface culling possible but creates a crappy selection tool )

* Relative paths user preference and Remap Relative option for save operator: can we just enabled these two by default? These two combined should make relative paths work completely automatic quite well, or are there cases that this doesn’t cover?

No idea what this is about. Maya has project based paths. Sort of depends if you work in groups or not and if settings are scene, file or project based. Also, I dont know much studios or people who work with versioning. I understand bI works with svn, I wonder how other studios handle versioning.

* File browser should hide hidden files and filter types by default. Every file browser does this, and it just seems to be what you want nearly always anyway. Especially on mac/unix hidden files are really in the way in the home directory. (recommend hidden by default Ctrl+H to show hidden)

Yep.

* Optimal display for multires and subsurf enabled by default.

Yep. ( Not a code maintanance issue, a GUI/UI issue ).

controversial List

* 3D view lock to object
To be removed? Why? For newbies its handy.

* All edges option for meshes
The inverse- faster draw thing? Blender can draw some wrong meshes pretty bad that render okay, this forces a complete draw which saves time on fixing the object just to get a good view in wire mode.
Also, it usefull when rendering wires and you want all wires.

* Animateable object layers
Light linking is rather dodgy in blender. Also, not everybody has a renderfarm and turning layers off can speed up rendering. So I’d say lets get this to work properly, with an understandable interface.
Maya even has drawmodes for layers, so one can use multiply or add for a layer. Then again, in maya everything is animateable.

* Blend Sky (no horizon/zenith, just one color)
Mental Ray in maya uses this for physical sky. I think Blender uses it for AO?
But yeah,… just remove it, nobody makes outdoor scenes with blender.

* Bounds draw types for objects
Why? Sometimes its the only way to get blender animation realtime. Specialy with nobody caring for interface drawing speed and gettign slugier per release.

* Cubic interpolation material option
Old fashioned, loads of buttons could use result names instead of technic-used names.

* Curves in the image editor: replace by exposure slider.
Sounds like less control for the artist to me.

* Dupliframes
Blender as the filmstudio tool with only character animation? Hmm… I doubt it.
For infographics dupliframes makes animated dotted lines a breeze. Blender is the only package in the world that makes it a breeze, so yeah, remove it, no other package has it.

* Environment Map texture
Clunky implemented. Specialy for animated textures its a horror. Raytracing made it sort-of obsolete.
Maya still has this shader option, but no options to create the texture, only the mapping type.

* Fresnel diffuse shader
Yeah, remove all shaders except the mia… o wait, blender does not have the mia. :P

* Grid mesh primitive
Maya has an option to select in how many subdivs I want my added plane added. Handy if I want a plane with a hole. Add a 3×3 and remove the middel face.

* Invert Z Depth material option.
What? Nobody making Esher animations?

* Irregular Shadow Buffer
Maya has it.

* Particle grid emission distribution
* Particle Instance Modifier
* Particle jittered Particle/Face option and Jittering amount options.
* Particle Line/Path/Billboard rendering
* Particle “Parent” option for rendering offset.
No idea. Never use them.

* Sequencer Glow effect
Sequencer in a 3d package? Split it of, or start an OS, but dont try to be everything.

* Shadow Render Pass
Was this a start to have everything into a render pass and failed? Than remove it.
If its a start then start adding other render passes. Depth and AO seems to be standard on other packages.

My 50 cents.

- Blend Sky can be easily done with nodes (with more options like more colors gradient).
- I agree with putting ‘Edge rendering’ in nodes
- Also Glow effect in Sequencer should be in nodes (correct me if I am wrong)
- I am for removing Stars from world tab -> you can make stars with particles or halo meshes
- I like the All Edges and Optimal Draw (subsurf) options on meshes, because with that you can clearly see your model wireframe with variable level of subdivision
- also keep Curves in Image editors – slider panel is not enough
- without shadow render pass, how can you composite the image externally?

Another vote for edge rendering.

I use Freestyle and edge a lot for engineering sketches and diagrams. Freestyle is great, but there is no standard equivalent to edge rendering (with progressively darker lines for sharp angles and the ability to quickly tweak its sensitivity and colour). If TK and the rest can come up with an equivalent style module for edge, then that would help, but edge is *significantly* faster (in use and rendering) and more stable than Freestyle at present.

