Blender Developer Notes July 3, 2011
Hi all,
Notes from today’s developer meeting:
1) Blender 2.5x related
– 2.58a build in progress, still need Windows and OSX builds. (trunkr38019 addons r2080).
Also the official tag has to be done. Ton will remind Nathan and Jens.
– Bug tracker is nicely growing with new reports! Both Ton & Brecht will work there the coming week, everyone’s assistance is welcome!
– Campbell produced overview of I/O status for Blender
– Mario (lmg) Kishalmi helps with continuous release log updates in our wiki, he’ll update add-on changes for 2.58a this week.
– Thomas Dinges reminds everyone to keep track of the release checklist
The proposal for a new ‘BCon’ status (Blender’s DefCon) will need to be reviewed too.
2) Other projects (branches, etc)
– Two new svn commit access (bf-project) members: Keir Mierle (libmv updating) and Jeroen Bakker (compositor engine recode, various smaller fixes).
– This week “Harmony” will release official templates for developer agreements.
They will open up a mailing list for feedback. Ton will consult them to ask for the right exception/extension/upgrade clause that satisfies our needs.
– Campbell reviewed patch for Vertex Group modifier, needs to be split. An open issue still is whether it’s good to accept such modifiers in general… or wait for recode with nodes.
– Lukas Toenne: particle system upgrade with “paged buffers” will break hair. Cant be solved simply at this moment. Proposal is to continue work on a new node based particle system (using new buffers) and put this next to old system. Alternative is to either find a developer who can help upgrade hair or who recodes hair, and/or we make it a sponsored (or BF paid) project. Will be investigated during next weeks.
– Cycles render & shading project: Brecht wrote a proposal for workflow:
– Cycles libraries are in svn now, makes compile much easier for Windows and OSX.
3) Google Summer of Code
– Only few projects merge in “staging branch’ Salad. Could be better!
– Midterm evaluation is soon:
– July 11th – Mentors and students can begin submitting mid-term evaluations.
– July 15th – Mid-term evaluations deadline
– Everyone is very happy with how Sergey’s tracker project progresses and communicates. An enlightening and inspiring example for the other students :)
Thanks!
-Ton-
Good progress.
Nice to see how progress is being made, congratulations to all developers and community involved.
I’d pay some $$$ to see hair split out – it’s going to have to be done sooner or later, so might as well get it done now.
Outta curiosity: is there gonna be a 10.4 PPC mac version out yet?
Some nice GSOC progress. Thanks everyone for your good works. :)
I understand there is going to be a further commit for Cycles soon?
Hopefully someone can do a Cycles builds with Cuda enabled? (please) :)
I am impressed by the amount and quality of work you put into both development and communication.
I just switched to Blender from LightWave after the fiasco NewTek made out of the LightWave Core project. Instead of close communication with their users (a ‘privilege’ participants had to pay for!) and listening to user input, they kept changing project scope and targets again and again until finally killing the new Core application (and with it Linux support) after wasting three years of valuable time and input from participants. Instead they told everybody to be happy with the ‘improvements’ to classic LW which they threw together in a few months just to have something to show.
After only a few weeks I can already say that Blender is so far ahead of LW, it’s ridiculous that it is not being used by larger Studios already.
Keep up the good work people!
Thanks for keeping us updated.
@ FomerLWUser
Wow, I hadn’t heard that Newtek killed off Core. I used Lightwave for a long time but moved on from it several years ago. I still fire up my copy of 8.5 from time to time to render something with Fprime, but that’s about it. I’ve always felt that Lightwave pretty-much died when the devs left to form Luxology.
Blender however, seems to be following the opposite trajectory. It has come a long way in just the last couple years and I’d say it already exceeds Lightwave in many areas. And it can certainly be used for professional work in its current form, though for some people I’m sure there are still areas where it needs to improve first. But I think once cycles (the new render engine) and bmesh (the modernized polygon core) are finished, blender will be a very compelling choice for a lot of those people too.
Today is the 4th of July at home, so I declare secession from the blender community…
Good progress.
nothing about UI :(
I can offer my services to compile for OSX, both Intel and PPC.
I have a Macbook Pro (late 2007) and a Powermac G5 (dual 2.0).