The Google Summer of Code (GSOC), in a nutshell, is pretty much Google funding the development of opensource projects over a period of approximately three months. Blender has been sponsored via the GSOC program in both 2009 and 2010, seeing massive improvements (e.g rendering engine speed, instancing, better workflow etc.).
It is always an exciting part of the year when blender gets accepted into the GSOC, as we can expect to see some awesome additions and refinements come to our much beloved program!
If you want more information, or think you know what should be worked on head over to the thread, or say so in the comments below!
31 Comments
Ive seen the todo list and its pretty much spot on, texturing and UV improvements are greatly desired.
I think making everything nodeable (there is already a mention of the game engine) would benefit blender the most though
GSOC not GOSC.
dude its GSOC
This is great news!...Blender >>> go for it!...:-)
GSoC, to be more precise.
To be more correct.
Haha "Google of summer code". Thanks guys It has been edited.
Blender has taken part in every Google Summer of Code since it started in 2005.
Sounds like great news.
Don't ask what Blender can do for you, but ask what you can do for Blender.
Blender's VSE is a great tool for Linux. It's very reliable compared to other open source video editors.
I wish that I could edit faster in it though. The workflow is kind of hard to learn compared to other stand alone video editors that I've used (Kdenlive, Final Cut, Edius, etc.)
i 'dont surrender
i'm a promess for peoples man.
If Google helps improve texturing in Blender I just might start using that sh!tty company again for my internet searches and what not. :-)
Port to Open CL!!! :)
One thing I still miss in Blender are presets for several things. For example when you make use of the fluid sim you end up tweaking and changing many settings from scratch to get some semi-realistic water for example. Many of the default setting Blender provides seem to be random sometimes maybe set from a programmer's point of view. ('Hmm, min is 0, max is 100, then 50 is a good default setting'). And presets for glass for example. Ofcourse you always can tweak the 'preset' but I think it would be a better way to start. Maybe one could use Python presets that set various things for the user.
Things related to that: real world scale versus Blender units (to ajust settings to get a bit more realistic results) and scientific conversion to the blender values. For example one could take scientific values enter them in say a glass template python menu and that would convert it to the appropriate blender values to approximate real world results.
Furthermore I like to get the 3D imput devices from last year's GSOC into Blender. My 3Dconnexion 3d-Mouse is literally collecting dust. I bought it because at the time I saw an ad in 3D world for 3Dconnexion that included a blender logo as one of the supported apps.
Other improvements are also welcome of course but I want to emphasize that finished GSOC projects' aim should also have the projects actually implemented in Blender official builds instead of shelved somewhere in a custom build. Yeah that's hard, I know, but GSOC is there to get things into Blender, not for some experiments on the side. Hopefully the Blender 2.5 architecture makes hooking finished projects into blender an easier task and I'm curious to see the results for this year.
Cheers
I think the main thing missing from the game engine right now is a proper platform to develop for. I imagine that many games would be made if there was a proper web plugin.
M
I think the main thing missing from the game engine right now is a proper platform to develop for. I imagine that many games would be made if there was a proper web plugin.
+1 for openCL rendering
M
If I was older I would participate. Too bad they don't take high-school students! :(
Awesome :)) Thank you very much, precious developers and thank you Google a lot!!!
the thing i'd like in blender is this: put everything we've seen here in the trunk, there are so much beautiful things... but they are not in the blender i've got :-(
'naff said
Making logical defaults is a great suggestion. It would be awesome for Blender to ship with an initial set up wizard, which would render a few different scenes and build some data about the user's system. It could then rank the system on a 20 point scale for instance.
Blender could reference a pre-built list of defaults and more accurately insert good starting settings according to how much memory and processor the user has available, if s/he so chooses.
This would also allow users to globally change quality of things like smoke, hair, fluid etc because they could just choose global quality 5 (and over ride whatever the wizard suggested) and it would give middle quality settings across the board, which could then be fine tuned.
It would also be fun to have a quick benchmark reference number, to compare to friends' machines.
Either this or openCL
Blender rocks!
@Aaron Martins I don't think that would be particularly useful...
@KJ That's what Google Code In is for :)
***Nodal logic please!***
I'm hoping last years retoppo project is just waiting to be merged (as I remember reading that all Blender GSoC 2010 projects passed). If this is not the case, then retopo would be important, too.
Some of the UV stuff (like automatic seams) sounds nice too.
And I'd like a pony. :P
I'm new to blender and I just say in a nut shell:
Can't wait.
(Also some friendlier and easier to use user interface is always a plus)
Great! I don't know what to suggest for projects, but whatever you do, I'll take. But I actually hope Blender DOESN'T undergo any more major user interface changes--I'm kinda tired of chasing interfaces.
Ooo, I've got one now--official integration of YafaRay into Blender 2.5x, at last. I like LuxRender and all and would still use it, but I like YafaRay because it's faster than LuxRender (well, at least until LuxRender gets full-featured GPGPU support). And when Blender finally officially implements OpenCL support, and YafaRay finally gets GPGPU features as well, that'd be awesome. I like having options.
+1 Default Libraries/Presets
+1 OpenCL Rendering & Compositing
and of course i would love a definitive updated help wiki in downloadable format for general perusing and obsessive poring over.
I really think there should be an improvement on the internal renderer!
Large data set integration! Lets make blender an industrial application that can be used in laser scanning work flows! Massive Point Clouds...GPS coordinates... Lets opensource the industrial world as well.
Right on, Logan and Aaron. Blender could be much improved by simply setting some logical defaults, as you described, and by including some often-used objects or setups.
Materials would be a great place to do that. Blender's great about offering a bunch of primitives and objects types, when you want to add an object. Why not do the same with materials?
Just as a lot of users would want to add a cube, or a sphere, there are a lot of users that would want to make a material like glass, like water, like wood, like steel, like matte-finished plastic....