PyNode, Freestyle and Bullet integration: coming up!
Ton Roosendaal writes:
Hi all,
Here's notes from today's meeting in irc.freenode.net #blendercoders. We tried to keep it short, lots of interesting code work todo!
1) Blender 2.66 progress
- Sergey Sharybin: Our official linux builds (also on builder.blender.org) are now glibc2.11 only.
- Sergey also completed the Alpha recode, which is in svn now
- Brecht van Lommel worked on hair, refactoring code and getting arbitrary (texture coordinates, vertex color, etc) attributes working on hair.
- Brecht also worked on multiple importance sampling for lamps, an old todo, which should reduce noise on sharp glossy materials. Will be done monday or tuesday. Next on the todo is work on 'ubershader' or displacement.
- Lukas Toenne: the pynode target probably moves to 2.67?
- Bastien Montagne: Freestyle integration is also a 2.67 target now.
- Sergej Reich: work on Bullet integration nearly done, ready for review this week (with end-user docs)
2) Other projects
- Ton Roosendaal experimented with simple and fast GLSL shaders for "matcap" (sphere texture mapped on normals). Works well even with current preview-rendered material icons. Could be used as GLSL-enhance option for standard Solid drawing, for modeling and sculpt. Still experimental.
38 Comments
Bullet integration FTW!!!
But still no object name mapping option and stress maps in Cycles. :(
Who really need the "ubershader" (very bad name, btw)?
I think that the man who started this great render engine alone (now he's not alone, thx! :) ) knows better what must be 1st, 2nd, 3rd... etc implemented. If you want to ask for "why" and "who" you'd better go into the BlenderArtists forum. There are a LOT of talks ;)
BTW, don't get me offensive - nobody asks why your child's name is "that bad" :) Parent's choice is obvious (in most cases).
I think that Brecht doesn't need a dumbaby as defender, mainly also because I'm not attaching him at all but just wanted to point out a couple of things sadly still missing in Cycles.
Mm... ok, my apologies for the term "dumbaby", I've been a little too harsh.
after working with Max, Maya, Softimage and Cinema try Blender!
worse Outliner
worse fps in Shaded mode with over 1000K polygons
worse custamization interface with custom shelfs and scripting buttons
absurd save user preferences with all scene
million bugs with change hotkey preset from default
worse management of scene
Blender with today functions can only working with easy scenes.
These areas should be developed, not just small tools
Ramon, are you crazy?
I've started working in Max and tried to set my fav. blender keys there... Bad luck. I can set a key just ONCE! I mean if it's for Poly editing - it can't be the same (move command for ex.) in UV editor.
Really I don't know about OTHER programs you picked here...
again about Max:
no "Outliner"! Just shitty "Layer Manager" that main functions (moving between layers, collapsing and etc.) works slower than similar functions in Blender. AND
Outliner is fantastic in Blender! It's not too much smooth (but I get used to those things already) about "Shift-Ctrl-Select things" (not like in main Windows apps). It has the great "maneuverable" hierarchy, the awesome search system built-in and smooth visibility options.
Management of scenes(! not one scene!) - is greater than in many other 3d apps! It's not without bad behaviors but it's really workable. Let's think here about our "lovely Max" (I'm "in love" being with it on my last job) - what management it has? Separated function to access different types of objects and a slow access search function? Yes - you loose your time when you're just finding something there. Because NO handy Outliner - just some parody like "Layer Manager" (oh, I hate it!)
If I want to find something (prev. selected) in Outliner quickly -just hit my hot key in it's field ("." - in Numpad) Not selected - search by name.
Render Layers - it's great! Just must be studied properly and you'll get it!
You was right just about GLSL realtime view - it's not so fast as in the most other major 3d apps. But I'm sure it will be solved.
P.S. I'm not a "fanboy" and I worked in Modo, Lightwave, I work in SolidWorks and know (very well) AutoCAD and DS Catia. I know pros and cons there so I see what to compare.
Do not feed the troll. Obvious troll is obvious.
There's a difference between a troll and someone with a difference in opinion.
I think the übershader is a step towards being able to have a fast-SSS shader. before the physically correct SSS is in (which will probably take research and time to code)
poor freestyle! :D I hope 2.67 is its final call. and its in by then.
yay for bullet. couldn't be more syked for a gsoc integration than this one.
Ditto on the Freestyle! With any luck, when it gets close to 2.67 release time, it won't be pushed to 2.68.
"Sergey also completed the Alpha recode, which is in svn now"
I read the notes about the Alpha recode but I still don't really understand one basic fact... if I use a PNG with alpha as a 'decal' texture (an image texture with its position controlled by an empty) will the alpha be observed when rendered using Cycles, or will it still show as black in the render?
Thank you, Devs! Really glad to see that things are going so cool and pretty quickly!
I have a quick documentation question, for lack of a better place to ask it.
