Brecht writes:
New Features and Changes
About 65 bugs were fixed last week.
- Edit mode wireframe drawing has been improved, to be more crisp and better anti-aliased. (Clément Foucault)
- Outliner collection and object visibility have been revamped. (Dalai Felinto)
- Bevel: better attachment points for unbeveled edges, arc miter. (Howard Trickey)
- Image, movie clip and sequence editors can now show all image metadata. (Sergey Sharybin)
Development
- Automated testing: a new system for event simulation was added, for automated tests that are otherwise difficult to write. This used for testing texture paint and sculpt mode undo currently. (Campbell Barton)
- Removing fake user and automatic datablock deletion when users count drops to zero is being discussed. The Purge unused data operator has been improved. (task) (Bastien Montagne)
- DNA Renaming: structs and members saved to .blend file currently cannot be renamed easily, which over time has lead to names getting out of sync with the UI and leaving in poorly chosen names. A new patch adds support for renaming. (code review) (Campbell Barton)
- Cycles OpenCL compile time reduction is being worked on, starting with multithreaded compilation and gathering statistics. (wiki) (Jeroen Bakker)
5 Comments
Brecht wrote: "Removing fake user and automatic datablock deletion when users count drops to zero is being discussed. The Purge unused data operator has been improved."
Wait... isn't the whole point of the fake user supposed to be to prevent data from being purged when its users drop to zero? If I want to keep multiple mesh datablocks for a single mesh object to switch between (or multiple materials for a single mesh, or actions for an armature, etc.), the fake user allows me to keep the data I want without the need to store an extra dummy 3D object in a hidden layer (collection) just to protect a datablock. Am I missing something?
Thank you all Blender developers! Your hard-works are very much appreciated.
I think all data should be treated to have fake user by default. So no auto GC by Blender anymore. But add a "remove/delete" button so users have the power to decide which data to remove and which are not. Even further, perhaps add a special editor for asset management, where we can track unused data easily dan provide options to purge manually or automatically. Set the default settings to the most common case so beginners don't need to touch them, yet more advanced users can use them for their specific needs.
I agree with the idea of removing the idea of 'garbage collection' from Blender. Automatic GC is fantastic..... in programming. In design? Not so much. I'd much rather have explicit "Create/Import/Rename/Edit/Delete" controls over every asset in Blender, and preferable some kind of browser to view all of the assets in a blend. Like a material browser, mesh browser, object browser, etc etc. And options for bulk replacing, renaming, deleting, etc, would also be fantastic.
Also I'm loving the tweaks on the wireframe mode, thankyou so so so much Clément Foucault, it looks much better, it's much easier to see wireframes now. It's not quite perfect yet, but a little bit of theme and view setting tweaks the difference is huge compared to the older versions, it's a massive improvement and a huge step back in the right direction, fantastic job!
Oh, I see (yes, I was missing something): "Removing fake user and automatic datablock deletion when users count drops to zero..." doesn't mean that datablocks will be deleted immediately when users count hits zero, but the opposite; that the auto-deletion operation itself will be removed, along with the fake user paradigm. My bad for not clicking through to the dev discussion.
Thanks guys for great work! Keep it up!