Developer Meeting Notes, October 21, 2012
Nodes, nodes, nodes!
Hi all,
Here are the notes for today’s developer meeting in irc.freenode.net #blendercoders
1) Current projects for 2.65
- Open Shading language progressing well, progress and docs are here.
- Lukas Toenne is working on Python Nodes (nodes defined by scripting). It is being added as release target now.
- Changes to Node Groups.
- Brecht checks this week on Freestyle branch, and reports back if it’s feasible to review and add for 2.65. It then becomes a target, or we move it to 2.66.
- Sergej Reich: can you confirm if the Bullet GSoC could be ready before november 11? Then we add this as a target
- Nicholas Bishop: is Dynamic Topo possible to add, with help from Sergey Sharybin? Let’s check this soon!
- Howard Trickey will try to get rounded beveling for 2.65 as well. He will report back soon. Work to be done is still UV interpolation, and several edge cases…
- Campbell Barton suggests to move to Python 3.3. This should happen before November 11.
- Cycles: Brecht van Lommel will add some more nodes, but nothing major (ao, normal map, transmission bsdf).
- Campbell works on a new decimator, supporting customdata (uvs,vcols weights etc).
2) Other projects
Nothing was brought up for that topic.
Thanks!
-Ton-
Hello. I thought that you guys would take a bit of rest after the Blender Conf but you guys are amazing!!!
Big thanks to Ton and all the Devs, for the work they are doing and for always letting us know where the development have arrived each week.
A new decimator would really gonna be handy. I was using the actual one yesterday and the result was quite scary :).
Also I’m really waiting for the Freestyle branch.
PythonNodes sounds interesting, but not quite sure how/if this will work for shading and compositing, or if it’s only for custom tree types. I’m sure some fun stuff for game logic could be done with this :)
I assume it can be used for compositing nodes. A Python function/class method that takes numpy arrays as arguments and returns one or more numpy arrays (it will probably be more complex but the idea is there, data processing in python).
i am happy to see freestyle in the meeting notes :)
what’s happen with “Sticky” texture mapping – “Camera Mapping” ?
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Textures/Mapping
… is it gone for ever / replaced / temporary disabled ?
Now you must use UVProject modifier. The pipeline is almost the same. But possibilities are wider. One thing (I didn’t checked yet in 2.64) is “not here yet” is decent texture filtering algorithm. I tried to do some matte, made mountain textures but tiny details aren’t showing (looks good but not so crisp like in Photoshop where I made it). I didn’t checked in Cycles though. Maybe it shows these things better…
thank you Moolah, for clarify.
Great news!
And what about bugy knife? Will be fix soon?
This will be a MAJOR release in blender history if all the aforementioned features get added. Python nodes and DynTopo alone make it groundbreaking.
Indeed.
Great!
On a side note, any chance that the bevel tool (as it w–>bevel) could be expanded/fixed?
I would like to see bevelling available in Edit Mode (not the buggy version already included, but the one used in the modifiers). That would be extremely useful for faster modelling, and that rounding feature in Edit Mode would rock mechanical modelling.
I’d really like to see the composite and textures nodes be combined into one and for there to be more nodes for creating just about anything you can imagine.
Similar to what you can do in Substance Designer or FilterForge:
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8474/8112453726_64c9ac2826_k.jpg
To be more specific, it would be fantastic if we could do everything from:
Generating seamless textures:
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8055/8112682687_aa659915b9_h.jpg
to
Compositing renders to look like peeling paint:
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8328/8112692808_002ff17b75_h.jpg
to
Creating original works of art with infinite variations all through the compositor:
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8052/8112693006_235d3f360f_h.jpg
Combining composite and material nodes would be IMHO a very difficult task to undertake with respect to GPU rendering. As far as I can tell, GPU rendering (for materials) requires already a big monolithic kernel, and adding nodes designed to work with images to the mix will make this a gigantic mess (if it’s even possible with the GPU “scheduling model”).
I’m talking about unifying the compositor with the the texture node editor ,since they are virtually the same in some respects , and not the material node editor.
This is HUGE for making external render engines have the same look and feel as cycles with tight integration and nodes for materials. Luxrender REALLY needs this.
So. Dyntopo, Freestyle and Bullet are all loosely possible 2.65 additions? Holy. Freaking. Moly. And improved bevel. And those very intriguing words about an improved decimator.
And… the crazy stuff python and render wizards can cook up with those nodes.
Shouldn’t hope too much, but… wow.
This is exactly what I was thinking when I read this. Amazing.
Man, I’m excited about the prospects of this next release!
One thing I’d hope for with the new decimator is perhaps a feature similar to Remesh, where you can have a reduction done in as many even quads as possible instead of disoriented triangles, to help eliminate the step for Remeshing and/or retopo. Maybe with the help of Remesh and n-gons, this feature will be more feasible? It’d prove very useful for my low-poly work for games, and even though game engines use tris instead of quads, it’s best to have quads in modeling to let the game engines divide up into triangles.
But whatever we get in 2.65, I’m grateful to the developers for and will put it to good use.
Thank you guys! All things are exciting! I would like to see all of these in Trunk but especially Bullet GSoC, Dynamic Topo and Cycles’ new nodes! Round bevel sounds like a headache thing for dealing with UV’s, so I wish real shining thoughts to Howard!
This is amazing stuff, I am still getting over the last release.
Respect indeed to all the devs. Thank you.