I use many of them, but i think i could do without the most of them.
Anyway, please, do not remove shadow render pass! Separate render passes are very important, in professional use of Blender. If there are problems with the current implementation, it would bee good to fix them instead of removing.

If you have a sufficiently big user base every feature, as exotic as it my be, will be needed by at leas one user. That’s why you should hesitant *adding* features. If you remove a feature later, you will be hated (see KDE 4).

I’m not experienced with Blender enough to know if every feature you suggested would be removed. I do know that Cinema 4D had a much better edges render tool, but I could see using the Blender edges for specialized projects. It was nice to have this feature. I’m also with most here – don’t remove shadow render passes. There are many who use blender to export out to say – After Effects, and being able to composite in another program with various render passes is critical. In fact most of the suggest removals seem to be based on the fact that “you” don’t use them. And as you can see from the comments, there are a lot of people that do. What makes Blender nice – is that it was feature rich (and you lived with the bugs because it’s open source). But if you’re going to dumb it down to nothing….hmmm I’m thinking it’s not going to be such a feature rich tool and maybe I need to look to another software tool that actually has pros from the industry determining the features (Maya? 3DMax?). At least then I’m not going to be surprised when a bunch of critical features find the waste bin.

looks to me most of the stuff he wants to remove because there’s other ways to do it now. But, the things he wants to remove are also things that let you get things done faster vs the “new” way, even if it’s not as good.

I use:
*world stars (an image doesn’t take in to account the cameras position. Question: how exactly WOULD you make a space image if the 3d app doesn’t help? You’d have to get another program or make your own space, which would mean you’d need to do composting, more render time, etc. & then it wouldn’t be dynamic in relation to the camera)

*field rendering. Works just fine when I export for use in Vegas. I don’t feel like buying another program like AE to get my CG in to fields, or use a script that could break when Blender gets updated. Not working with composting is something that should be fixed.

*blend sky. Same as world stars: why add an image that doesn’t react to camera when blender has something built in that looks good?

*env map texture: just because raytrace is better doesn’t mean it’s faster!

Those are what I use most of the time, the others iffy.

Why not remove some of the new stuff that’s added after 2.49 & release it with 2.8? Some of that stuff people got along with for years & another year or so wouldn’t hurt. Then things people used all the time wouldn’t be removed. IE there’s a big push for sculpting but there’s many other sculpting apps out there but sculpting is an insisted tool in blender, but field rending or world stars aren’t because they could be done in another app or though another part of blender? Seems more like the big bullet points that draw headlines are more important than practicality.

Hello
Irregular Shadows are MUCH FASTER than raytracing ( old computers still exist and do the job)

To me, you can remove all 2.5 UI…too much bling bling!

Bye and thank you for your work and effort!

Sensitive topic… I advise to leave it all in 2.5x dev build and reintroduce whatever in latter 2.6x release when it’s all stable for production. I think of Blender’s dev nowadays like Linux’s kernel releases.

Other than that, I have worked on a project and I ended up using 2.49b because of the lacking features in 2.5 release. Take for example, Extra: Time the Loop function in the Particle System and the PAttr in the Map to can be used with nodes. Now, we know the color management is way much better in 2.5 already.

Still some 2.49b features haven’t been ported to the forthcoming release. I still use the external Texture and sequencer plugins for video sequence editor, kindly keep this one unless you can introduce nodes for video sequence editor. Hmmm… Nodes for video sequence editor sounds – AWESOME!

Also, the particles attribute a.k.a PAtrr and the Time in the Extra’s Particle System Tab mentioned here http://blenderartists.org/forum/showpost.php?p=1575087&postcount=141 I still use it in 2.49b because of it.

More comments to come.

Also, are people commenting about this in the blenderartist forum? Please post link.

Field rendering is not a post process.

At time frame 1 the fields show the odd lines of the frame and at frame 1.5 the fields show the even lines of the frame.

Or, the other way round. On an interlaced image of frame 1 the odd lines will show time 1 and the even lines will show time 1.5. Ergo: making 50 (half) images per second ( in PAL and 60 in NTSC ). A far much smoother motion than 25 or 30 progressive images.
The even lines are not on the same Y as the odd lines, so rendering double the amount of half height images will NOT do the trick. The even lines need to be slightly under the odd lines, exactly half way between to be excact.
If blender no longer supports field rendering and you want fields for TV then the only thing left to do is render 50 frames per second ( in PAL, 60 in NTSC ) and remove the odd lines on odd frames and even lines on even frames and interlace that. Twice the amount of rendertime .