Having just created an account on the BlenderWiki site, who are the people to talk to regarding various questions?
try
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Meta:Guides/Writer_Guide
or find other pages here
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Special:SpecialPages
Marco
I'm confused, 2.65 was already released but it says Blender 2.65 progress.
That should've been 2.66, I'm sure. I'll update it.
Awesome ! Hey... I love blender .
PLEASE bring back PS X PPC releases. i bought a machine just for this. =(
Yeah, I'll second that. Trying to compile Blender from source is a major headache for the inexperienced and the available "instructions" are all but useless as they have not been kept anything like up to date. I'll get there in the end, but some official PPC builds again would be a huge help while I'm trying.
When did you buy a PPC machine for Blender? PPC has been dead outside of console architectures for YEARS. Time to upgrade. No point in devs dragging a dead horse along just to weigh down all of the healthy ones.
What's freestyle do?
Also, when I read "pynodes" I'm imagining a node editor like Softimage's ICE. Am I deluded, or is this the awesomest thing ever?
Freestyle generates lines, i.e. 2d lineart, from 3d scenes - it provides the same function as Blender's "Edge" option in post-processing, but is MUCH more powerful.
Sweet! I've been wanting a feature like that.
Can you do stuff like mark an edge and it get's drawn as black even if it's not silhouetting the object?
What do pynodes do?
PyNodes will allow for outside integration of 3rd party software directly into Blender. That means node systems for Yafaray, VRay, Lux, 3Delight, maybe even Arnold one day. It allows for fully customizable node architectures that can access anything exposed to the Python API. Very exciting stuff.
Best outliner - Softimage
Best scene managment - Maya
Best customization interface - Maya and Softimage
Best render Layers - Maya and Softimage
Moolah .... Did you try all functions in Maya and Softimage
I saw you try only Max...
Obvious troll is obvious, and off topic.
Man, you sound 12. Just because the guy has a different opinion than you doesn't necessarily make him a troll.
Chrome Monkey is right. This character is off topic and instead just making general remarks about how bad Blender is and how good all the other software. That's trolling and flaming to me.
Thank you. Although, I should point out in fairness that he was justified to note that my response to RamonKarlos was a recycled flippant one-liner of an internet meme.
I could have argued the point with Ramon, and had reasons to decide against it. Primarily in that he seemed to be arguing his point with lots of cherry-picking, was very sloppy with capitalizing and punctuating; perhaps this was simply cosmetic. My gut said it looked like a troll attack, and I'm sure in hindsight that my response appeared similarly so. I'm always torn on how to respond to comments that appear baiting when I see (or believe I see) others taking the bait. Perhaps there is no good endgame in such a case.
I'm going to let that one go.
I think he's a paid troll.
It's worse than just a dork.
So if I'd be a moderator here I could definitely ban this kind of "aggressive opinions flaming" guys for a week (by IP of course). Obviously, he's not arguing well. Just some cliche shit "slogans". I don't want to "switch" now - it's a worst thing for me at this time. It's enough I'm using Max a bit - just a real need (dictated by our local "cg standards"). But prefer to model everything in Blender (it's for sure).
Paid trolls usually activates when a major release or just a "visible changes" release happens. And really seems it's NOW. And further we can expect more great releases :)
I think that our actions can be positive:
maybe everybody (at least who works a year with Blender) can write an article.
How about a small contest
"My favorite tools and features in Blender 2.6*"?
To be honest, this is all a matter of your personal taste, not any absolute fact. Though, if you perceive them as better for these tasks, and you're apparently more comfortable using them, why not just stick with Softimage or Maya? There's no sense in comparing Blender to the likes of Maya or Softimage, really. Blender has its own design philosophy, as does Maya and Softimage.
It is a matter of tone, though. It strikes me as odd that you had more of an issue with the tone of the reply than with the tone of the original post, which also relied on some fallacies of reasoning to make the point. In addition to that initial post being very "twelve-ish" in its own right, it is just a disingenuous way of pointing out the problems with one product by comparing it to the best individual features of a wide variety of other products. That is the logical equivalent of a shell game.
(Specifically, it's a kind of deck-stacking, argument-wise.)
"■Ton Roosendaal experimented with simple and fast GLSL shaders for “matcap...”
Care to explain this further?
Is it like this but without having to import matcap textures?
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?174790-ZBrush-matcap-in-Blender
"..GLSL shaders for matcap"
I would love to see an AO draw mode. It would be especially useful for texture paint. Currently when you UV map a blank texture to an object and tick "texture to solid" you only see the silhouette of that object. martinsh has already coded a fast AO GLSL shader for BGE which would work nicely.
this isnt related to this page but i was just on grafficall and saw that there are alot of cmplaints about blender not loading and pythonpath enviorment variables. i have dicovered that you dont need that at all anymore. you can just delete it from the enviorment variable system in the advanced tab of whatever system your running. just thought this could help. didnt know where else4 to put this