[Bf-committers] Blender developer meeting notes - 2019.09.16

Mon Sep 16 18:49:53 CEST 2019

Hi all,

Here are the notes from today's developer meeting. Next meeting is
Monday, 23 September 10:00 CEST / 8:00 UTC, in #blender-coders on
blender.chat.

For images read the report on:
https://devtalk.blender.org/t/16-september-2019/9505

Announcements
=============
* We now officially leaving the Bcon1 [1] state of Blender2.81 with
only a critical patch pending.
* Google Summer of Code 2019 wrap up post [2].

### Blender 2.81 Bcon2

* Welcome everyone to Blender 2.81 Bcon2 [3].
* Developers are expected to work on bugfixing and polishing the
features that were committed.
* All hired developers are to work on the tracker regularly (once a
week usually), but during Bcon2 more activity there is expected
(50%-100% of the week).
* To help us going over the >400 reports we are working in a bug
triaging playbook [4].
* Bcon3 starts on October 10th, together with Blender 2.82 Bcon1.

New Features and Changes
=====================
Sculpting
------------
Many new sculpting features were added. (Pablo Dobarro)

Tools
-------
* Pose brush: pose a model simulating an armature-like deformation.
The pivot point for rotation is calculated automatically based on the
radius of the brush and the topology of the model.
* Translate, Rotate, Scale tools: transform around a pivot point, also
taking into account symmetry.
* Elastic Deform brush: grab, biscale grab, triscale grab, scale and
twist operations that preserve volume. All deformation modes are
accessible under the same tool. Based on the "Regularized Kelvinlets:
Sculpting Brushes based on Fundamental Solutions of Elasticity [5]"
paper.
* Draw Sharp brush: Similar to the draw brush, but it deforms the mesh
from the original coordinates. When used with the sharper curve
presets it has a much more pleasant crease/cut behavior than any of
the other brushes. It is useful for creating cloth wrinkles, stylized
hair or hard surface edges.
* Mesh Filter tool: applies a deformation to all vertices in the mesh
at the same time. It includes multiple deformation modes and the
option to lock the deformation axis.

Brush Settings
-------------------
* Automasking: assigns a factor to each vertex before starting the
stroke. Topology automasking affects only vertices connected to the
active vertex.
* Grab active vertex snaps the maximum strength of the grab brush to
the highlighted active vertex, making it easier to manipulate low poly
models or meshes with subdivision surfaces.
* Dynamic Mesh Preview displays the edges of the mesh inside the brush
radius. This helps to visualize the real geometry the user is
manipulating from sculpt mode when there are active modifiers.

Masking
-----------
* Mask Filter: modifies the whole paint mask. In includes multiple
operations like smooth, grow or contrast accessible from a pie menu.
* Dirty Mask generator: similar to Dirty Vertex Colors, but it
generates a paint mask. It can be used to mask cavities in the sculpt.
* Mask Expand: creates a mask from the active vertex to the vertex
under the cursor based on topology or mesh curvature
* Mask Extract: extracts the paint mask to a new mesh object. It can
extract the paint mask creating a boundary loop in the geometry,
making it ready for adding a subdivision surface modifier.

Quad Remeshing
-----------------------
A new QuadriFlow remeshing method was added, to create a quad mesh
with few poles and edge loops following the curvature of the surface.
This method is relatively slow but generates higher quality for final
topology, compared to Voxel Remesh. (QuadriFlow library [6])
(Sebastian Parborg)

Library Overrides
-----------------------
The replacement system for proxies, called Library Overrides, is now
enabled. (docs [7]) (Bastien Montagne)

It is considered as experimental, and the current proxy system will be
kept alongside for a few releases. A manual operator to convert
proxies to library overrides will be added later, however results on
complex characters are not guaranteed.

Compared to proxies, library overrides support:
* Multiple independent overrides of a same linked data (e.g. a whole character).
* Add new modifiers and constraints, anywhere in the stack.
* Override many more types of data-blocks, and selectively edit some
of their properties. For example materials or textures.
* Recursively chain overrides, linking and override overrides from
another library file.

Cycles Optix
-----------------
Cycles now has experimental support for rendering with
hardware-accelerated raytracing on NVIDIA RTX graphics cards. This is
done by enabling Optix in Preferences > System > Cycles Render
Devices. (Patrick Mours, Brecht Van Lommel)

This requires recent NVIDIA drivers and does not yet support all
features of the CUDA backend. For more details see the release notes
[8].

