[Bf-committers] Blender Grant for sponsored development

[Howard Trickey]

Hi Duarte,

I am interested in working on this, but I am only very-part-time, so
progress would be slow; maybe your "funding" proposal can snag a more
full-time person, but until then I can see what I can do (after finishing
my current project, which will probably take another month or so).  I
wouldn't need any funding to do this.

Feel free to send your more detailed proposal to me and we can continue
discussion off-list.

- Howard

On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 1:48 PM Duarte Ramos <duarte_ramos at sapo.pt> wrote:

> Sorry for the double email, the previous one bounced back, this is the
> actual address I use for the committers mailing list
>
> Bezier Curve tools revamp
>
> Hello to all members of the Blender Developers mailing list, especially
> Ton Roosendaal and all blender developers and contributors, my name is
> Duarte Ramos, and I am seeking a way to sponsor Blender development of a
> specific set of features regarding Bezier curve tools  by making a
> monetary donation for a development grant. I wish to inquire about it's
> feasibility and whole way to go about accomplishing it.
>
> TL,DR:
>
>   - Do you (Blender Foundation) accept/manage sponsored development of
> this nature?
>   - To whom and how should these matters be addressed?
>   - Does improving bezier curves and tools fit in the whole development
> process and global vision for the future roadmap?
>   - Are the features asked for feasible (from both technical and
> ideological point of view)?
>   - Are there any available developers willing/motivated/capable of
> working on such features?
>
> The long version
>
> I have been a Blender user for about seven years now, closely following
> development and lurking around the mailing lists and commits logs. What
> started out as an experiment mostly just for fun and curiosity, ended up
> becoming my main source of income for my freelance work. I am an
> architect working mostly in arch viz and rendering of architecture and
> interior design (you can see some of my early work here
> http://www.duarteramos.pt/home.html#ArchViz); for a long time I used it
> simply as a hobby, but lately I find myself relying more and more on
> Blender for my commercial work.
> Bezier curve editing clearly is not on the same level of refinement as
> other areas of modeling, which is totally understandable given Blender's
> main target audience for whom what we currently have is probably more
> than enough. I however would love nothing more than to see them
> improved, and to such end I am willing to make a monetary donation to
> help in the development of new functionality, so I would like to know if
> the Blender Foundation would be willing hire/mentor a developer to work
> on such features; also since I am led to believe that you maintain a
> relatively open policy about who works on what based at least partially
> on personal interest, I guess it's also relevant to ask if there are any
> available developers or programmers, knowledgeable enough and motivated
> to work in such areas.
>
> While modeling for architecture I find myself often using bezier curves
> as an actual modeling tool and final rendering geometry (lots of
> extrusion or path based geometries), my main aim here would thus be
> improving workflow by reducing the need for destructive operations like
> converting bezier curve objects to meshes. For now what I would
> initially like to propose would be:
>
>   - The ability to assign material slots to curve segments,
>   - The ability for the 'derived mesh generator' to use said material
> slots directly from curve object or from a bevel object in the generated
> mesh.
>   - Material slots for built-in bevels and rims, perhaps a system akin
> to the one used with the solidify modifier, with material index offsets(?)
>
>  From the user interface point of view this would likely 'just' require
> making curve segments selectable (like mesh vertex, edge, face selection
> modes), and the ability to store material slot data to those segments.
> The 'derived mesh generator' would then have to be able to read these
> and apply them to the created mesh geometry (with bevels, extrusions and
> fills).
>
> I have prepared a more detailed and complete list of improvements all
> related to Bezier Curves that I'd like to share. Most are probably too
> extensive or out of scope for this limited funding, and would likely
> break backwards compatibility, yet the time seems right for these topics
> seem to fit well into the 2.8 Workflow Sprint (
> http://code.blender.org/2015/07/blender-2-8-the-workflow-release/ ) and
> the upcoming 2015 conference discussions, with more time to plan and
> less urge to keep backwards compatibility, allowing for deeper more
> radical changes. Depending on your opinion about the feasibility of this
> project and the developer time this limited funding could 'hire' maybe
> more topics can be tackled, or perhaps instead make some groundwork and
> set some solid foundations as basis for further improvements in this
> area if time/funding allows.
>
> I was hoping this e-mail would also serve as publicity to get the
> attention of any additional potentially interested users or companies
> who may want to contributing with additional funding that can grant more
> development time.
> I regard these changes as general improvements that will benefit every
> user, or at the very least not disrupt whoever doesn't need them.
> Hopefully they'll be valuable for numerous more artists outside
> architecture or construction industry, like professionals in the Motion
> Graphics industry like television, publicity, 2D graphic animation (for
> example
>
> http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?295010-Blender-text-conversion-improvements-wishlist
> ), especially if these improvements also affect text objects, or perhaps
> people in industrial design (
> http://plus.google.com/101076135528517730950/posts/DHGBFYHoBcA )or
> precision modeling.
>
> Only additional request/condition I would set is that all this gets made
> in a manner conducive to it's inclusion in Blender main development
> trunk, preferably within the time-frame for the 2.8 release if feasible.
> I just want to avoid seeing these features buried in some lost
> development branch, or have to use some outdated obscure custom build to
> take advantage of new features.
>
> I apologize for the wall of text, I am very enthusiastic about this and
> eagerly awaiting to hear your opinions on these matters. Looking forward
> to your reply
>
> Best regards
> Duarte Ramos
>
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