Dalai writes:

Announcements

• Blender 3.0 and LTS proposal by Ton Roosendaal.
• Second “code quality day ” this Friday, 6/Mar/20.

2.82a

• Campbell Barton organized an initial list of fixes to be backported to a 2.82a release (T74274 ).
• Developers are to update the task with proposed new fixes.
• Buildbot builds will be triggered manually, the 2.82a branch will be created this week.
• The idea is to release 2.82a on March 12, same day we start 2.83 bcon2.

2.83

• Grease pencil patch review is ongoing (D6293 ) with few fixes pending.
• VR initial patches were sent for review, the final milestone 1 functionality will come afterwards (T71347 ).
• Volume object is also under review (D6945 ).
• Multires (T73317 ) should make it in time. Which doesn’t mean solve every possible issue, but making it a lot better.
• Undo (T60695 ) is a complicated topic. It doesn’t look far from ready, but Bastien Montagne is afraid of introducing big issues with this change without the due time for testing.

Other

• The meeting digressed a bit on the impacts that making 2.83 the first LTS would have. In particular when it comes to add more or less features in a release that is supposed to aim at stability.
• “The LTS stability comes from continuing to bugfix it after the release, not so much form being conservative with new features” ( Brecht Van Lommel )

New Features and Changes

Sculpt

• Cloth Brush: new brush with a simple physics solver that helps when sculpting cloth. ( Pablo Dobarro )
• Hardness brush property, moving the fallof towards the edges and making the brush sharper. ( Pablo Dobarro )

User Interface

• File Browser: Add Ctrl+F shortcut to activate filter textbox. ( Jacques Lucke )
• Harmonize strip colors in video sequencer. ( Peter Fog )
• Add theme option for grid levels to display in node editor background. ( Pawel Franitza )
• Add theme option for time markers line ( Michael Soluyanov )
• Use dedicated icons for topbar and statusbar in theme preferences. ( Yevgeny Makarov )
• Improve label text colors in save and security popups. ( Yevgeny Makarov )
• Remove non-functional large cursors preferences. ( Harley Acheson )
• Text rendering has been optimized. ( Germano Cavalcante )

Viewport

• Overlays with X-ray enabled no longer have dithering noise. ( Clément Foucault )
• HDRI background option for the amount of blur. ( Clément Foucault )

Render

• Eevee: per-image option to use high bit depth (32bit instead of 16bit float). ( Clément Foucault )
• Cycles: move sss and diffuse transmission into diffuse render pass. ( Brecht Van Lommel )
• Cycles: add option to change which sample to start viewport denoising at. ( Patrick Mours )
• Color management: improved false color view transform. ( Aaron Carlisle )
• Color management: support the same looks for all view transforms. ( Aaron Carlisle )

Other

• Fluid: improved behavior at open boundaries. ( Sebastián Barschkis )
• Bevel: take into account Z-up for custom profile orientation. ( Hans Goudey )
• 3D Text: add kerning menu. ( Campbell Barton )
• Ocean modifier: don’t completely change shape when changing resolution. ( Phil Stopford )
• Constraints: improved Set Inverse system. (details ) ( Alexander Gavrilov, Sybren A. Stüvel )
• Linux platform support for XDG ‘user-dirs.dirs’. ( Alessio Monti di Sopra, Campbell Barton )

Weekly Reports

• Bastien Montagne
• Brecht Van Lommel
• Campbell Barton
• Dalai Felinto
• Germano Cavalcante
• Jacques Lucke
• Jeroen Bakker
• Julian Eisel
• Nathan Letwory
• Pablo Dobarro
• Philipp Oeser
• Richard Antalik
• Sebastián Barschkis
• Sebastian Parborg
• Sergey Sharybin