[Bf-cycles] GSoC - Spectral Rendering

[Brecht Van Lommel]

I pretty much agree with this. There are more important features, but
what's feasible depends on the experience of the student. Spectral
rendering would be a well defined project which mostly requires local
changes.

Volume rendering, performance improvements, baking are too difficult
as summer of code projects unless the developer already has some
experience working on render engines. Deformation motion blur could
work well as a project if you're interested in that, FSA is probably
too simple.

Anyway, if the student is not very experienced I would rather have
them pick a smaller project, summer of code proposals are often too
ambitious and rarely finished on time..

Brecht.

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 9:58 PM, Gavin Howard <gavin.d.howard at gmail.com> wrote:
>      All,
>
>      Thank you all for actually taking the time to reply. And in less
> than 24 hours too! Now, I have a much better idea of the situation. I
> expected that some would consider that spectral rendering is outside
> of Cycles' paradigm. In fact, I have contemplated that a lot. I still
> haven't found a satisfactory answer. I tend to think that it is
> outside the paradigm.
>
>      With that said, let me explain why I chose spectral rendering.
> There are several reasons. The first is that I am interested in
> rendering. The second is that I understand spectral rendering. The
> third is that it is relatively easy to implement and limited in scope.
> These come from my limitations as a coder. I do not have much
> experience, nor do I have much education. I tend to think less
> algorithmically than scientifically.
>
>      However, I know that there are plenty of other things available
> to do for Cycles. I am just at a loss as to what there is at my level.
> I am willing to do just about anything; I want to work on Blender for
> GSoC more than any other project, and I don't mind if there are some
> things at my level that are perhaps more tedious, ESPECIALLY if they
> will help me gain an understanding of a large portion of Blender's
> codebase in general and Cycles in particular. Please let me know of
> any suggestions that you think I could handle, including the "Take
> this small feature list and implement them all" type of suggestion.
>
>      Let me address some of the suggestions that have come up as
> possible projects.
>
>      Performance enhancements. You know, I would love to only work on
> performance enhancements. I like running blender and cycles
> benchmarks. My hesitation comes from the fact that generally, in order
> to do something like that, I would need to be quite familiar with the
> codebase. Also, they tend to be very difficult to do. Another reason
> is that it is hard to define a project behind just "performance
> enhancements." There needs to be a definite scope in order to get
> approved and pass GSoC. If anyone has any suggestions to mitigate
> those problems, please let me know.
>
>      Volumes. Again, this is one I would love to do. The advantage to
> this one is that it does have a definite scope. I like that. Much of
> the functionality is already there. It shouldn't take me long to do
> some searching over the codebase to find out what I need to do. It
> would also give me the opportunity to do some design. And let's not
> forget the fact that it would make me popular with the community! :)
> Anyway, I understand some of what integrators do, so I believe that
> this one MIGHT be within my capacity to do. However, I do not know the
> codebase, so at this point, the best thing for me to do would be to
> turn to Brecht and ask if he thinks that someone like me can handle
> volume integration into Cycles. If so, then this IS the project I will
> do. If not, I'd better not attempt it. Brecht, what do you think?
>
>      FSA: Ton, I'm sorry; I don't know what this means. Could you tell
> me? I'm pretty sure that when you tell me, it will be a facedesk
> moment, but at the moment, I can't figure out what it is.
>
>      GPU hair. I am not experienced with GPU code at all; however, I
> think that this would be a very fun project to do. Again, Brecht, do
> you think that this would be possible? Keep in mind that I would need
> to learn CUDA. Personally, I don't think this one would be a good
> idea.
>
>      Shader editing. This one would probably be very possible, but
> Thomas Dinges probably already wants it. Thomas, you're the alpha
> coder. ;)
>
>      Baking. This is another one that I would find very fun, but
> again, I need to ask Brecht whether he believes it's in my
> capabilities.
>
>      Deformable motion blur. I don't think I could do this one. In my
> opinion, I would have to learn too much in too short of time.
>
>      Hopefully, this email explains my reasoning and will allow you
> all to tell me what you think the best project for me would be.
> Thanks!