Maybe the Blender Institute movies make them think Blender is the #1 app in Movie world? Or maybe they wanna be.
Most of the work I see made with blender is images, and that does not need fields, so I guess that has ground to remove it. And isnt TV dead? Replaced by vimeo, youtube and other web stuff. Fields are horrid on a computer display.
But if it wants to take ground on TV animation I would leave it in and fix the bugs.

Brecht seems to be more practicle to ask who is using it now rather than what does he wants the app to be able to handle. Is he going to siggraph?

Another thing that has been very useful for me (as a pro worker) is the flip normal option.
Especially when making complex shapes, ex characters, if I extrude, I sometimes get wrong normals. The same happens when i model the parts separately, for example to reuse them. Whe I import or append, let’s say, a head from a file and some other parts (hands, feet, tails or whatever) from different files, and quickly readapt the mesh and stitch all together, i often get strangely messed up normals too. In some case the “recalculate normals outside” is completely useless and in this case manual fipping of messed up faces is the only choice. In a professional environment, stitching stuff toghether can happen very often and you usually have very limited time to deliver the work.
So, + 1 for keeping the flip normal button!

AGREED 100%

Go ahead, Brecht. The panicked people around should trust one of the few people who understand Blender to the extreme.

One function that he should remove is Xsort. What does it do??????????

Don’t really dare to add a line in such a long list of comments, sorry Brecht, but as Silence I use sticky textures for camera mapping quite a bit and would miss it when it’d go. Other than that, great idea to clean things up! And thanks for all your good and hard work so far!

It amazes me how developers are in the stage or removing extra stuff when former and useful features in the animation system are working totally erratic. I notice that most of the feedback comes from modeling and texturing. What about the animation system? It looks abandoned since builds from many months ago.

A quick look of erratic behavior:

1. Ability to create and move markers in Dopesheet,Action Editors, F-curves windows. The command is there but it does not work.

2. Keying Armature’s bone channels are placed in the action editor “wherever” ! Then there is not command to bring channels up or down. I might have arm.L at the top and then arm.R 200 channels bellow! If I need to shift keys in between there is not way to hide those 200 extra channel to display only Arm.L and Arm.R ! The arrow icon only allows you to display “only one channel” no very useful if you need to see other channels as reference.

3. Bone Groups, what do I need bone groups for is they do not show in the ActionEditor-Dopesheet? Expanding bone groups in the Action Editor IS A really speedup.

4. No way to hide unneeded bone’s channels. Do we have to work with all 200 bones at the same time? and all disorganized with no command to re-arrange them?

5. Selecting channels in the Action Editor should select the respective bone in the 3D view and viceversa. Well it works erratic. Also besides the bone groups issue, when displaying or hiding bone’s layers they become hidden in the 3D view but are still shown in the Editor !

NOTICE THAT ALL ABOVE ARE NOT REQUESTED FEATURES ! THOSE WERE ALREADY IMPLEMENTED IN 2.49B AS A BIG “SPEEDUP TIME FEATURES”, MANY OF THESE COMMANDS ARE IN THE MENUS BUT USELESS…IT DOES NOT SEEM TO BE A WORK AROUND TO ACCOMPLISH THE SAME IN 2.5.

Do away with all of them on the list (even controversal) My opinion is…

1. It will clean it up drastically.

2. if needed will be re-implemented in a more robust manner….now that blender has a better set of standards, AND code in general has improved since these
functions(or modules) were first implemented…

Blend Sky could be replaced with an existing texture applied by default to the sky.

Modifying it or removing it, if it’s applied you be as easy as the Blend Sky feature.

DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING.
I use every feature on the list to make my games and animations better and would appreciate it if you made a full versoin and one with removed features.

