[Bf-blender-npr] priority targets for Freestyle and Blender NPR capabilities

[Terry Hancock]

> Could the frequent NPR artists here feedback on the todo for Tamito?

I sent a message, but the first one bounced for some reason. I did participate 
in the Facebook poll.

> He's on an extended contract for the development fund, and I like to see
> his work well supported by as much people here. I can see why it's
> interesting to have Cycles render strokes, but I never would have thought
> it's a priority for anyone.

Myself, I'm not too concerned with Cycles support for Freestyle, as Lunatics 
Project is committed to using Blender Internal. I know there are others who 
feel differently.

My top priorities for Freestyle would be improving RAM efficiency and reducing 
render times.

I would also include in that category, the goal of failing better if it's 
going to fail. 

Currently, it tends to bog down; hang the computer; and require a complete 
reboot if it fails by exceeding RAM limits. This is extremely disruptive to 
workflow, and necessitates an overly-cautious testing approach.

It would be better if Freestyle could predict it was going to fail and simply 
exit with an error in such cases. Then a binary search would quickly resolve 
RAM limit problems (i.e. tell us how far we can push it on given hardware).

It's a much trickier problem to predict when Freestyle is going to demand a 
lot of RAM than it is for shading-only renders, where the scaling laws are 
fairly simple. If the computer doesn't figure this out, then the artist has to 
estimate it. A lot of render time can be wasted if renders crash somewhere in 
the middle because of such limits.

> I also thought everyone liked to see more work done on quality rendering
> for NPR (material options especially). Blender Internal is very much ready
> for that.

Yes this is useful, although there are a lot of options. I'd like the ability 
to have stroke properties (such as color and thickness) depend on object or 
vertex group materials (I believe this is one of the present to-dos).

An issue for us is temporal coherence. TK and I discussed using the view-
dependent parameter on the "suggestive contour" feature to modify line type 
properties so that lines could be made to thin or fade out rather than simply 
blinking off. This would be nice to have easier access to through the 
interface, but since he demonstrated a way to do it in the present interface, 
that's sufficient for our immediate needs.

HTH,
Terry


--
Terry Hancock
Director/Producer - "Lunatics" Project - http://lunatics.tv
Anansi Spaceworks