[Bf-committers] Meeting minutes May 1 + todo for release

[Matt Ebb]

Ton Roosendaal wrote:

> ---------> Render
>
> - Bump map fixes

What's the situation with the 'temporary' 'make my render work 
correctly' button?

> --------> 3D Manipulator Widgets
>
> - offers global/local and normal alignment

What are people's opinions on re-using this setting for the default MMB 
constrain co-ordinate system as well? I think it could be quite nice.

> --------> Softbody
>
> Todo:
> - Baking (done)
> - docs & demos!

Are the softbodies still considered WIP and open to proposals and 
changes, or has it basically been locked off now? There are a number of 
usability problems with it, and from what I can see on the forums most 
people who aren't physicists and try to use it (including myself) are 
getting very confused about what all the different buttons mean, what 
units they are in, what effects they have and how they interrelate with 
each other. At least in my testing, it's been one big session of 'tweak 
unknown settings, test, repeat' but with all the different permutations 
of variables affecting each other in mysterious ways, it's very hard to 
predict, and hard to get good results for things that are more complex 
than square sheets falling on spheres. I've seen good stuff in Jens' 
test files, so I know the core system can do a lot - it's just very 
hard  for people like me, who don't have a deep understanding of the 
code behind it, to get it working nicely. So far the buttons seem to 
have been tacked on incrementally, reflecting changes in the code along 
the way (and the baking popup.. ouch..), without a general plan/design 
for interaction and workflow. It would be good if the interaction here 
could be properly analysed, designed, considered and re-considered.

> --------> Post-production effect: ZBlur
>
> New:
> - it's the zblur sequence plugin, tied to render output itself
> - functionality highly limited... antialias & blur errors by  
> implementation

I have significant misgivings about this and will write another email.

> --------> New .B.blend
>
> Todo:
> - general re-check of standard color conventions (Matt?) 

I would say if there are larger UI changes afoot (2.4) then it would be 
much better to leave any default theme changes until then and do it all 
in the one go, to isolate disruption and also for the purposes of the 
2.3 manual being valid for the 2.3 series.

Cheers,

Matt