[Bf-committers] drafting dev digest / release notes for the pre-release

[antont at kyperjokki.fi]

hi,

drafted a dev. digest / release notes for the upcoming pre-release. a working 
copy is in the mediawiki dev. docs. section, 
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Blender_2.4_pre-release_notes . the 
current draft is also attached here.

will go through the cvs log (probably on Friday) to see things that missed, 
but do send in reminders / comments about errors / missing things. am 
off-line starting now till then.

cheers,
~Toni
-------------- next part --------------
Wrapping up 2.40

Development Digest, October 2005. 
(insert cool 1 sentence statement here)

v0.5

Overview and release plan
-------------------------

So much has happened since the previous release that it is difficult
to know where to begin. In the internals, as Ton already reported in
July, the animation system rewrite started with putting a new
dependency system in use, and the armature/pose system was
rebuilt. Later this has allowed the introduction of <a
href="http://www.blender.org/cms/Changes_since_2_37.598.0.html">new
features</a>, such as new armature draw types, bendy bones and
envelopes, which have already been used extensively by the guys in
project Orange and others. Also the Modifier stack by Daniel Dunbar is
a substantial new core system, allowing layered transformations like
subdividing and mirroring.

Another major flow of development came from the Google Summer of Code
projects, which added new areas to Blender like fluid dynamics, Verse
integration and Python textures. Integration of some of these projects
is still to be done.

The amount of internal changes and new features is so large that we
decided to make a pre-release. There are several reasons for it:
1. there are so many new exiting features that we want to have them
more accessible for anyone soon, 2. with the substantial changes there
are bound to be nasty lurking bugs that only testing can find, 3. the
new tools affect modelling and animation workflows, hopefully making
blending more fluent, but surely there's also space for feedback and
ideas for finalizing the new tools, before the final 2.40 release. The
(first) pre-release is 2.40alpha1 (the version number being 2.39 for
technical reasons). This also introduces user interface changes, which
Matt Ebb is transferring over from Tuhopuu where they have been
experimented with.

Known issues
------------

(these i guess we must fit to the new armature system before release
- game engine broken

- python armatures broken)

..

List of changes
---------------

Animation system
................

- Dependency Graph, http://www.blender.org/cms/Dependency_Graph.633.0.html

- Armatures, http://www.blender.org/cms/How_Armatures_work.634.0.html

- Armature draw modes, http://www.blender.org/cms/Armature_draw_modes.629.0.html

- Armature Envelopes, http://www.blender.org/cms/Armature_Envelopes.647.0.html

- Inverse Kinematics, http://www.blender.org/cms/Inverse_Kinematics.663.0.html
Brecht van Lommel adds advanced features to our IK library, enabling
"Tree IK", joint DOF control, sliding joints, and a massive speedup.

- Shape Keys, http://www.blender.org/cms/Shape_Keys.678.0.html

- Ipo drivers, http://www.blender.org/cms/Ipo_Drivers.680.0.html and
http://orange.blender.org/blog/licence-to-drive


Modelling
.........

- Modifier Stack, http://wiki.blender.org/bin/view.pl/Blenderdev/Modifiers 
Daniel Dunbar has added a Modier Stack in Blender, for layering (Mesh)
transformations like Subdivision Surface, Wave Effect, Mirror, Mesh
Reduction, and so on.

- Mesh Subdivide Tools,
http://www.blender.org/cms/Subdivide_Tools.599.0.html
Johnny Matthews has rebuilt the Mesh Subdivide tool from scratch,
allowing much better control over subdividing. New tools like "edge
slide" now are added too.

- Unicode support for text objects by Mika Saari

- XXX Something about the new particle things?
(is any of this coming? http://users.utu.fi/jhkarh/prog/bs_part1.html)

Rendering
.........

- (from http://orange.blender.org/blog/hairy-issues) static (animated)
particles are rendered as a series of extruded faces which are
parallel to the camera view, and blender makes sure that they¡Çre
rendered at the right size to produce no (or only minor) AA issues.


Textures
........

- Radial Blend Type, http://www.blender.org/cms/Radial_Blend_Type.677.0.html

- Python textures

User interface
..............

(Matt will fill this in)

General
.......

Blender file compression 

Shaul Kedem restored the option to compress files, giving 50-70%
smaller .blend files.

Verse Integration 

Verse is a 3d network protocol allowing any graphics application to
work together, as if it's a single program. Jiri Hnidek has integrated
it in Blender, and demonstrated a Blender connected to Maya,
exchanging data! Currently the Verse Blender is available as a
separate test build.

Python API
..........

Ken Hughes added getset tables throughout the API. Yay!
Replaces search thru list of attribute names by a table lookup.
Provides consistent access to members, speeds up method calls,
attrs show up automagically with dir().

Mathutils rewrite and new Armature / Bone code by Joseph Gilbert.

New modules: 

- Key 

- (BezTriple)

- Timeline access via Scene. e.g. for using timeline markers to
control a Camera changing script (as done by Basse at studio Orange),

- Mesh, a.k.a. thinmesh, by Ken Hughes provides direct access to Mesh
objects (unlike the pre-existing NMesh module which wraps mesh data by
copying?)

..more?


Scripts
.......

LetterRip is collecting via
http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=51512&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

need to be reviewed and tested!