Shader Nodes
-------------------
* Voronoi Texture node: new 4D mode, distance and position output,
smoothing, randomness, distance to edge and n-sphere radius to create
many different types of patterns. (examples [9]) (Omar Ahmad)
* Musgrave Texture node: support for 1D, 2D, 3D and 4D dimensions. (Omar Ahmad)
* New Vertex Color node: for convenient access to Vertex Colors and
their alpha channel.  (Omar Ahmad)

File Browser
-----------------
* Add back + - buttons for adding version numbers. (Julian Eisel)
* Colored folder icons. (Harley Acheson)
* Better volume descriptions on Windows. (Harley Acheson)
* Icons for desktop, external drive and network drive. (Andrzej
Ambroż, William Reynish)

Sequencer
--------------
Prefetching support, to automatically fill the cache with frames after
the current frame in the background. This can be enabled in the
sequencer Preview, in the View Settings in the sidebar. (Richard
Antalik)

Other
--------
* Transform: mirroring over the Y and Z axis is now supported, along
with the existing X axis option. Multiple axes can also be enabled
simultaneously. (Germano Cavalcante)
* Transform: options to affect only origins or parents was moved from
the pivot popover to the options panel. (Campbell Barton)
* Drivers: bone length is now a property that can be used for drivers.
(Alexander Gavrilov)
* Python API: `depsgraphupdatepost` and `framechangepost` handlers can
now optionally use a `depsgraph` argument. These and other callbacks
also no longer run for preview renders, only the main scene. (details
[10]) (Sergey Sharybin)
* Grease Pencil: new Simplify Tint option, to disable tinting on all
layers. (Antonio Vazquez)
* Eevee: faster volume rendering for graphics card that support new
OpenGL versions. (Clément Foucault)
* Cycles: option to display a render pass in the viewport, instead of
the combined pass. (Jeroen Bakker)
* User Interface: use pageup/down and home/end to scroll to start/end
of menus. (Joep Peters)
* Collections: each 3D viewport can now display a different subset of
collections, by enabling Local Collections in the sidebar Collections
panel. (Dalai Felinto)

Projects Under Development
======================
* New patch for wireframe opacity control in uv editor [11] waiting for review.

Weekly Progress Reports
=======================
* Bastien https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Mont29/Foundation/2019#Week_313_-_09.2F07_to_09.2F14
* Brecht https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Brecht/Reports/2019#September_9_-_13
* Campbell https://download.blender.org/ftp/ideasman42/donelist/2019.html#week-243-september-9
* Clément https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Hypersomniac/Foundation/2019#Week_139_:_9th_-_15th_September
* Dalai https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Dfelinto/Reports/2019#September_9_-_13
* Germano https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Manowii/Reports/2019#Week_11:_9th_-_13rd_September
* Jeroen https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Jbakker/reports/2019#Week_201937:_2019.2F09.2F09_-_2019.2F09.2F15
* Jacques https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:JacquesLucke/Reports/2019#Week_50:_September_09_-_13
* Julian https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Severin/Reports/Institute_2019#September_9_-_September_15
* Pablo https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Pablodp606/Reports/2019#September_9_-_13
* Philipp https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:PhilippOeser/Foundation/2019#Calendar_Week_37_.28Sep_9th_-_Sep_13th.29
* Sebastian https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Zeddb#Sep_09_-_Aug_13
* Sergey https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/User:Sergey/Foundation/2019#Week_402:_9th_-_15th_September

Links
====
[1] https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Process/Release_Cycle
[2] https://code.blender.org/2019/09/google-summer-of-code-2019/
[3] https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Process/Release_Cycle
[4] http://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Process/Bug_Reports/Triaging_Playbook
[5] https://graphics.pixar.com/library/Kelvinlets/paper.pdf
[6] https://github.com/hjwdzh/QuadriFlow
[7] https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.81/DataManagement/Library_Override
[8] https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.81/Cycles#NVIDIA_RTX
[9] https://devtalk.blender.org/t/cycles-eevee-improvements-weekly-reports/7697/14
[10] https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.81/Python_API#Handlers
[11] https://developer.blender.org/D5348

Best regards,
Dalai