[Bf-committers] Blender developers meeting, 2016-10-02

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi everyone,

Here are the notes from today's 14 UTC meeting in irc.freenode.net #blendercoders.

1) Blender 2.78 release

- The release is out! Thanks & congrats to everyone who helped!

- Check the fantastic release logs, made by Marco Ardito and Pablo Vazquez:
https://www.blender.org/features/2-78/

- There are reports about the Windows .msi installer, it gives an SDL error 
on first time expand. Second time things work. However, no developer could 
yet reproduce it.

- Similar report came in from some OSX users; the way we bundle 
Python scripts make Apple tell you that the binary is corrupt (in fact 
it's just not well signed).

- Martijn Berger and Ray Molenkamp are working on the above two topics.

- Meanwhile, several nasty bugs were reported and fixed. Unfortunately that 
means we need to make an 'a' release again. We seem to never win this 
testing fight! 

- Next Sunday meeting a final decision on an update release will be made.

2) Other projects and 2.8

- Blender will move to C++11. This has impact on the minimum OSX version we
support (will become 10.8). Sergey Sharybin i will mail the list with details 
why / how we do this.

- The 2.8 Viewport project has launched! A couple of highlight notes:

  - Design proposal: https://code.blender.org/2016/09/blender-2-8-viewport-development/

  - Dalai Felinto, Clement Foucault and Mike Erwin will be working as full time
    developers on the viewport project. The first two for Blender Institute, thanks
    to support by Tangent Animation Studios. Mike thanks to support from AMD.

  - Mike will publish a "how to help out with immediate mode" doc tomorrow.

  - Mike, Dalai and Clement will be attending the Blender Conference. 
    Lubos Lenco (Armory3d) will do a presentation at the conference too.

- Bastien Montagne posted a code blog update on Asset management and pipelines:
  https://code.blender.org/2016/10/asset-management-and-pipeline/

- The upcoming Cycles workshop at the conference will also be a gathering of nearly
everyone who contributed to Cycles, including representatives from Intel, AMD, 
Tangent Animation and SmithMicro.

- Meeting confirms that there's agreement on postponing "Everything nodes" for a later 2.8 release.
What we will tackle is viewport, assets + pipeline, workflow + UI, depsgraph + modifier recode.

- There are a number of loose ends still, will be coming back in future meetings:
  - How to put back old hair/particles in 2.8, like in a big walled area ready for recode
  - Get the coders from BGE, UPBGE, Blend4web, Armory3d cooperate on Blender for game makers.
  - Related: logic editor upgrade. Inez Almeida is available to help.
  - Physics systems in Blender need maintenance and more maintainers. 
  - What to do with generative modifiers like 'fracture'. Should be solved in modifier recode
  - Are we going to put all code work in one 2.8 branch together?

That's it for today! 

-Ton-

--------------------------------------------------------
Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
Chairman Blender Foundation, Producer Blender Institute
Support us - join blender.cloud or Blender Dev Fund.