@ Benjamin Kay
I’m not sure it’s unrealistic, still I don’t quite see the point. Linux distros is a different issue – we’re talking about an operational system, with many millions of users, who have VERY diversified needs, so in terms of sheer numbers and variety it makes a lot of sense. But Blender is a specialized application, the community is much smaller, so you don’t really need (or are able) to make a Blender for architects, a Blender for gamers, a Blender for housewives… Who would look over all that? And why? It’s not a huge app in terms of kilobytes, so why bother and not have it all together, and use whatever you need. I haven’t seen specialized forks of Open Office, although it’s quite big, and it can do a number of different things…

I’ve used freestyle(in blender) since the very FIRST build on graphicall.org. it looks great, but it’s VERY different from blender’s internal edge-rendering method, of which I and MANY other enjoy. They’re 2 different tools, both doing something VERY different for the advanced edge-rendering-user.

It’s great to see edge-rendering will be a comp node. Blender internal edge rendering is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and cannot be replaced by FreeStyle in its current form(or any form given the algorithms it uses IMO). Thanks you for taking our words into consideration.

Also VERY good to see shadow-pass off the cut-list, that had me wondering about this list being a joke. Seriously, a 3D production tool without a shadow-pass for compositing output, LOL.

i think leave the time offset parent because its very useful for an ‘effect’ on the camera in games. i use it a lot.

Answer: Donation Challenge – we all donate to hire more coders to port features to 2.6?

Blender needs more procedural animation tools!!! PLEASE!!!! I’m crying for this! :)
Please, have a look at mograph, this would opens tons of possibilities to Blender:
http://www.maxon.net/products/modules/modules/mograph-2.html

Don’t just say “you can achieve that with by combining this and that…” often is simply not possible and more often is simply crazy time consuming in a production scenario.

We want Blender launched on the Mograph field too!!!! :)

we all learned a lesson here, didn’t we?

Every tiny little Blender feature is already vital to some random user and they’ll cry over it.

hey, how about a poll? Least voted feature is out… :)

Automatic updater is a very bad idea, specialy for software that is getting features removed.

Software that decides to not start rendering because it needs user input is bad news for renderfarm software. In renderfarms Automatic updaters are a real pain.

Dont remove sticky texture co-ordinates. I use it for camera mapping

Slow parent! Keep it. Think of the poor Game Engine! SP is used so much in camera set ups and other things.

“General Agreement
Vertex normal flip: this does more harm than good in my experience, and actually makes rim lighting look wrong. Already removed in the render branch, I’d like to port that over to trunk. Note that this is not the Flip Normal tool in mesh edit mode, it is a rendering option.”
–This is the “Vertex Normal Flip” checkbox in the “Object Data” buttons, right? Used to be “No V.Normal Flip” in 2.4? I think I used it once to get backface culling, but that’s now possible with material nodes for rendering, and with the “Textured Solid” shading option in the 3D view.
Change as proposed.

“Instances option for raytracing: we can just enable this by default , just like the rest of the rendering system does this automatically.”
–I can’t find the option to turn in on or off, so go ahead and make it the default.
Change as proposed.

“Edge Rendering: make this a compositing node.”
–Yes, please make this a compositing node. I don’t know if it would be possible, but I’d also like to see it as a material node, because it could then be used in the 3D View and the Game Engine.
Change as proposed.

“B-Bone Rest: at least remove from the UI, and perhaps even the code. Was a compatibility option to keep broken behavior.”
–Seems to create weird twisting in some B-Bones when applied. The only reason to keep it would be backward-compatibility, and even then you could remove it from the UI.
Change as proposed.

“Pin Floating Panels: there aren’t any, so option should not be there.”
–I read at least a couple of complaints about this in the wall of comments, but the only thing that’s missing is the Render Preview panel. I hope we get back something like that eventually, but you’re right — there aren’t any floating panels, and all of the other functionality has been moved to the tool shelf, the property editor, or the Nkey panel.
Change as proposed.

“Snap always for Translate/Rotate/Scale: seems not necessary, just enable snap in the 3d view header if you always want to snap.”
–Sounds good to me.
Change as proposed.

“Outline Selected, All Object Origins and Relationship Lines in the 3d view should become user preferences.”
–I can see where a user might want these to be more quickly accessible than the User Preferences window, especially in medium-sized scenes with dozens of objects. It seems like these options are in a pretty good place already; I doubt they’re really in anyone’s way. And since you’re not proposing removing them entirely, I’d guess that leaving them alone won’t create any more development headache than moving them to the preferences?
Leave as-is.

