Developer Meeting Notes, July 15, 2012
Blender 2.64 is a tough cookie to crack – the bug count remains high and the release may be postponed until september.
Here’s the notes from today’s meeting, irc.freenode.net #blendercoders
1) Blender 2.64 status
- Bugs bugs bugs… tracker keeps stable around 300 open issues. We still need more developers to close & fix!
- Campbell Barton suggests to disable some features before release. He’ll come with a proposal for which ones later.
- New Compositor and Masking can be finished up this month
- Cycles has a lot of open issues, with Brecht on holidays now we might better need docs or some tooltip/widget to warn about experimental features. In general Cycles’ status is better than in 2.63, worth releasing.
- Ton Roosendaal proposes to postpone 2.64 until mid September, and in the meantime keep trunk feature-frozen (BCon3), with as exception approved/stable work for Mango – which is mostly color pipeline and grading features.
2) Other projects
- Sergey Sharybin will do sequencer work, grading tools. Docs or proposal will be published in 2 weeks max.
- Sergej Reich (and Daniel Genrich) proposes to remove the old “Continuous physics option – this now becomes default anyway. Will be done together with future merger of the Physics GSoC project.
3) Google Summer of Code
- For review: new subdivision surface modifier.
- Sergej Reich reminds everyone to his video of 2 weeks ago:
- Google midterm results: out of the 16 projects, 2 students didn’t pass midterm due to lack of results. That’s the projects for Cycles Subsurface Scattering and Polygon tessellation. Fourteen students will now head at a successful completion of their work! Congrats :)
Laters,
-Ton-
Long ago, I remember I had to calculate physics for hours.. This looks so fast!
Damn my most wanted project has just disappeared (SSS Cycles)…
This lost it’s necessity since Agus3D’s introduciton of the ray length node and it’s inclusion in trunk.
http://agus3d.blogspot.com/2012/05/blender-cycles-ray-length-node-output.html
Lol, it’s a totally different thing. You can’t compare ray length node to a robust SSS shader.
lol, although you can try to fake it with the ray length node, it is by no means sub surface scattering.
SSS is still very necessary in Cycles. We will now just have to wait.
I beleive it’s still..somewhat possible, no?
http://blendernerd.com/sss-cycles/
I really wanted SSS for cycles. Oh well. A lot of other exciting stuff at least.
I want baking in cycle
Yeah, that would be awesome for nice armors for oblivion or skyrim :D. Btw, I am romanian too.
That too but here’s another reason for
baking in cycle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRfOUBzTiQw
@facebook-505609318:disqus You mean Cycles as a Game Engine? ^^
AWESOME!
oh yes baking pls
Thanks for keeping us updated and thank you so much for the hard work of all involved in the developpment :-)
Just tried the new fisheye renderer in Cycles. It is very good. :)
I’m glad they’re holding off release. I’ve spent the afternoon using the new compositor(which I LOVE it’s newfound speed), but when I render it freezes every 30 frames or so.
pretty pathetic
Let’s skip 2.64 since it takes too long and bad luck number. Let’s make it 2.65.
Take your time people!
Thanks 4 the hard work!
Firstly big thanks to Ton and the Devs for the hard work they are doing. Personally I’m waiting for the upgrades that are coming with 2.64 for cycles. Please take your time and make a superb 2.64 version as you guys know.
One little thing I wanted to ask. Is it planned that in the future Cycles would allow like pathtracing ot photon mapping render methods?
Each ray essentially is a “photon”, so there’s no need for old-style photon mapping.
“Sergey Sharybin will do sequencer work” – anyone have some more details on what he’ll be working on?
one question – cycles support for AMD/OpenCL in 2.6.4?
there was a rumour that AMD had a developer working with brecht last week, what came of it?
That would be awesome, but almost sure that was only a rumour
:(
”
Ton Roosendaal proposes to postpone 2.64 until mid September” -> SAD
”
That’s the projects for Cycles Subsurface Scattering” -> SAD
Today is a bad day… I need a drink.
Ton Roosendaal proposes to postpone 2.64 until mid September” -> SAD
Not sad – it means a focus on quality – Quality means for me stable and bug free (or close to). Thats important for profs. I am only hobbiest but i like it too if an application work…. so give them some time !
Two months? That’s just nothing!
Can somebody tells me if cycle now support sli video card (two cards at ones)????
You don’t need SLI to use two cards at once. Cycles already support multiple GPUs with nVidia cards.
How can I?
Google is your friend:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/GPU_Rendering#Can_I_use_multiple_GPU.27s_for_rendering.3F
I guess I’ll be in the minority with my opinion, especially where the more experienced artists are concerned. It seems that Blender is being developed far too quickly for us novices to catch up with the developments. Half the stuff that’s being mentioned about the new features etc have me stumped and the other half I’m just clueless with. It’s like you guys are all talking another langauge as far as I’m concerned. I still use the 2.5x version to learn on as there are absolutely no 2.6x instructional books on the market due to, as I suspect, the redundant way in which the fast development of the software leaves these learning materials in the gutter. I could buy the instructional DVDs that are targeted specifically for 2.6 but as they are far more expensive than books, they still don’t solve the problem of them being redundant as soon as another release comes out.
Wouldn’t it be better to simply release Blender on, say, a yearly basis with ALL the major and minor updates (complete with a comprehensive guide/book/DVD to instruct you on the new features etc) as opposed to a release with little updates every few months? That way, at least us new guys won’t feel overwhelmed with the amount we have to learn and then re-learn it all over again and come back to square one because of the sheer fast paced development.
Nop. Impossible. Quality libre software requires frequent releases and the community help. BTW, you, as a novice user, could download Blender “every year” and that would be the same for you.
I agree with Chaos: more frequent releases (with correspondingly fewer changes) is of great benefit.
However, I also understand your point about not understanding some of the new features – even though I have used Blender for 6 years. Rest assured, though. The hardest part of learning Blender is “learning how to learn” Blender – the very first steps. Just keep at it, and soon enough learning new features will be easy and a lot of fun!
I always try to keep up with these meeting minutes and the release notes so I know the names and “topics” of new features. As a result, when I’m working on a project those features are available to me even though I haven’t actually learned to use it yet (at this point, I generally go find a tutorial). But the short story is: staying up-to-date on a high level means you have access to new features without spending all the time to learn them.
Could you make 2.65 the Big Bug Fix release?
Its all good . Boys need time ,let there be time . I always thankful to this crowd .
*tough cookie
or
*hard nut to crack
“Tough cookie to crack”, is too short through the corner.
That new subdivision surface modifier is exactly what I was looking for! I was modeling a rather low poly hard surface creature for http://AncientBeast.com , to be more precise the Living Armor. The issue was that when I wanted to get the creature more smooth and detailed, but applying a subd modifier on it would just break it’s overall shape. And having to add edge loops to reinforce the shape or use sharp edges weren’t real options. Cheers!