Brecht writes:
Notes
2.81 Tasks and Work
- The stabilizing branch
blender-v2.81-releasewill be created on October 10th in blender.git and add-ons repositories. An email with details on committing and merging for this branch will be sent to bf-committers. ( Nathan Letwory )- Remaining tasks and bugs are on the Blender 2.81 workboard .
- The manual still needs attention, developers are asked to document new features they worked on if they are still missing.
- There is now a system to display a one-time warning to users when their graphics card is unsupported or drivers need to be updated. Soon we’ll start displaying warnings like this, when the list of graphics cards is completed. Help is needed with completing supported GPU/driver list for task T70520 . ( Jeroen Bakker )
- Help is needed to review the local collections patch D5992 . ( Dalai Felinto )
- A patch for code signing on buildbots will be posted soon. ( Nathan Letwory )
2.82 and Beyond
- Brecht Van Lommel asks developers to help/take over reviews of bigger projects like mantaflow, LANPR, particle nodes, texture painting. For 2.81 most of the review work was done by Campbell Barton and Brecht Van Lommel, but this can be divided better.
- LANPR will be taken over by Sebastian Parborg.
- Module owners/developers please step up and comment in the relevant code reviews when you plan to help.
- Once
blender-v2.81-releaseis created themasterbranch is again open for new work.- Note that priority for code work is on bug fixing for 2.81.
New Features and Changes
Sculpt & Paint
- Multires sculpting now supports the new 3D cursor, mesh filter, mask filter and dirty mask. ( Brecht Van Lommel, Sergey Sharybin )
- Fine tuning of various brushes and sculpt features. ( Pablo Dobarro )
- Texture painting: revamped undo system for images, resolving various bugs. ( Campbell Barton )
- Paint and sculpt cursor redesign. ( Harley Acheson, William Reynish )
Editors
- File browser: the dialog now display always on top of other Blender Windows. ( Julian Eisel )
- File browser: remember display options across Blender sessions. ( Julian Eisel )
- Dopesheet and sequencer editors: move all selected items when clicking and dragging on a selected item. ( Julian Eisel )
- Shader editor: the material slots popover now has buttons to assign materials in edit mode. ( Hans Goudey )
- Image editor: new Resize operator. ( Campbell Barton )
- Image and clip editor: new Center View to Cursor operators. ( Alessio Monti di Sopra )
- Clip editor: plane track corners can now be easily dragged with left mouse button. ( Sebastian Koenig )
Other
- Preference to set the default smoothing mode for f-curve auto handles. ( Alexander Gavrilov )
- Preference to use OS-key instead of alt-key for middle mouse button emulation. Supported only on Linux and macOS. ( Campbell Barton )
- Python API: new functions and properties for editing cursor and selection in
Textdata-blocks. ( Kai Jægersen )Weekly Progress Reports
5 Comments
I get the emphasis on sculpting for the professionals, but other areas for the general users is lacking in my opinion.
There are lots of multiple steps needed to accomplish a task that are unnecessary. If I want to create a task that always requires 2, 3, 4, steps, why not make it a one step process?
There are dozens of tasks that can be combined into one or enabled with a step by step process that now require the user to memorize. Either modify it or add a macro add-on that lets a user to define his/her own steps.
I'm tired of having to memorize all the steps in routine processes that I use just about every time.
Can you give an example?
I know it's a plugin and not integrated (and you're right, could be good to do so) but would this solve your problem? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaOeTt-y3Dc
Has alt-h been fixed yet? At least in 2.80 it always unhides every single object in every single collection regardless of their render/visibility/etc settings which is so frustrating and just plain wrong. The very least it should do is to limit its operation based to just visible collections. But no. It unhides every single thing on visible collections, hidden collections, disabled collections... everywhere. It just boggles the mind how someone thought this is how it should work.
I was also hoping some of the 2.80 ui changes to be rethought. The content sensitivity of the right click menu is imho a failure the way it is because it is not even content sensitive at all. Only thing it is sensitive to is the three modes of selection. Vertice, edge and face. And because tools are now locked into and out of these modes the menu is basically useless because availability of tools is not based on selection or content but simply what selection mode you are in. I don't use the right click menu because it is just useless. The q menu saves the day but all I am doing is using the q menu to bring back the w menu. The solution is either an actual content sensitiveness or bring back the w menu.
I love blender and have been using it for about 5 years now , and love , appreciate and respect the effort of every developer working on it . However this year with the big donations I expect a boost in the progress of development , not the same as before .