[Bf-committers] Meeting notes march 14 and 21

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi all,

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Note: please be aware daylight saving started in Europe. Seems to be 1  
week later in the USA. For other countries I have no clue! :P
Seems to be like this now:

sunday meetings; 16-18 CEST (GMST 15, Sao Paulo 14, EST 9,  PST 6,   
Sydney 01)
irc.freenode.net, #blendercoders
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1. Game engine status

- Here are the (still hidden, but soon to be published) engine demos,  
based on NaN content:
http://www.blender.org/bf/225_game_demos.zip
The physics demos here (conveyor, ballercoaster) still have minor  
issues (performance), but have improved quite some and are now on 2.25  
level.

- Compiling is being tested/developed with Scons now. Other make  
systems need work still.
Jesterking will commit the tuhopuu code in bf-blender tree now.

- Note: we need official MSVC 7 licenses! Any sponsors? Ton will also  
check on opportunities for it.

- Hos will check on Makefiles for the game engine.

2. Blender 2.33 projects status

- Transform() recode
Theeth discussed some issues, and what his develop path will be. He  
also likes to enable '3d widgets' later on, but will start with  
reorganizing code and keep the main subloop.
It can't be a 2.33 target now. Work on this could be in separate c  
file, so it won't break anything of old Blender functionality. (Maybe  
first try in tuho?)

- New noise & AO patch
New noise: mostly based on fractal and Musgrave formulas. As  
alternative for current Perlin for Textures in Blender. There's also  
access for Python scripts possible.
AO: ambient occlusion, a simple method to raytrace ambient light by  
darkening areas that have reduced visibility (like corners).
Eeshlo will be not available for a while, so he'll drop the patches to  
the mailinglist for review. Ton volunteered to check this & integrate  
in code.

- Python
Willian is back! After having suffered from lightning strike, he's now  
working on finalizing the 2.3 Python project, which also will include  
revision of built-in modules.
Willian points to  Joseph Gilbert (ascotan), who deserves credits for  
doing a lot of coding work on the API recently!

- Installer Windows
Aphex works on (compatible) saving of .B.blend in Windows too. Needs to  
be in installer too. Will be finished before 2.33.

3. Typo3 review
Bart is almost finished with reorganizing the blender3d.org site  
content in a CMS system. Some of the developers already started  
enthusiast with it as well.
Review of this system is positive, and we'll encourage Bart to go on  
with it. Next step will be a more elaborate navigation structure, also  
to merge with blender.org itself.
Note: we still need help adding developer docs there! Ask me for an  
account.

4. New Mesh project
Zr proposed to rethink Blender Meshes (editing meshes) by making it  
fully python. Not using the current API, but as interaction with  
Blender through c modules.
The discussion went on in many directions, but stalled on Zr not having  
a final design, or discussion doc ready yet. He's not sure yet how much  
he'll work on this.
Ton promised to poke him regularly to share information on this with us!

-Ton-


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