Today's Developers meeting notes: 2.49b release around the corner? Blender 2.5 update, Durian feature list and Durian community involvement update.
2.49b update
- All signs are green now! So... let's schedule it.
- Campbell will provide a changle log
- Ton makes sure blender.org website gets updated
- Ton commits the splash update, and sends "release AHOY" to the maillist monday. - Martin then tags svn
- Brendon Murphy (meta-androcto) will make an updated .zip with his famous python bundle (as a separate download).
2.5 project
- Now Brecht and Ton are back from the Durian workshop, they can move back to mapping out all the todos, to propose a work and migration plan.
- First thing we want is a 'test page', which will clearly map out which parts of Blender are ready for test, and for what specific. Nicholas Bishop made a start already: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Blender2.5/Testing (Devs: fill it in with more info!)
As soon as this information is accurate, we'll open a new bug tracker for 2.5, and regularly make "official" testing binaries available as well. - Next will be roadmap proposal for what and when will be worked on, and how to most efficiently release this. It's still expected to have multiple 2.5x iterations before we're fully 100% back. How many releases and how much time that'll cost we will hopefully know next week.
- We also have to think of how to structure the Blender Reference documentation in wiki, preferably generated from source code (where possible). Luca 'mindrones' made a wiki reference example, which will need some further evaluation and design work though. Brecht/Ton/Campbell will be connecting with him about this.
- GSoC and patches... there's several projects ready to get included, also patches are waiting for a long time already. Ton proposes to first get the basics back to work for 2.5, based on "what worked for 2.4x", before putting official coordinated efforts in adding new features in Blender. Also this will depend on the roadmap masterplan though.
- Bmesh: Joe Eagar will review current status of code and communicate with team what the the best migration moment would be.
- Py scripts and API design: many things work, and many open ends here still... will need time to map out as well.
So in short: we first need to get the big picture... docs, docs docs! And you know, coders... :)
Durian
- Work in progress, feature shortlist:Â http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Org:Bf-institute/DurianFeatures
- We have to ensure smaller but especially bigger development demands are well communicated in advance, to invite and involve all development power in our community. This can be achieved also by more openess in what kind of shots are going to be designed. The Durian team already agreed on to be more open this time. In general the team consensus is "Everything open, except the script and story(boards)". How this will work in practice we'll find out soon! But examples of useful information is to note down we need shots with effects like:
"Sword sweeps through foggy air, leaving curled smoke effect like a helicopter"
"Lava chunks drop down from sky, come to life, to turn into glowing evil lava critters."
More updates on this will be on the durian blog, and next week's meeting minutes!
Thanks,
-Ton-
13 Comments
Sounds awesome :-)
sounds good :)
One question though, what is a Cavity shader?
(from the Durian feature wishlist)
I'ts really great to hear that this movie is going to be more open. It was a pain to wait in the dark with ED and BBB :)
"Lava chunks drop down from sky, come to life, to turn into glowing evil lava critters."
its exactly like the intro cinematic to the Warcraft III - http://www.gametrailers.com/video/trailer-1-warcraft-iii/3107
Sounds good, nice to see a 2.49b :) and I'm definitely looking forward to durian!
"Shader that reacts to angle of mesh faces to each other"
Isn't that the whole point of freestyle?
Any while these coding 'gods' are at it maybe they could spend the two minutes to add some comments to the shadeinput struct that describes what each setting is (along with its normal direction) so that non-deities can add their own custom shaders.
Not that I'm ungrateful for the hard work the devs are doing but seriously, two minutes to add something like "light vector -- normal points from surface to light source".
Ok, maybe I do sound ungrateful but that's not the intent...
Whoa lava chunks drop down from sky, come to life, to turn into glowing evil lava critters? Wow this will be cool!
Oh hey, from the features wishlist I see were getting rigid bodies integrated right into the physics section of Blender! No more recording to IPO!! YAY I've been waiting for this for a long time thanks devs!
So would someone in the know like to nominate a % finished for 2.5 at this point please.
At one time Ton was giving reports about progress but this seems to have died out.
I'd rather see the line, 'so the dragon looks temptingly at the durian, the auroma filling the air, wanting to filling its stomach, before finding the girl's parents' three killers".
lava chunks drop down from the sky....:-) so who is the warcraft fan?
Ohh! Ohh! ... I'm lost :-).
@niecny - it is ridiculous to say something is going to be "exactly like" from a one sentence description.
For the physic, if I may add something : it would be interesting if people could set increase or decrease the number of timestep they wish to record (for the moment, bullet record only the default timestep to IPO)
Possible applications : ragdolls for slow motion animations. These need more timestep than the usual.
And for fast paced burly fight you don't need as much details for the ragdolls, so you can skip some timestep...
Otherwise, I do like the way they imagine the scenario of Durian, if the animators and artists get all their features it will be a hell of a release for Blender... :)