“Relative paths user preference and Remap Relative option for save operator: can we just enabled these two by default? These two combined should make relative paths work completely automatic quite well, or are there cases that this doesn’t cover?”
–Just one more change to get used to in 2.5 / 2.6. I’m starting to get the hang of Shift+Akey instead of Spacebar.
Change as proposed.

“File browser should hide hidden files and filter types by default. Every file browser does this, and it just seems to be what you want nearly always anyway. Especially on mac/unix hidden files are really in the way in the home directory.”
–Agreed.
Change as proposed.

“Optimal display for multires and subsurf enabled by default.”
–You’re not talking about removing this as an option, just enabling it by default. I don’t see why not.
Change as proposed.

“All edges option for meshes: useful for dense meshes, but only if they are not too dense, because then they completely disappear. Just always enable it.”
–I hope this doesn’t bite me later, but…
Change as proposed.

“Particle jittered Particle/Face option and Jittering amount options: workarounds for poor distribution behavior.”
–I never use particle jittering, but I have no real preference here. Maybe you should ask someone who uses it?
Change as proposed.

“Grid mesh primitive: can use a plane instead.
–ScaroDj 15:17, 10 July 2010 (-6 GTM)
Ditch the plane and name the grid, plane. What everybody does is to add a plane and then subdivide or multi-loop-cut. It’s very useful to have a grid already made, the problem is that people is lazy and don’t look down the list.”
–I disagree with ScaroDj; the grid primitive is only faster than Add Plane>Subdivide if you want a 10×10 grid. Otherwise, you have to adjust the subdivisions either way.
Change as proposed.

“Classical shadow buffer: change default to Classical-Halfway.”
–Classical-Halfway seems to create arguably better results than Classical, seems to take the same amount of time to render, and once again, it doesn’t sound like you’re talking about removing any options, just changing the default selection.
Change as proposed.

“Some Time Offset features: the time offset value itself it still useful, but a few other options aren’t:
Particle: hasn’t done anything for years.
Edit: no longer does anything in 2.5, at least remove from UI or fix.
Parent: also marked as deprecated in 2.5, remove from UI or fix.”
–I’ve always wondered what those features were supposed to do, and I’ve never been able to figure it out. If it’s because they’re not working, get rid of them. Keep whatever’s working, as anything that’s good for the Game Engine is good for me.
Change as proposed.

“No Agreement Yet
Console window on Windows: this is not used on Mac/Linux and should only contain messages for developers. If e.g. python developers want to see printed messages, they can run blender from the console.
–hoshi 22:03, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Oh yes, please. Never really liked this one. Wouldn’t this be better placed somewhere in the console editor? Or at least as a optional startup parameter?
–Keith 20:48, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
No. The console window should stay as it is but its operation changed to easily display or hide the console window as desired or needed. It needs to be dynamic, easily accessible, control. Default: Off. When the info is desired, it is a very useful tool. In Windows, I have went through great pains to create the functionality to pipe data to a (normally non-existent) console window.
The Yafaray Community makes good use of the console window. The most important use is the gathering of Debug information when some person posts a crash or error on the forums. If the standard windows user didn’t have access to the console it would be much more of a process to get that information from them. Also the console window shows progress information during the render. I believe all of this is true for the new 2.5/6 exporter
–ScaroDj 13:45, 10 July 2010 (-6GTM)
I second Hoshi’s motion. I think all of Keith’s goals can be achieved making it an editor, this is the one thing that breaks Blender’s non-modality (along with the new User Preferences Editor, if you open it from the File Menu).”
–This window was a weird and ugly shadow in the background when I “up”graded from an old iMac to a custom PC desktop. I’ve gotten used to it now, and some of the render progress and python debug info are very useful, but I don’t think every Windows user should be forced to have it open by default, as a separate window, every time they run Blender.
Change as proposed.

