[Bf-committers] Learning Blender Code?

[Howard Trickey]

Some introductory FAQ material is here:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/FAQ#Source_Code_FAQ

As it says there, reading all of the docs on
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Source/Architecture
is useful, though hard-going and somewhat out of date.

It's probably best to start on just a small area of the code and not worry
about the rest.
Follow through what happens when you execute some command in an area that
you are interested in.
Do what you are trying to do: fix a small problem or make a small feature
change in that command.
Probably doing a NURBS task isn't the best idea to start, since there is a
summer student right now working on revamping NURBS, and anyway that code
is fairly old and somewhat removed from the modern part of Blender.

- Howard


On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 11:07 AM, John Alway <jalway at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I've been working to understand Blender code so that I can try my hand at
> fixing some bugs and adding some features as needed.   However, I'm finding
> the learning curve to be quite steep.   C and C++ code per se are no
> problem for me, but it's hard to determine what the code is doing, because
> there are many abstract concepts that have been implemented.
>
> I was trying my hand at Issue T39656, just to see what it would take:
> https://developer.blender.org/T39656
>
> And, to help me along, I've been using the Visual Studio debugger and I've
> read many things out of the wiki, including this overview:
>
> http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Source/Architecture/Overview
>
> However, at the end of the day, this is proving to be pretty heavy going.
>
> So, I'm wondering how others have learned the code, or is it just a matter
> of putting in lots of time?
>
> I do know OpenGL and I have studied many graphical concepts, and I've done
> a lot of matrix math for rotating and translating objects, etc.   But, I'm
> sure there is much to more learn, anyway.  There always is!
>
> Anyway, I'm just looking for pointers and any kind of help on this.
>
> Thanks for any feedback!
> ...Regards,
> John
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