[Bf-committers] Blender developer meeting notes - 2020.1.6

Wed Jan 8 15:05:10 CET 2020

Hi,

Multires (the subdivision based sculpting system) is the most basic and
fundamental feature of a digital sculpting workflow and it never worked as
expected (even in 2.79). In 2.80 it was creating irreversible mesh data
corruption and this is why it was disabled in 2.81.

We are currently adding sculpting features that can be considered extremely
advanced. Even though they are working and the implementation is correct,
they can only be used to look at them and say ¨wow, this looks cool!¨. It
does not matter how much time and effort we put into developing, reviewing
and fixing bugs in Sculpt Mode. The entire sculpting system design relies
on a functional Multires system, which is currently broken, so none of
these features can be used in a real project the way they are intended to
be used.

With all the development that happened during 2.81 and 2.82 related to
Sculpt Mode, a working Multires system (and only that) is the difference
between having a perfectly functional sculpting package and a playground
that can only be used to create demo videos.

I understand that not all projects can be tackled at a time and that there
are priorities. But in this case, multiple developers worked on Multires
related tasks for 2.81 and 2.82. For example:

   - Jeroen: Review all sculpt/paint patches
   - Brecht: Multires sculpt API compatibility, ported all tools to support
   Multires duplicates
   - Sergey: Multires sculpt API compatibility, bug fixing in Multires
   - Sebastian: Quadriflow

so I understand that Multires is still a supported, not deprecated feature
under active development. In my opinion, it is hard to justify this
development planning when we knew beforehand that none of those features
will be usable without fixing the core functionality of Multires in the
first place. These kind of issues in the development process are what I was
referring to in this email I send a while ago: https://pastebin.com/7YNPTsm3

This is why I consider that it does not make sense to keep giving priority
to sculpt mode development (I'm currently working on vertex paint and paint
brush design) until there is a plan to fix this. If we add and promote in a
future release another big set of advanced sculpting features (like in
2.81) without the basics working we are showing a clear problem in product
design that hurts the image of Blender as a project.

I would like to bring some attention to the status of Multires.
Unfortunately, I lack the necessary knowledge to fix it (I don't even know
if it can be fixed), or the time it would take to do it. I'm also not sure
if fixing only T58473 is enough to bring it to a functional state. Any
information or help with this task will be appreciated. I would also
recommend any developer who wants to work on Sculpt Mode features or bug
fixes to take a look at this task before trying anything else. If you need
help with the functional design and use cases of a Multires sculpting
system, please feel free to ask me.

Thanks,

Pablo

El mié., 8 ene. 2020 a las 10:30, Sergey Sharybin (<sergey.vfx at gmail.com>)
escribió:

> Hi,
>
> > Original plan is to move to bcon3 this Thursday (9/1)
>
> Regressions tests are to be passing prior to this.
> Do we consider fluids officially broken and disable the test?
>
> >  Pablo Dobarro mention that if the multires fix are not planned for 2.82
> he suggests lowering the priority for review all other pending sculpt
> related patches
>
> Which exact multires fix? T58473? It does not affect the way sculpting
> tools interact with multires and i don't see how that's a stopper for
> improvements in the area.
> If it's a bottleneck, feel free to pick the task up and work on a solution.
>
> On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 7:45 PM Dalai Felinto <dfelinto at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Here are the notes from today's developer meeting. Next meeting is
> Monday,
> > 13 January 10:00 CET / 9:00 UTC, in #blender-coders onblender.chat.
> >
> > For the complete report read it on:
> > https://devtalk.blender.org/t/6-january-2020/11123
> >
> > Announcements
> > =============
> > * Starting this year/January, we now have Richard Antalik working
> fulltime
> > :) (triaging at first, drifting towards VSE)
> > * Tracker curfew is ongoing, devs remember to untag tasks from the
> > #tracker-curfew project after triaging (move them to bug or known issue(
> > /fixing them
> >
> > Blender 2.82 bcon3
> > ===============
> > * Original plan is to move to bcon3 this Thursday (9/1)
> > * Grease Pencil / annotation patch needs review by then - D6467
> > * Lukas Stockner says at least one UDIM patch needs review, specially the
> > Eevee/Workbench patch (D6456) - other patches: D6465 (simple), D6492
> > (packing, more complex, not priority) - Clement will try to look at it
> > * Lukas will also work in UDIM manual in the coming days
> > * Pablo Dobarro wants the IK pose brush (D6389) to be in bcon3
> >
> > Blender 2.83 bcon1
> > ===============
> > * Just a reminder that we then also start 2.83 bcon1 this week
> > * Time when consider what to schedule in the modules roadmaps let's
> > remember of the tracker curfew
> > (so devs are expected to work 2 full days a week with bug triaging,
> fixing
> > and patch review)
> > This will impact the inflow of new features, but it is temporary
> >
> > Other
> > =====
> > * Pablo Dobarro mention that if the multires fix are not planned for 2.82
> > he suggests lowering the priority for review all other pending sculpt
> > related patches
> > * Ray Molenkamp reminds every to run unittests
> > * Happy 2020!
> >
> > Regards,
> > Dalai
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bf-committers mailing list
> > Bf-committers at blender.org
> > https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
> >
>
>
> --
> With best regards, Sergey Sharybin
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-committers mailing list
> Bf-committers at blender.org
> https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
>