[Soc-2017-dev] Weekly Report #01 - Silhouette Sculpting

[Sebastian Witt]

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Hi Blenderheads, Sculptors and Developers,

First short week is over and it is time to do a first report about what 
I have done so far.

I started with a smaller feature to improve the sculpting toolset:

Adaptive spacing

The spacing system within sculpting controls how the individual dabs are 
placed when drawing on a mesh. A big spacing value results in a dotted 
line whilst a small spacing value results in a smooth continuous line. 
Without adaptive mode the spacing between each dab is calculated by the 
distance to the last dab on screen in 2D coordinates. This results in a 
lower dab density and artifacts when the surface curves away from the view.

With the new adaptive spacing, the distance is calculated depending on 
the distance drawn on the surface in 3D.

I pushed my first version and a cleanup commit to my branch so people 
can check it out and can give some feedback! It is not finished yet but 
it is not to far away from done.

The branch is currently named “soc-2017-sculpting_improvements” but will 
most likely renamed later:

https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/B/browse/soc-2017-sculpting_improvements/

You can check out the original discussion about the adaptive spacing here:

https://developer.blender.org/T50939

Besides this, i started working on my main project the 
additiveSilhouette Brush. Most of the effort went into planning. It 
turns out, the “Silhouette Brush” might not even become a brush like the 
others. Its usage differs from the other brushes which allow to draw and 
get instant feedback about it. With the Silhouette Tool an area is first 
defined from which a 3D shape will get generated. After digging the code 
I decided not to implement the tool like the other brushes instead 
create an operator for it.

Here are two mockups illustrating the case:

Brush version

http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=116024

Operator version

http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=116023

My biggest concern with an operator tool is that the workflow diverges 
too far from the other brushes. Therefore the current plan is to 
implement it right next to the other brushes, similar to how you can do 
grease pencil drawings while sculpting (press d). As you can see it is 
all in a very early development stage and will change a lot.

To get feedback on my first ideas I also created a thread on BA which i 
will update.

You can find it here:

https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?427124-GSoC-2017-Silhouette-Brush

Have a nice weekend!

Sebastian Witt

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