[Bf-committers] Project Proposal

[roger.liang at utoronto.ca]

Hi everyone.

We are 4th year computer engineering students at the University of  
Toronto. For our capstone design project, we decided to contribute  
some exciting features to Blender under the supervision of Keir Mierle.
.

The current plan of our project involves extending the nodes system of  
Blender by implementing new nodes. We gathered inspiration from the  
commercial procedural image generation software Filter Forge which  
uses a node system similar to what Blender has right now. After a bit  
of research we have decided that we are going to focus on the nodes  
under following 5 catalogues.

  External nodes
  Gradients
  Processing nodes
  Curve ops
  Curves

A brief description of each node can be found at:
http://blender.astrometry.net/wiki/listofnodes

However, the implementation of those nodes will require introducing  
one data type to the current Blender node system. In Filter Forge, the  
nodes under Curve and Curve ops operates with one a unique data type  
?curve input?. A curve input represents a curve function in a  
specified range and is often used to provide inputs for other nodes to  
define their behaviors.

A more detailed description on Filter Forge?s curve system can be found at:
http://www.filterforge.com/more/help/Components/CurveComponents.html

Therefore, if we are to extend Blender?s node system to the level of  
Filter Forge, two changes in the current Blender node system will be  
needed:
1.	Implementation of the new data type ?curve input?
2.	Possibly revision on some of the existing nodes to take advantage  
of the new data type.

Also we suspect that we could implement the new curve input data type  
in a way that it will be useable for both composite and shader nodes.  
However we lack the knowledge of the current system to come to a  
conclusion.

Any feedback will be greatly appreciated and we look forward to hear from you.


Thank you very much

Roger Liang
Nicolas Wu Sak Wing
Christopher Leung