[Bf-committers] Blender roadmap article on code blog

[David Jeske]

I like the overall structure of this roadmap.

It prompted me to cleanup and post my own 2013 Roadmap
Wishlist<http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/June_2013_Roadmap_Wishlist_Jeske>,
in-case it helps anyone's thinking/brainstorming.

If Blender does only four things in the next few years, I would personally
like them to be:

1) Include opt-in usage and automatic crash reporting in *every* blender
build, and a web dashboard to live usage/crash stats to devs and the
community. ( It looks like Google breakpad integration is
in-progress<http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:AlexK/Breakpad>.
)

2) Increase community leverage, sharing, library asset encapsulation --
more bridges between pro-artists and amateur blender pilots.
Material-sharing is being figured out. I'd like to be able to enapsulate a
more complex parameterized block into something with external "easy to use"
push-buttons... For example, (a) let me group/encapsulate/re-use/share a 10
node more advanced color-keying setup with an external mask-input,
key-color-input, and exposed "internal RGB curve editor" used for
foreground feather color correction; (b) let me wrap up the (scene, model,
logic, animation, script, and render setup) for a 3d rendered and
composited video-title-effect which can be used directly from the
video-sequence-editor with simple animatable fields like "color", "title
text", "font", "position".

3) Refine and add more end-to-end capabilities. IMO compositing and VFX
have a multiplicative not additive effect on Blender's utility. Somehow
having merely "reasonable" integrated 3d+compositing+vfx is better for some
tasks than having non-integrated best-of-breed tools for each. Small
refinements could be a video-sequence-editor refresh and
non-photo-realistic-shading to complement freestyle. Bigger leaps might be
comic/graphic-novel layout and authoring, 3d-sound-rendering/sequencing, or
live-broadcast/streaming using BGE/interactive-mode.

4) Incorporate an extension language which can support Intellisense,
type-checking, and fast execution. A big goal is to make scripting easier
with Intellisense. Another goal is to enable both new blender additions and
old code to be in a solid, typechecked, memory-managed high-level-language.
Until recently, I wished for .NET/Mono/C# integration, like some people
wished for in Maya before they decided on Python. However, I think there is
a new exciting option which is lighter weight and may fit better, and that
is TypeScript + Javascript-V8. (Typescript <http://www.typescriptlang.org/>is
a class-based Javascript "facade" with optional-static typing, and
Javascript-V8 is 10-30x
faster<http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=python3&lang2=v8&data=u64>than
CPython 3). Obviously this would be done in a way which leverages the
investment in Python exports/apis.