[Bf-committers] Meeting minutes dec 21

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi all,

1. 'Solid' proceedings
Kester reports that integration stalled on incompatibility between  
Solid 3.0 and 3.5. He is not sure how much code in engine was changed  
in the short period before the before open source, when we tried to  
remove Solid from the tree. Ton will send him code from NaN period to  
compare.

2. Installation project
As promised, would come back to the agenda. We still need a couple of  
volunteers to define the installation of binaries on all OS's. Some  
conventions we agree on ($HOME/.blender/ for unices for example), but  
consequences have not been examined enough.
Still pending...

3. Cursors
Robert (DetectiveThorn) and Unnamed will continue on this. A request  
was done to send an image (jpeg, bitmap) to the mailinglist, so we have  
something for designers to look at.

4. Python
IanWill wanted to know if we will enforce a license standard for  
scripts which will be included in our distributions. Fortunately the  
GPL doesn't forbid it (bundling non-GPL scripts),  so we can just stick  
to "permission from the copyright owner to distribute".

5. Editmesh.c
Ton mentions this c file is growing far too large. Would be nice to do  
a cleanup here as well, for exmple documenting flag usage (and  
#defines), removing menu calls from inside of tools, enabling face/edge  
select. Ton comes with proposal for maillist to review the specs for of  
such cleanup.

6. Other projects
Goofster mentioned the layer system, as also being discussed on  
funboard list. What he likes is the XSI approach, where you can name  
layers, and set them on/off for rendering and editing. Apart from  
implementation details that were discussed, no simple direct answer  
came out of the discussion. We need something that works simple and  
fast as old system, but allows more control & flexibility.
Also discussed was expanding the current "Set" option (F10 buttons)  
which allows to use a Scene as 'backdrop' for another Scene. Such a  
system can be coded generic, allowing unlimited combinations of Scenes,  
including blending/merging operations.
Both features need to be further thought over...

A method how to expand current layer system, and keep compatibility:
- add to objects 2 extra layer variables (ints). So we can stick to the  
simple bitmask check
- the 3 layers then denote: "visible", "render" and "selectable".
- on conversion from old files, the old layer value is just copied to  
the others, resulting in identical beahviour
- each Scene, and each 3D window in Blender gets the same 3 layer  
values, but also a new Linked List data element for "Named Layer".
- A named layer is nothing else than a preset for the 3 layer values.  
Switching "layers" then (also) is possible based on presets like  
"characters" or "help objects" or "final render".
- On the UI side I don't know for sure yet... how to use the current  
1-10 hotkeys, or how to allow editing the "Named Layer" settings. Maybe  
we can adopt the convention that when no Named Layer is active, the  
hotkeys work as usual (setting individual visibility/render layers).  
Hopefully we can avoid another editmode here...

-Ton-

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Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton@blender.org  
http://www.blender.org