[Bf-cycles] Render API Coordination

[Brecht Van Lommel]

Hi all,

I'm working for the Blender Institute again, and part of my job for
the coming months will be improving the Blender Render API for
external engines. I'll have time to work on the implementation, but it
would be best if we could get as many developers as possible involved
in the design and contributing code!

For discussion, we'll use the bf-python at blender.org mailing list, it
doesn't have much other traffic at the moment. So if you want to get
involved it's best to subscribe:
http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-python

There's a few different areas that need to be improved, the main ones
I have in my mind are:

* Preview and viewport rendering
* Extensible shader node system
* Texturing
* UI and properties
* C/C++ API for faster export
* Data synchronization for interactive rendering
* Render result and passes

My plan is to mail a design proposal to the bf-python list for each
topic, to get it discussed and agreed on, expect the first proposal in
a few days. If you've got more requests for things to be added, just
send them to the mailing list, so we can get a better idea of what is
needed. There's also already this wiki page:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Source/Render/Render_API

It's not entirely clear to me who is in charge of integration for all
engines, so if I've missed someone, please forward this mail.

Thanks,
Brecht.