“Texture and sequencer plugins: obviously plugins are useful, but it’s possible to make a much better system that fits in the 2.5 design. I don’t see the point of bringing them pack in the current form, and they were not much used or properly supported in 2.4x anyway. We can just remove all the code in my opinion.
–Jansende 14:03, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
I like the Sequencer. It makes blender an easy to use video-editor with lots of functions. I use it often to edit my videos. But I agree its quite unhandy in some ways. So you may kick it of the new release and write a better one. :)
–Brecht 17:43, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
First, I’m not proposing to remove the sequencer, only the plugin system. Note plugins are currently not functional in 2.5. I don’t have a timeframe for when a new plugin system would be added. But I also think that bringing back the old system temporarily would be a waste of time, both for developers and for users who soon after will have to switch to another system anyway.
–Jansende 21:06, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Ahhh. You mean things like the Import/Export-Plugins? Yeah they are really creepy and unhandy. They should definetly be replaced. Most ennoying is the sound handling. :( If you don’t convert right you get crap in blender. :((”
–I never used plugins. Maybe with a new system we’ll get some really good ones.
Change as proposed.

“World stars: for 80ies space animations this may be useful, but if you want something that actually looks good, you should use a texture.
–Bartrobinson 13:38, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Keep stars. I don’t know about 80′s space animations, but I use this for visualization of 2010 space animation.
–Brecht 17:43, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
I think this can be replaced quite well with a particle system, with the added advantage that the look is actually configurable. Should we have a moon rendering system, a nebula system, etc? Those things are useful but best left to addons.
–Zeauro 11:07, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
It is not as easy as it seems to replace that with a particle system.If the mesh emitter is out of camera clipping; a system with no physics with volume emission is not renderred.
–ScaroDj 14:07, 10 July 2010 (-6 GTM) (Sorry, idk how to do this)
I always thought that it was ridiculous to begin with, I would like a procedural star texture in the Texture Panel, though.”
–Okay, this one I don’t get. Congratulations to all of you who are successfully using this feature. I’ve tried it in two of my recent projects, and both times, no matter what settings I used, hitting F12 caused Blender to crash. (AMD Phenom 9850, nVidia 8800GTS, 4GB RAM, both in Windows Vista 32 and Windows 7 32, Blender 2.48a and 2.5 alpha). I guess star rendering is still working for most people? Go figure.
Change as proposed.

“Texture mesh: is anyone actually using this? It’s useful in principle but seems like one of those things that was added because it was useful in a neogeo project but not used afterwards, and now is just a confusing option in the UI.
–Brecht 17:43, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Alternatively this could be moved to the texture mapping panel, at least then it becomes clear what it is used for.”
–I was over on BlenderArtists not long ago, looking for a way to fake an effect for the Game Engine, and someone had a thread open about animating water moving through a transparent hose. At the time, I had no idea the Texture Mesh functionality existed at all — it turns out it would have been perfect for that person! (Thanks to Zeauro for pointing out that tutorial). That said, the current implementation seems a little strange, not very intuitive. Moving it to Texture Mapping sounds like a good idea. And maybe changing the name and tooltip, so people can actually figure out what it’s for?
Change based on second proposal

“Object Color: for games this is useful, but otherwise I think it’s a bad feature, so I propose to only show it in game engine mode. Note that this is not a wire frame color or solid view drawing color, it is a texface/material option.
–Jansende 21:25, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
I found it. And I wondered what does this option do? I didn’t find out. Can you please explain it.
… I think, if you can’t get out whats changing, when you use an option, this one might be very useless.”
–I can only find the option in the material buttons that enables the use of Object Colors for a given material, not where to actually set the color per-object. It seems like you should be able to achieve the same result by applying a generated image texture to each object, and using the TexFace option in the material buttons to apply that texture as the material’s color. This has the advantage of being a texture, not just a solid color (Which means it could also be a solid color), and retains the per-object nature of the Object Color option.
Change as proposed.

“Sticky texture coordinates: doubt this is much used in practice. Corrected perspective interpolation however is useful, could be added back as an option for UV’s.
–Pixelminer 21:11, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
If sticky texture coordinates are removed then there should still be some way to use a camera to project UVs onto surfaces. If not, I say keep it in since sticky textures are useful for projected matte paintings and such.”
–I finally learned what this does today. I’ve been wondering for years. It’s kind of unfortunate that this seems to be the quickest and maybe best way to achieve this result, because the way it’s implemented is inconsistent with other texture mapping options in Blender. With UV mapping, you create an editable UV layout for your mesh. With Object mapping, you connect the texture coords with an existing mesh in your scene. With Sticky mapping, you get an apparently theoretical set of coordinates that can be deleted, but can’t be seen or adjusted. What are sticky coordinates “stuck” to? The active camera? The selected object? Something else entirely? Make this an option for UV mapping instead. (Thanks to Woodge for the Sticky Coordinates link).
Change based on second proposal.

