Blender developers meeting notes - 2018-11-19

Here are the notes from today's developer meeting. Next meeting is Monday,
26 November 18:00 CET (17:00 UTC).

Brecht Van Lommel writes:

1) New features and changes

• Left click select was modified to be more compatible with the tool
  system. This will continue to be improved to address various usability
  issues.
• New popover for collection visibility in 3D viewport header.
• New Eevee features:
  • New light threshold value, needed to support light culling in the future.
  • Glossy reflection filter quality and clamping settings.
  • Irradiance smoothing setting, to smooth interpolation between irradiance
    volume cells.
• Physics system editing and playback should work a lot more reliable now
  in 2.8.
• Most of the themes were removed as they are outdated. There is a call for
  the community to provide updates and replacements:

2) Blender 2.8 beta

The meeting spent a long time reviewing the status of 2.8 in the context of
the upcoming beta release. There are still some loose ends remaining,
though we are getting closer. We will evaluate the status again next Monday.

Some topics that came up:

• Motion tracking UI changes broke too much, will be reverted to the old
  2.7 toolbar until there is a better replacement for it.
• Decision about notifiers/message bus: restore notifiers, and remove them
  one-by-one once the message bus becomes aware of those. This closes a lot
  of missing update issues.
• Particle edit mode needs to have drawing code updated, to do proper hair
  shading and to support weights visualization.
• Python API is going well, though a couple of areas which needs more love:
  multi-object-edit and tools integration
• OpenSubdiv needs to be enabled by default. Not a stopper for Beta, but
  still some work to be done afterward.

3) Next week plans

• Bastien works on Python API and bug fixing.
• Brecht works on industry compatible keymap and left click keymap
  improvements.
• Campbell works on improving tool system and keymaps.
• Clément continues viewport and Eevee work.
• Dalai works on local view and visibility.
• Jacques works on background images and Python API.
• Pablo works on release notes on blender.org.
• Philipp works on bug tracker.
• Sergey works on studio issues, physics and OpenSubdiv.

4) Weekly reports

• Bastien
• Brecht
• Campbell
• Clément
• Dalai
• Jacques
• Philipp
• Sergey

5) Other projects

• Blender XR (VR/AR user interface for Blender) wants to join the team and
  work on releases.