Developer Meeting Notes: April 13, 2014
Blender 2.70a was silently released two days ago (download it here), but the changelog is not yet available. Blender 2.71 is starting to look good! Check the updates in today’s Developers Notes.
Hi all,
Here are the notes from today’s meeting in irc.freenode.net #blendercoders.
1) Blender 2.70a update release
- Still a todo: finish the log. Should be added here.
- Sergey Sharybin will update the bugfix page.
2) Targets for 2.71
- Bastien Montagne: FBX binary file export now works for animation!!
- Martijn Berger: The msvc 2013 builds for 2.70 seem to be good, let’s plan having it as the official for 2.71.
- Tamito Kajiyama: a first round of patch review for Freestyle textured strokes was done. Some work is likely needed in the UI part, but this feature is a 2.71 target. Doc is coming, for now check the patch discussion.
- Antonis Ryakiotakis and Campbell Barton work on Dynamic Topo scultping, which get a nice speedup for 2.71.
- Dalai Felinto: Cycles baking is nearly done. I would like to merge it in master by Wednesday, so people can test it in master during Easters.
- The target list is now really final. We’re officially in BCon2! Check the long list.
3) Other projects, Google Summer of Code
- Candidate mentors: last day to review! Mail to the mentor list if you think the ranking is not representing the quality OK. Tomorrow final rankings is being defined.
- Gaia Clary: will keep working on Second Life support, but wants to step down as official Collada maintainer. Makes it an orphaned Blender feature… anyone to step in?
And that’s exactly why you don’t let ninjas handle your new Blender releases.
On a serious note: FBX binary file export now works for animation!!! Cycles baking is nearly done!!!
http://yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.com/
Many Blender-using game developers everywhere will be pleased with Blender 2.71.
Huh?
Ninjas do things silently. This Blender release was silent. Thus, ninjas handled the Blender release. ;)
So I guess we get an “a” release for 2.70 after all lol.. oh well, thanks to the devs as usual :)
Are they gonna fix the file compression that doesn’t seem to be functioning in Windows X64?
Probably sooner than later, I would imagine–assuming the issue is a properly-reported bug. :)
So many issues, so little time. :/
https://developer.blender.org/T30618 <– many more like it too
Not sure why they bother with zlib if it gives them so much issue, why not just use 7zip library instead and have access to LZMA2? It's LGPL so compatible with blender, and rather than spending so much time digging a ditch around a broken chunk of code every time it breaks it might be better to change it once and never worry again…
In the meantime you can enable compression in NTFS, which usually works about 50-75% of a fast zip (if your file is ~4mb, zip might get it to ~1.5, NTFS will do about ~2-2.5mb). Neither is as good as LMZA2 with max compression (~500kb in that same test) though, but far faster for sure (NTFS compression is almost without overhead in comparison). Also helps shrink all your program files if you care about space more than CPU overhead ;)
Uncompress seems to be working as I can load imported compressed. Just don’t seem to be able to create a new compressed file. Wierd.
And I already have ntfs compression turned on, but figured internal zip should work as advertised.
It should, but doesn’t. And worse off if that you have zero ability to select what gets compressed and how it’s done. (Though usually you would want to compress everything, so the real issue is lack of control over speed vs file size)
Cycles baking is a blast! :D <3 u guyz!
Thanks for the update Bart! also I believe you meant “yet” and not “yes” :)
Ah indeed I did – you were the only one who noticed! :)
“Martijn Berger: The msvc 2013 builds for 2.70 seem to be good, let’s plan having it as the official for 2.71.”
Does this mean that blender will finally give us an “official” solution/project file on phabricator for easy compilation? VS2013 (even express) has GIT access built in, so no sense telling people to go the SVN route when you have one click access to the newest code. It seems that Windows is being treated as a second class citizen for blender development, even if Windows makes up a majority of the active users (from bug reports, it also makes up the bulk of non-issues but that’s to be expected)
I’m most excited about the dyntopo speedup :)
will a cycles shadow only material ever be on the list? Its a must for people lighting using HDR IBL as the shadow pass only works with in scene lights.