[Bf-committers] IRC meeting minutes, feb 6

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi all,

1. New developer support needed
End of last summmer, Nathan Letwory was hired by the BF for support  
issues (wiki, projects site, dev docs, minutes, etc) and to help with  
the Verse project. He's unfortunately temporally unavailable due to  
illness. Might take at least 3-6 months before he can be active for us  
again.
Needless to say, Nathan saved me from many time consuming issues,  
allowing to do more coding the 2nd half of last year. :) In a separate  
mail I'll post job description/targets for those who would be  
interested.

2. bf-blender vs. tuhopuu
A discussion went on to define more clear guidelines for what  
development belongs in what tree. A couple of suggestions were made;
- better coordination (and keeping track of) moving worthwhile  
additions from tuhopuu to the official bf-blender tree. There's a lot  
of code there that needs to be transferred.
- Jean-Luc Peurriere proposed to setup a wiki page to show current  
(actual) coding projects
- Ton will re-confirm the official projects list, with the "module  
owners". It remains important that people can do actual work on  
bf-blender without having to get formal approval on every  
commit/change. Of course for sofar it fits in release targets and  
scheduling.

3. Release targets

- Transform
Martin Poirier mentions the Armature part still needs to be done. There  
are no showstoppers here, apart from lotsa testing and filling in the  
gaps. Is in Tuhopuu still.
- DOF
The zbuffer-based DOF sequence plugin was integrated in the render by  
Alexander Ewering, he will make a patch against bf-blender for it.
- Animation project
Ton notes coding work still has to start... the scale and impact of  
recode requires a non-stop & quiet coding period, which is not  
predictable when to be available...
- Dependency graph
Jean-Luc has been busy with other things, but has time soon to be  
integrated for next release.
- UI work
Matt Ebb wasn't available recently to update on status, but there are  
several good changes in Tuhopuu that could be transferred (like Lamp  
drawing).
- Alfredo de Greef is doing a lot Yafray work, but will pick up openEXR  
after that. He also proposes to look at HDR, 32 bits RGBE with 1 byte  
Exponential value.
- Mal Duffin is working a python export to Shockwave 3D.
- Brecht van Lommel has some UV editing tricks up his sleeve! (not  
discussed which :).

Ton stated that "for keeping momentum and have a feasible release" he  
can
also postpone the anim recode and first help with transform()  
(including looking at 3d transform widgets), help with openEXR or HDR,  
assist with dependency graph, and get Matt's UI work finished/moved to  
bf-blender". Oh, and the wire color proposal!

4) New Mesh Proposal
Joseph Eagar (joeedh) is working a new Mesh primitive for Blender,  
based on the half-edge data model (like wings3d). This cannot replace  
current Mesh modeling, so the idea is to include it in Blender next to  
the existing Mesh, with options for conversion. A patch/proposal will  
follow. Hopefully it's OK to include in Tuhopuu for test.

-Ton-

(thanks to Tom Musgrove, for providing minutes draft!)

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