[Bf-committers] Google Summer of Code - mentors needed

[dbaker@citytech.cuny.edu]

Hi, I filled out application materials to volunteer as a mentor on the
google site, but apparently I should have sent that here instead:


My name is Damon Loren Baker. I use and develop with Blender as part of the
courses I teach at NYC College of Technology where I am the Emerging Media
Technologies Program Director and Assistant Professor of Interactive
Entertainment. We use Blender heavily in our classes (My Interactive 3D
Environments Programming and Interactive Audio for Games and Simulations
courses are taught entirely using Blender Game Engine and several students
in my lab are developing blender games using the oculus rift, kinect and
leap motion interfaces) and I would like to contribute back to the project
by mentoring students if possible for GSoC. My main areas of interest are
in the game logic/game engine  and Audio sections. I'm familiar with Python
and C development with Blender and I also have a background in digital
audio programming/signal processing (I do most of my work in
Games/AR/VR/Human Computer Interaction with Virtual Worlds these days but
my graduate training was originally in computer music and spatialized audio
specifically.).
. Of the proposed projects these are the ones that I would be most useful
as a mentor for:

Group propertiesAt the moment working with group instances can be rather
bothersome if a user wants to have per instance properties. In other words,
it would be nice to define a set of properties for a group object that each
instance could change. At the moment, this type of behavior can be emulated
with a Python script, but it gets rather clunky. Having a clean way to do
this via the logic/property UI would be much nicer.
-Moguri<http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Moguri>Cleanup
Blenderplayer Command Line Argument ParsingThe Blenderplayer's parsing of
command line arguments is currently very picky and prone to breaking, and
adding more command line options can be a bit painful. Instead, we should
take advantage of a library such as one listed on this Stack Overflow
page<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/865668/parse-command-line-arguments>,
or BLI_args, which is used by Blender. The BGE already has Boost as a
dependency, so Boost.Program_options is an option. This project would also
involve adding some more command line arguments for controlling audio
options, anisotropic filtering, and possibly others.
-Moguri<http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Moguri>Using
blender as game engine/level editorThe target of this project is to utilize
blender as a game development tool for external engines. To get an idea
what blender should be used for, have a look at other game engine tools
like the UDK or CryEngine toolset. The outcome of this project should be
either a usable editor for a specific engine or a very good document on how
to use blender like this, focusing on the actual implementation and showing
samples for some imaginary non-existent game engine. Examples of features
and important things to think about: adding a RenderSettings.engine (next
to Blender Internal, Cycles and Blender Game) to select the game engine and
change the UI elements to what is used for the engine; level editing tools,
for example setting entities and their properties; necessary exporters for
levels, game engine models, etc; baking of light-/shadowmaps and similar
for the asset pipeline of the game engine; and many more!
-neXyon<http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:NeXyon>

Audio

Contact: neXyon <http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:NeXyon>

   - Playback manager - A class/interface that can handle multiple sounds
   being played back with different categories assigned (e.g. voice, music,
   background noise, notifications, etc.) where each category can be
   controlled. Useful for the game engine for example to easily pause/stop all
   sounds and adjust volume levels of different categories.
   - Binaural audio: 3D audio with headphones, using HRTFs (head-related
   transfer functions)
   - Environmental audio: different sound modifications (filters, reverb,
   etc.) which are spatially dependant on sound source and listener position.
   For example a gunshot in a tiled bathroom sounds different than in a room
   with sound absorbing walls.
   - Dynamic music: a music playback interface which can change the music
   based on some user-defined flags. For example: a game has some random
   background music while the player runs around and then he starts fighting
   against a bunch of enemies and the music gets more exciting. This interface
   should then use predefined loopable music samples and transition nicely
   between them changing the mood of the background music according to the
   action that is currently going on.
   - Random sounds: repeating sounds all over again sounds boring and is
   easily noticed by the player (for example footsteps) so this functionality
   should add a list of sounds to the sound actuator instead of a single one,
   with the ability to choose sounds randomly or sequential when it is
   triggered.
   - Reverberation
   - Back- and front-ends (libogg, libvorbis, alsa, pulse, Windows and OSX
   backends)
   - Plugins (including plugin architecture)
   - Filters



On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 4:44 AM, Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> People who like to mentor a student can now apply here:
> http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2014
>
> Mentors should be proficient with (a part of) Blender code, and preferably
> in a module team. We also expect them to be able to do code reviews for the
> student's work, and assist on merging or integration.
>
> Reward: our gratitude, and 500 USD from Google. :)
>
> Additionally - mentors should check on the ideas page, if this is still
> valid.
> http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/GoogleSummerOfCode/2014/Ideas
>
> (Note - this is not a feature request page! Only add ideas if you know
> there's someone in the team who'll mentor it).
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Ton-
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
> Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute
> Entrepotdok 57A  -  1018AD Amsterdam  -  The Netherlands
>
>
>
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