Even with SIGGRAPH happening, the Developer Meetings just keep continuing!
Thomas Dinges writes:
Hi everyone,
Here's the notes from today's meeting in irc.freenode.net #blendercoders.
1) Blender 2.64 progress
- 284 open bug reports still, help is welcome. :)
- We will do another test build, Sergey will sent infos for builders to the list soon.
- Work on Color management and Cycles Tile Rendering is ongoing in the Tomato branch, we will evaluate when it can be merged to trunk.
2) Current projects
- We talked about the Frameserver file output in Blender. It's not widely used and the current implementation has some limitations (only 8 bit images, no alpha, old .ppm format). This could be ported to a Python Addon, would be easier to maintain and add features. Volunteers welcome.
3) Google summer of code
- The Android Game Engine port will be showcased this week at Siggraph. More demos for it are welcome, if you have something cool (especially fun interactive characters), please share in the blenderartists thread.
- Alexander Pinzon Fernandez mentions that laplacian-smooth is finished. Tests and feedback are welcome.
- Students: Contact your mentors to discuss goals for the last few weeks of GSoC and how to proceed afterwards (Code review, merge to trunk...)
Regards,
Thomas
12 Comments
I hope there's a video about the android game engine port coverage at Siggraph. I wish I could be there....
Firstly let me thanks Ton and the Devs for their hard work. Blender is just getting so awesome. I see people doing stuff each day that's just blows your mind.
Like every blender user I'm eagerly waiting for 2.64 to come out, but I would like to say that if I have to wait for 1 or 2 month more for it to come out its ok. Many with whom I've spoke to agree that the Devs should take their time and reduce as much as possible the bugs. One gave I think a good idea, where he suggested that 2.65 should just be a bugfixed version.
I have thought of something yesterday and wanted to know if its possible to have such a feature.
I work mostly on architectural rendering, and many times blender crashes or just do not render the scene. Sometimes I know that its due to the level of details but last time I found out that it was because of a small bush that was using alpha for all the leafs. The scene started to render and after a few minutes would just stop the rendering.
I would like to know if it is possible to have a feature where it tells you what went wrong in the process of rendering. Like if the system cannot render because there's too much poly, if a certain object was the cause of the crash, if memory is not sufficient. I know that every software crash sometimes. But for blender most of the time is when there's is something wrong in the scene.
Sorry for writing such a long comment.
And the beauty of Blender and it's open source nature is that if you are one of the eager beavers like I am, that can't wait to use the fantastic new features , you can build Blender yourself or download it from http://www.graphicall.org
I think it is excellent that they make official releases as stable as possible. IMO Blender is way more stable than 3DS Max has ever been with me. Blender does crash now and then but it's not nearly as often as it used to happen in 3DS Max with me.
I still can't believe the amazing tool set I have at my disposal completely for free. And it keeps getting better and better. Every now and then I get a strong sense of appreciation for the work the developers put into Blender.
Thanks guys!!
Try running it from a console, that way you can see the error messages.
yes congratulations for all the team for this seriuous work
Is only the android game beeing developed in this year's gsoc? last year was great but this year doesn't look too good. Is it just me or did you notice that?
I disagree, there are fantastic projects and good results so far. Bullet integration, smoke improvements, texture painting improvements and new unwrapping algorithm, precision modeling and modeling tools. These are my favorites.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/GoogleSummerOfCode/2012/Overview
Just a shame that SSS in cycles did not make it :(
Someone, correct me if i'm wrong, I read somewhere that it's related to volume handling implementation in Cycles, which SSS is only one part of what could be done when this big part will be done ...
You can certainly achieve real sss with volume, it is however a little bit computation heavy. a BSSRDF shader is a much more efficient way to achieve sss in a pathtracer.
I have done some skin tests with storm's volume patch and it works well.
just out of interest when is the mango branch being merged into the next version?
If I didn't have to work for a living, I would love to help on the bugs.
keep working on the bugs,I can Wait...Love Blender!