“Animateable object layers: not compatible with the dependency graph. Visibility/renderability can be animated instead.”
–What about compositing animations? What will I do if I want my composite nodes to affect objects in one renderlayer, but not another renderlayer? Normally, I’d set each renderlayer to include different 3D layers, and animate the objects between the layers, which would effectively animate which renderlayer the objects were on, too? Is there some other way to do that?
Leave as-is / Fix!

“Curve parent animation: replaced by constraint.”
–That should be fine.
Change as proposed.

“Curves in the image editor: replace by exposure slider. If you really need this much control, use compositing nodes.”
–I tend to feel like the Image Editor needs more tools and functionality, not less. However, I can see the logic in this proposal, especially as a pre-2.6 cut that could always be improved on down the road. Meantime, I like the compositor, and I have no problem using it for image correction — or, you know, an actual image editing program. GIMP is free, too.
Change as proposed.

“Irregular Shadow Buffer: raytracing can be used instead.
–calli 14:19, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Speed?
–Brecht 17:34, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
I think the main advantage is that you can disable raytracing, besides that I don’t think there is a big speed difference.”
–If anybody knows about the speed of shadow rendering in Blender, it’s Brecht. If he says irregular buffers aren’t faster than raytracing, he’s probably right.
Change as proposed.

“Particle Line rendering: doesn’t seem like you can create good looking results with this.
–Alexsani 17:13, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
I have used this for sparks renders, and it is not very high quality. If you could make a path-type version which would have a strand render for the path traveled by the particle, that would help greatly.
–Zeauro 16:18, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
Other interesting things than realistic sparks can be done with line rendering. [1]
–This is a quick way to render a particle that looks motion blurred. It doesn’t look great by default, but it can be tweaked in the compositor. Maybe it should stay until something better comes along?
Leave as-is / Fix.

“Sequencer Glow effect: seems out of place.
–ScaroDj 15:07, 10 July 2010 (-6 GTM)
If you could process the sequences through the Node Editor, it would make Blender a really powerful video editing tool, I think. Making a new node in the compositor (Add ? Input ? Sequence Layer)
so that the only effects in the Sequencer would be the transition ones. So, yes, it is out of place.”
–Glow is post, and post is done in the compositor. If you can’t currently feed the sequencer, you should be able to. I’d like to see more fades/crosses/transitions in the sequencer, but it doesn’t need post effects.
Change as proposed.

“Slow Parent: useful, but doesn’t actually work correct with the current animation system. We could still keep it working in the game engine.
–calli 14:19, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
many camera controls in the BGE rely on SlowParent so at least keep it for BGE.
–cog 14:39, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
This list is beginning to remind me of an old adage about a bus company whose busses stopped picking up passengers.
When asked why they were doing this the manager replied. “If we had to stop for passengers we would never be able to keep up with the timetable”.
Meaning know what your business is not what makes the job of running it easier.
–As before, what’s good for the Game Engine is good for me.
Change as proposed. (Keep in Game Engine mode)

“Invert Z Depth material option: weird rasterization trick, doesn’t seem very useful. Yes, you can do certain Escher type renderings with, but do we really need native support for that kind of thing?”
–If I understand correctly, we can invert the Z depth pass in the compositor, right? We can also normalize, squeeze or blur it…
Change as proposed.

“Fields rendering: is anyone actually using Blender to produce content for TV with this option? For example, it doesn’t work with compositing and never has. Can’t we leave this to specialized tools?
–Bartrobinson 13:38, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Keep Field Rendering. Very important! In order to directly support television standards, rendering of fields is required. If it’s not supported 4 times as much data needs to be rendered as is required when field rendering to get the same smooth motion quality. I’ve used it on several for TV and DVD projects and commercials and independent films. It would be nice if it were actually better supported.
–calli 14:35, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Keep! Still there are many DV cam/recorders working and not everybody has a LCD Screen as TV. 50i images are much smoother on such devices.
Brecht 17:53, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
My point is not that interlaced video is outdated, but the way it is implemented in Blender makes it of limited used. A better alternative is to render in double the framerate and encode it as interlaced at the last point in the pipeline. Besides that, Blender has never been able to save an interlaced video file that can be played correctly in a video player.”
–Clearly important to a lot of Blender users.
Fix.

