[Bf-committers] Understanding the dev process

[Campbell Barton]

On Fri, Jul 5, 2019 at 6:58 PM dr. Sybren A. Stüvel <sybren at stuvel.eu> wrote:
>
> Hey Nathan,
>
> On 04-07-19 15:37, Nathan Letwory wrote:
> > I'm most interested in finding out how devs perceive the process: what goes
> > well, and even more so what causes trouble.
>
> I think that what could use improvement is the interaction between
> non-regulars and regulars in the blender-developers chat channel. My
> GSoC student has asked questions there, but got completely ignored, and
> I've seen others getting no answer either. Maybe there is a bit too much
> of a not-my-area-of-Blender mentality going on, and on the other hand it
> would be silly if people were swamped with "I don't know" answers. In
> such a case, for every individual dev silence is better than saying "I
> don't know", but that's only good for the question-asker if the actual
> answer follows pretty shortly.
>
> On 05-07-19 04:20, Campbell Barton wrote:
> > Perhaps we can assign promising patches to review each release cycle
> > (as part of per module tasks - see T63725).
>
> Would it be a good idea to start assigning "milestones" to patches? In
> practice this is probably only possible when the patch is close to
> acceptance, because only then the true impact of the patch is known.

Any way for us to assign patches to a module, then quickly see which
patches need to be reviewed for that module would be good.

>
> > Who are we making Blender for?
> > ==============================
> >
> > With 2.8x and the introduction of tools,
> > it strikes me that artists at the Blender Institute are not using it much
> > (just my impression, maybe this changes over time).
>
> This is a good point. I know for a fact that the animators aren't using
> the new tool system at all, because it doesn't make sense to them -- the
> "tools" as introduced in 2.8 are conceptually incompatible with the
> animation tools they need. Tools for them are things like the pose
> library (+the pose thumbnails add-on), selection sets, the Blenrig
> control panel, and tools in the dopesheet editor. The tabbed T-panel had
> space for the tools they need, but that's been removed with the promise
> of something better. Only, that "something better" hasn't arrived yet
> and also hasn't even been presented yet.
>
> Hjalti and Nacho want to join the Animation module team, and I'm talking
> with an external animator to get an outside perspective too.

It's unfortunate that there has been very little attention payed to
animation + tool system.
Although AFAICS the issues with animation at the studio are more
complicated - where we could use a dedicated developer to take their
input and either customize improve what we have, with studio spesific
customizations for special cases. Ideally we could get Blender2.8 to a
state where they are comfortable & productive, then investigate how
this might be integrated without customizations.

> Cheers,
>
> --
> Sybren A. Stüvel
>
> https://stuvelfoto.nl/
> https://stuvel.eu/
>
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-- 
- Campbell