[Bf-committers] SOC Project Ideas?

[Matt Ebb]

On 19/04/2006, at 00:14 AM, Chris Want wrote:
>
> Yeah, I'm short on ideas too. If you, or any of the other
> orangers, can think of something you really felt you
> needed during ED, let me know.

 From memory at least for myself (most likely for some of the others,  
though I'm hesitant to speak for them):

* Curves stuff:
	- FIX THE 3D TWISTING BUG! PLEASE!
	- More editing tools such as inserting a CV at a chosen place on a  
segment, while keeping the shape identical, and vice versa.
	- Make the various bevel and taper features into modifiers for  
better control
	- More modifiers for curves (i.e. the mesh ones like mirror, but  
also things like smoothing etc)
	- Some kind of Curve->Mesh modifier which would give a derivedmesh  
output (i.e. the result of bevels/tapers) in order to use further  
mesh modifiers on, like subsurf or whatever.

* General usability analysis and cleanup of NLA. It's still very  
frustrating to use, and could do with more thought over relationships  
between other animation editor windows.

* Stride/path/etc character animation. The current stride system  
still leaves a lot to be desired. It's easy to get foot slipping on  
anything but a straight line and it's very very difficult to edit or  
change timing afterwards (yes the speed Ipo is pure evil). Having  
reliable stride action baking can help as a bandaid, but better would  
be a more advanced stride animation system, where you could just key  
an object or base bone in space, then the stride actions would be  
filled in automatically between those keys. CAT seems to have an  
interesting looking system, but I've never tried it.

* Ipo Bag - Using Actions as a generic container for any type of  
ipos, from different objects.

* Fix crazy space! Editing meshes and other object types deformed by  
any combination of armatures, lattices, curves, whatever should be  
rock solid.

* Better hair styling controls. It currently takes at least 15 or 20  
guide curves to get a passable hair cut. Trying to edit the guide  
curves is horrible, having to jump in and out of edit mode all the  
time, adjusting lengths, etc.

* Edit mode/manipulators for Lamps and Cameras. Twiddling buttons in  
a panel totally sucks for things that could be done easily and  
interactively in 3D such as spotlight size, shadow buffer clipping, etc.

* Improved shadow buffer features
	- Deep shadow maps? I've heard of this before as something good, but  
don't really know what it is :)
	- Some sort of auto sensing or adaptive-ness to ease the total  
tedium of having to adjust buffer clipping distances on all  
spotlights, just to get acceptable results
	- Ability for transparent objects to affect shadow buffers (right  
now, a shadow buffer lamp shining on wispy transparent hair gives a  
thick black totally opaque shadow. yuck)

* Volumetric rendering?

* Rendering to a blender window such as the image window, better  
storage and comparison of past renders (J key etc.)

* File/path management
	- improving handling of image sequences eg. in textures or comp  
nodes (the confusing sfra buttons etc always get me, it should just  
use the sequence that was selected in the file selector)
	- ability to edit referenced paths of library linked data, ability  
to convert between absolute and relative, etc.


Well I'm sure there's more, but I have to go out now :)

Matt