[Bf-committers] Render Branch Plans

[Brecht Van Lommel]

Hi all,

I've written some docs on the render branch changes, more coming:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.5/Source/RenderBranch

I'll also release a patch for the new shading nodes, however they are
only in a prototype stage and far from finished. There's no clear plan
yet for when to merge the render branch changes (and I couldn't really
discuss it properly yet before the Octane announcement). There's a few
options:

* Merge as soon as possible, so it ends up in 2.6. This means the
changes then would be available immediately, disadvantage is that we
make trunk more unstable, and have to break render compatibility
twice, assuming a new shading refactor happens in a following release.
* Merge after the 2.6 release. This means it will take a bit longer,
but not get in the way of current bugfixing work to get a release out.
Does most likely mean breaking render compatibility twice.
* Merge along with a shading nodes refactor. It's unknown when this
would be done, and I can't be involved with it much. Means everything
can be changed at once and tested better.

I looked into merging only "safe" changes that would not break
compatibility much, but this seems to be very difficult, so I can't
see other options. My personal preference would be to merge things
after 2.6, maybe at that time others may be interested / have the time
to improve things further.

Brecht.