There's a lot of work going on, and it seems like there's a special focus on import- and export functionality. Cool!
Ton Roosendaal writes:
Hi all,
1) 2.5 project
- [Bug-]Tracker went up to 67, enough work todo still!
- Sergey announced that his "crazyspace" work to allow sculpting armature-deformed meshes is ready for final reviews. He'll get it reviewed first by Brecht, and then either commits or posts in tracker for further feedback.
- COLLADA: Ton had a concerned mail from COLLADA lead Remi Arnaud, he and Khronos offer their support, they also would love to see Blender to soon get the official Khronos Conformancy Badge! Nathan Letwory is in contact with Remi to check on what can be done together.
- Campbell mentions that all core IO scripts from 2.4 now are ported to 2.5. They work similar or better (x3d) even now. Campbell offers to make a test suite for Import/Export with default reference .blend files.
- Nathan will post a diagram with the current state (support level, features) of our Import/Export scripts.
2) Other projects, branches
- Lukas Toenne updated his blog about his particle node work.
- That post, and Jeroen's proposal for OpenCL could be copied to our code blog too! Ton will set this going.
- This week we'll also check which of the tablet work from Mike Erwin can go to trunk.
- Ton notices Tamito Kajuyama nicely keeps his Non-Photo-Realistic render branch (FreeStyle) upto date with the 2.5 trunk. Testers and reviewers welcome!
Thanks,
-Ton-
30 Comments
Hey guys, will there still be FBX export supported? That's needed to make assets for Unity game engine, as far as I know.
@MSZ
I've been exporting fine using Blender-FBX-Unity with no problems on several commercial projects using 2.5. I'm exporting textured meshes, materials and have experimented with transform keyframes (although I'm actually just scripting movers in Unity and using physics, rather than using animations). This pipeline has worked really well for me. My only "complaint" is the inability to open FBX files from 3D artists in the studio using C4D / 3D Max. TO get around this, I have the 3D artists export an Obj file along with the FBX, so I can go in and heaviy edit / change the file in Blender.
BTW, Dropping a Blender 2.5+ file in Unity doesn't work and I've also experimented exporting files with key shapes but they seemed to be ignored. Exporting an FBX from Blender with 1 BU = 1 Meter, then setting the FBX importer in Unity to scale to 1.0 (instead of .01) gets me a 1:1 match between Blender and Unity.
I'm happy to see movement on Collada. I'm hoping this eventually takes the place of FBX files. So far, using collada files in Blender, Unity, 3D Max and SketchUp has been an exercise is futility.
- nXain
@nxain
That's good to know. I'll experiment with armature animated meshes then. I'm really looking forward to baking animations in Blender. I mean using constraints and then baking the movement to key framed animation. As far as I know, it should work just like Motion Builder's "plot animation".
I'd love to see the WebGL exporter ported to 2.5
http://code.google.com/p/blender-webgl-exporter/
>Ton had a concerned mail from COLLADA lead Remi Arnaud, he and Khronos offer their support, they also would love to see Blender to soon get the official Khronos Conformancy Badge!
That's good news, but why was this a "concerned" mail? The wording makes is sound as if the COLLADA group was unhappy about Blender's COLLADA support.
It's great to see that the Khronos group is seeing the strategic place blender has and that they are willing to support blender in every way they can. It would be dumb to say the least to ignore this offer. Hopefully the Khronos group has the same passion about OpenCL and maybe Sony/ILM will help with the integration of Alembic for VFX.
This is probably not the place but i dont't know where to make the sugestion/complaint.
in the beta when i choose to select with the left mouse button (which should be the default), it works in the 3d panel but not in the timeline, and probably not in other places. it should change the paradigm to the standard select mode in the whole application.
Is in there some sort of bell to say its safe to make scripts now, without painting the walls every other week? ;)
The most exciting news for me is that one line:
"This week we’ll also check which of the tablet work from Mike Erwin can go to trunk."
I was afraid I'd have to wait for 2.6 - My Wacom is smiling.
Hopefully STL export will be fixed soon, it's broken now in 2.56a.
@arkady I'm guessing it's "concerned" as in "attentive" and "interested". They're concerned because they care about it. See?
Glad to see their interest.
But wasn't there a whole gsoc project dedicated to fully implement collada over a year ago? So shouldn't most of the work be done already?
Collada is a very important part to use Blender for professional projects.
Any news on http://cia.vc/stats/project/Blender?
It's frozen since last friday.
No news on the render branch (the one to render Sintel) In a long time...To me GI is the most important feature, any news on the render branch would be much appreciated.
Thanks for the hard work
Three important fixes must be done, according to me:
1) No more "DOS" window while opening Blender.
2) Moving a window on top of the main program has the effect of tracing black strips.
3) The interface doesn't retain its internal layout while growing/shrinking the Blender window.
Any chance to get these things fixed for the final release?
T.K. is the best!
mjordan writes:
"Any chance to get these things fixed for the final release?"
Final release? What is that? It's software.
For some reason it's impossible for programmers to create a finished product.
@joeri67: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle
On the same theme as mjordan above, please make Blender understand negative coordinates in its startup switches, e.g. "blender.exe -w -p -1280 53 2960 1000". This was understood by all previous Blender 2.4x releases, and allowed Blender to start-up spread across two monitors (with the primary on the right). It will not work in 2.5x, so EVERY time I open 2.5x I have to re-stretch it across my monitors! Grrrr! Surely such a simple fix?
I'd prefer that "1) No more “DOS” window while opening Blender." stays... it has told me many needed information for bug fix or whatsoever if needed.
It's like linux console, just that windows don't have anything like that hence the dos window.
Anyways keep up the good work. I hope to use blender again! :D
Blender developers are the best. Maybe any form of cheerleading is not neccessary?
@Joeri67 "final release" or RTM (as its name suggests) is good for commercial software, The blender is not "product" anymore...
Jesus,
given the number of bugs, features added since Sintel, Im still not sure how it got made? :)
regards All
TFS
please dont remove the dos console as default in win! i love it, its very important to see whats going on. under osx/linux i often have to restart blender from console to see any infos..:(
maybe add an option to hide in the user pref, but not as default.
but imho there are several things which deserve much more focus to work on..
opencl compositor... gi render.. particle nodes..
great work! thx to all coders!
I vote for Collada support! It is very very important and useful. Chances of intengrating blender in more and more working pipeline...
@dm7: Bug fixing is not a user related task.
hmmm what happed with Raytrace Indirect light?
@mjordan
its not just debug info you get from the console!
so seeing what blender does in backround (e.g. the gui does not rspond no more because the cpu is busy) is a very user related task!
looking into the console is very needful to see the progress and to see what happens inside blender. did you ever use some heavy meshes, complex nodes or some exporters?....
cylcle dependencies... inconsistent normals... wrong img path... all those things and much more are very well reported in the console and these thinks can happend in normal user related tasks so how do you wanna know wo console?
i dont understand why often people thing the console gives only coder related infos for debug..
also i am no coder but it helps me often to get problems fixed.
imo take a closer look and you will be able to use blender more efficently..
regards dave
@dave62: I'm not questioning the usefulness of the console. It has its use, of course. I'm just asking for a way to disable it. I simply don't want to open 2 windows each time I start Blender.
yeah, what happened to Raytraced Indirect Lighting ? I think Farsthary was working on it but it never made it to the trunk for some reason...