“Fields option for images: same reasoning as above. Also no one noticed this has been broken for years.
Field Rendering is very important for me and I really think that it’s time for field rendering to be supported with the compositor.
–Bartrobinson 13:38, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Repair Fields option for images, and enhance. If this were working, it would be a huge time saver for loading in interlaced (professional video) for texturing and comping.
–speaker_mute18:12, 9 Uly 2010
–I’m inclined to stay out of this one. I have yet to produce anything good enough for TV, and if it’s been broken that long, nobody noticed it. It seems like exporting fields would be more important than importing them, but I don’t want to pretend I know anything about it.
…

“No Suitable Replacement
These won’t be removed since there is nothing good enough to replace them:
Environment Map texture
Blend Sky
Fresnel diffuse shader”
–So I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say these last three definitely won’t be removed? I just have this feeling that they somehow won’t be removed. Weird, huh?

It seems there are no many motion graphics artist here… that’s a shame.

Console window on Windows: Keep this. sometimes blender freezes and this is an easy way to close. Maybe make an option to show or hide it.

Blend sky: pretty useful in my opinion.

stars can be useful too. with some editing in GIMP, look: http://i47.tinypic.com/20utliv.jpg . Sure you could simulate 3d stars in gimp, by why add extra steps?

@ namekuseijin: buzzword? really? ask to tons of motion graphics professionals who work in this field.

@ Richard

‘I do motion graphics’ (Motion 4) ! – just thought I would stick my arm up above trenches :))

@ namekuseijin – Believe me, motion graphics are anything but trendy buzzwords, when you’re trying to crank out some client work at speed at 4 in the morning. It’s real solid paying work, but sometimes you do need matchsticks to keep the eyes open :)

I rarely use a lot of implements in my kitchen, but it’s not never, or I’d question why I have them in the first place. Sometimes the food processor is good to quickly chop together something in a hurry. Other times I might need a sharp precision knife to slowly craft something exquisite. These proposed changes feel like someone going into my kitchen and removing a bunch of items and telling me to learn how to cook X a new way. Just saying…

Am I the only one thinking this is a discussion that should have occurred before this point in time? Regardless, thank you developers for all you do. I must say, it’s easy to pontificate from the sidelines, especially when you think you are right. =P

I wish Brecht van Lommel, would remove himself from the blender team!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@Marc:
But if they dont work then do you keep them or throw them away?
I always replace them, but then again I have the cash to do so.

@blndrusr:
Yeah sure, phone home. Add vertex , Extrude and cut edge. My list would be pretty boring.
I think it would be better if there are plans set out on how to accomplisch tasks and then create tools to do so, not randomly add features people start yelling. Or remove them for that matter.
Maybe one Picasso uses that rarely used feature only once. Shame if we would need to miss his work. Ofcourse Blender needs to be stable, but in the end blender needs to be blender, a tool for artists, not a developers hobby. Thats my take anyway.

The Blender version number system scheme is just fitting, IMO. It reminds of the Linux kernel releases.

Whatever is to be removed as mentioned in this proposal for Blender 2.6 release (stable) keep them in the Blender 2.5 release (unstable – development build) for us to continue our work. Once these features have a suitable alternative as you suggest or if none available as mention in the blender wiki, kindly re-implement them in 2.6.

The other option was release these features as a Add-on and suggest a disclaimer, these add-on are unstable and experience a crash. Something along those lines. This would make the code more modular. Easier for the user to disable or enable a crashy feature.

I hope that makes a lot of sense. Sorry about the repeat suggestion. I was brainstorming the alternatives earlier as I am using Blender 2.49b’s “PAttr” under Map to in the Materials and Loop in the Extra’s Particle System which isn’t available in the 2.5 :-(

As of now, I see there are to branches at the graphicall.org a render build and a plain build.
Why not follow that scheme into Blender 2.6. Of course, include the render branch code into the final release.

Now that your joining Octane rended team. Does this proposal still stand?