[Soc-2008-dev] UncleZeiv/Lightcuts - Week 1 Report

[Davide Vercelli]

Hi guys,

here's my report for the first week of Soc2008. I'm submitting it
early because I won't be available from today till sunday, even though
I should be able to show up to the sunday meeting on irc. Sorry about
this.

a) What you did in the previous week

So far I have managed to get a ultra-minimal ultra-limited prototype
to work. I wanted to reach this stage quickly in order to validate my
architectural plans. As a matter of fact, while coding I found out
that my original plan, to use a sort of "light iterator" to hook my
code with the ordinary render flow, was not well thought out; I had to
revert that and implement a callback scheme instead, where my code
asks Blender Internal to evaluate the contribution of single lights.
The code so far includes:
- light tree creation
- light tree traversal (the "core" of the algorithm) - but only for
point lights and with several other limitations
- a new panel among the scene buttons, containing: a toggle to use my
code while rendering, and some parameters to control that
- a new render layer, "false colour", to use as a visual debugging
tool in the future

More detailed infos can be found in my svn logs and in my blog:
http://unclezeiv.kerid.org/category/gsoc-2008

I routinely provide binary builds for linux and windows, here:
http://unclezeiv.kerid.org/download/temp

b) What you plan to do in the following week

I've run some simple tests, with encouraging results. Some scenes
though are rendered incorrectly. I plan to look into this problem
first thing next week, but it's difficult to foresee how long it will
take.

Afterwards, I will start lifting the current various limitations. For
instance I could add support for specularity and different shading
models, OR I could start coding support for directional and oriented
lights. I have yet to decide...

I also plan to update my pages on the wiki.

c) Describe any issues you are having that may require extra attention

So far I'm fine.

d) Let us know whether you feel that you are on schedule, ahead of
schedule, or behind schedule.

I would say we are on schedule right now. The first big step (having a
running "something") was completed, now other tough tasks lie ahead.
The good thing is that I'm gaining confidence with the codebase.



As the first to write a report, this was a bit experimental... I hope it was ok.

Cheers,

Davide