Highlights: Blender 2.62 feature targets have been decided, B-Mesh is currently planned for 2.63.
Blender 2.61 review, planning next release
- No show stoppers sofar, incredible good work! Compliments :)
- We can now get working on 2.62 target list. Each is summarized below:
- UV tools, GSoC project by Antonis Ryakiotakis. Gets reviewed by Brecht now.
- Dual contouring, by Nicholas Bishop.
- Object motion tracking, by Sergey Sharybin.
- Pete Larabell: Double Edge Matte node? Masking code?
- Brecht van Lommel: Cycles layers/passes.
- Fast linear color -> srgb conversion patch.
- Replace random dithering with Floyd-Steinberg dithering.
- Robert Penner, easing equations for f-curves.
- BGE Harmony Branch (improved light and shadow), by Kupoman.
- BGE bugfixing and polishing.
- Call for more developers: if you have patche(s) waiting for review, but also intended to become active as part of the module owner team, tell us! We will give highest priority to your work... would be a shame to have great new devs waiting.
- Proposal for the "BCon" levels for 2.62 is:
- BCon2: 01 Jan (2.62 targets frozen)
- BCon3: 22 Jan (Blender feature complete)
- BCon4: 05 Feb (Release candidates)
- BCon5: 12 Feb (Call for release)
Other projects
- The "Depsgraph sprint" idea gets different approach now. To fly in everyone to Amsterdam in Jan/Feb would be too expensive and quite unsure what the outcome would be... not to mention it might not be possible to get all devs together at same time. Instead, Ton will discuss assignments to individual developers for the next month, supported by Dev Fund. About the sprint:
In order to get ready better, and more development results for Project Mango, we propose to organize a kick-off with a special 1-2 months of “Coder Sprint”. Before the artists start working really, the studio can be filled with a team of 5-6 developers to tackle a more complex and ambitious target well. A crucial goal would be to implement a new ‘dependency graph’ system in Blender, solving a lot of advanced animation (speed, playback, update) issues we suffer now.
- Mango project will start early march. Brecht, Sergey and Campbell will be each involved to help out, but they will only be part time in Amsterdam. That means there's another 'seat' left for a developer to support this VFX project. Active devs here: make sure I know you're available.. just in case!
- BMesh: will become a 2.63 target.
- Meeting briefly discussed Node plugins. Would be a good way to prevent "node-creep"! Lukas will look into it.
26 Comments
Yay! Cycles needs layers!
And Render Passes!
Especially a better Vector speed pass for motion blur. I tried to mix frames rendered in Cycles with Vector Motion Blur via BI passes... and I got some bad things.. I think it's because of VB limitations. So now hope for this to be created in Cycles in a better way.
exciting times ahead!...thank you all of the developers!!!...
Blender keeps getting better and better. thanks to all the developers out there.
Great! thanks for keeping us updated :-)
And what about polishing UI ?
what polish does it need?
I think that polishing UI is the last thing we need... It's a lot easier if you works like on a piano - Blender is the easiest program (I ever used) where you can create your own shortcut maps.
2.5 got a huge jump after the previous UI...
I agree but hell will freeze over before any serious UI work is ever done on Blender.
will it ever be possible for cycles to render wireframes?
Why use cycles to render wireframe? The Internal can do that just fine I do believe.
Big big thanks to Ton and all the Devs who are making this amazing to happen. Blender is becoming such an awesome software. Features for 2.62 are going to be really great.
I do not know what the future of the BGE, but it would be awesome if let say a BGE 2.0 could be made. Perhaps making it a totally different project and using it as an addon would maybe help a lot.
Thanks again.
b-mesh a target for 2.63? Awesome, it'll finally be in!
I'm not understanding how, concerning the coder sprint for the Mango project, the "Details will be published during October here"? October?
Ahh, that piece of text was copied directly from the Mango site. It seems like they missed that goal ;-) I've removed it from the post.
Yay, great news I very appreciate your work, but I think that Bmesh is top priority so I don't understand, why it's the target for 2.63 and no for 2.62. It's not ready for merge (too many bugs, ...)?
They talk about it Bmesh in the most recent Blender Podcast
It is very much a priority, it is also important, since it is an integral part of Blender, that it is stable before going into trunk. We´re not quite there yet, but there´s constant work to achieve that goal. After all 2.62 is scheduled for the middle of february, which means that B-mesh could go in already feb/mar, which is not too far :)
Features like "Headus UV Layout", left panel mini icons for a better fast finding tools, implement more sculpting features "Nicolas Bishop" , better painting features like those in "3d-coat" , painting textures in blender using projection is SUPER SLOW, better tools for retopology (they are ok, but I hate to use shrink wrap for making the mesh a little bit out of the surface). Importing hi poly meshes to blender for retopoly is super slow. Thank you guys for the effort, cycles is a gift, you guys are the best.
Nice idea to have a fully working Blender enviroment (with the code sprint) in order to the team not stumble upon issues that happened in Sintel, like a half baked Blender 2.5 pre-pre- pre- alpha :P , in a real production. Wise, move.
And yes, the deph-graph issues (speed for me) is now finally officially declared one top-most thing to tackle, I wish I had the knowledge to help, but we all know is in good hands. I hope Aligorith will help here, he knows very deeply what needs to be done there, by reading all his blog entries and rants about everything :D.
.
Why Aligorith you may ask? he created the Animato (everything animatable scheme) that we use everyday...
What is that about a double edge matte node. Masking code? Does that mean masking is scheduled for the next release?
I hope for Cycles (more complete), Phymec to enter the scene, for BMesh of course and (even more) for node particles. The last thing present (in some other implementations) almost in all serious 3d animation programs.
Thanks for BGE plans. BGE needs power
Whoa it gets more and more interesting. I think I'll have a lot to learn when I finally get back to some serious blending.