[Soc-2016-dev] Weekly Report #5, UV-Tools

[Phil Gosch]

Report #5 for UV-Tools:

Wiki version here: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:SaphireS/gsoc2016/reports#Report_.235_for_UV-Tools:

What I did this week:

* After some user feedback I re-created the "old" hiding behaviour as separate operators (access them using Ctrl as modifier key to the standard hiding shortcuts).
Opinions on naming those welcome, not perfectly satisfied with current names. [1]

* Looked into bugreports and feedback I got this week, regarding the results of the last weeks, after users tested it. Most of the bug reports weren't actually bugs but turned into feature requests, which I documented here: [2]

* Implemented a new modal operator to serve as a base for new packing tools.

* Started implementing utility functions which will be needed for the packing algorithm, like computing % of used UV space. (Still need to push most of those) Also implemented a temporary "debug" operator to quickly test isolated functions without having the whole simulated annealing and packing code in place.

* Most of this week was spent on reading papers and researching methods to do the no-fit polygon (NFP) computation, which likely is going to be the most performance heavy part of packing. After quite a lot of research and discussion with my mentor it seems like computing the NFP using Minkowski sums in combination with decomposition of non-convex shapes into simpler, convex ones is the best approach. I'll keep researching though and decide beginning of next week which method to implement. I expanded the packing theory wiki page with the new research: [3]

* Completed Midterm Evaluation.

What I plan on doing next week:

* Decide on final packing strategys to implement.

* Start implementation of actual packing algorithms and metaheuristics.

* Testing, bugfixing and getting to know more of the code

Questions:

It would be great to always display the % of used/wasted UV space to the user (UV properties toolbar? Header?) since I already have a function to compute this. What would be the best way to accomplish this?

   [1] https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/File:Deselect_mesh_uv.jpg
   [2] https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:SaphireS/gsoc2016/ideas
   [3] https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:SaphireS/gsoc2016/Packing