2.93 LTS suggestion; No new modeling/rigging tools, make editmode/OSD fast instead

I remember reading somewhere that a couple years ago a company/or someone specifically gave Blender money to develop a module in blender or to further develop it . . . i think it was the Blender game engine.

Which blender dropped as we all know

The way I understand it they can make requests but it has to align with what the developers are doing or be compatible with that. Donating a large sum gives the advantage to actually make specific requests but it does never grant the right for these requests to be actually implemented.
So yes - you can nudge and are at a better position to have that nudge be heard but it’s never a transaction.

Which is a good thing in the regard that nobody can simply buy into changing Blender their way but is a bad thing for when you want to give specific money for a thing that the core developers simply don’t want or currently can’t for one reason or another.
Bottom line - everything you donate via the fund will always remain that: A donation. Not a transaction or rights

I think if there really is the intent to have money involved or hire somebody to contribute to the core development then actually talking to the module owners and coordinators first would be the best thing to do. They know what’s going on and how it could be included or if it would collide with their own plans etc.

Isn’t Kevin Dietrich sponsored by Facebook in order make something specific (Alembic?) work better?

If so, couldn’t a pool of Blender users do something similar? Would be difficult because you’d need at least 6K Euros or so per month for a full time developer but the initial question would have to be if the blender foundation would even allow such a constellation.

Maaaybe? I don’t know how much or if in that case it would be better to have an external developer contribute from the outside like any other user contributing to an Open Source project. I don’t have enough knowledge in this field. I would love to know, though. :smiley:
The way it is now I don’t even know how the internal developer status is regarding speed ups. Maybe they are working on it but not full force or are stuck in a way. Maybe an external dev would collide wit te curent progress …
That’s why I was trying to summon @dfelinto or maybe @brecht to this thread to clear things up.

I tried this at one time, and it was a waste of time. As soon as the module owner knew that I was not a programmer, he understood that this approach would have no future and preferred not to continue talking.

Yes, I got your point the first time you wrote it.
I do think that it’s still worth trying again since circumstances change over time and may be different here.

Asking with a specific plan doesn’t hurt but may lead to results.
Giving up is the only surefire way for no change. :man_shrugging:

It was about a related issue that we are talking here… so, I don’t expect a lot of changes… :smile:

Poor performance may be caused by the python data structure.

Blender “official” developers hired by the BF are not standing against external patches, however yes, the problem is they want the patch to be coded exactly the way they want.
Regarding OSD, a guy named Jack Quiver had started a patch with interesting improvement regarding performances:
https://developer.blender.org/T68996
But he stopped because according to BF dev, he was not going in the correct direction (and that is certainly true) for optimal performances and code management.
Then yes, finding someone skilled enough for this is hard, and someone who knows Blender code enough is even harder, and someone who accept to follow line-to-line BF devs instructions and corrections (often for free!), it’s almost impossible.

The modeling tools are written in C/C++, I don’t think Python is responsible for performances here, unless when executed from external script or addon.

Potentially good news at last, Campbell’s weekly report contained this line.

General development & plan mesh optimization project.

I hope this is a confirmation that editmode performance is now a priority, we can’t create everything with Geometry Nodes, not only that a few other areas of Blender are also getting a performance boost. We would not want to see editmode continue to be the weak link that everyone talks about when working with Blender.

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Kévin Dietrich, a blender developer, is working on OSD GPU acceleration.

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Great to hear, any link to follow the development?

More information will probably be found in the Rendering Modules weekly meeting notes and Kevin’s weekly notes.

Oh, I see. You’re right.

Today Pablo during the stream seem to have confimed that improvements are coming to Blender edit mode!

Happy!

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good crowned lord gracious

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So it appears editmode won’t have huge improvements for 2.93 LTS, but for those who don’t know, optimization work is in fact underway and the results can be seen in the current Blender 3.0 alpha builds. On top of that, the fact the devs. allocated so much time to this subject means many bottlenecks will fall, that is as long as OpenSubDiv is not enabled (but there is a dev. taking care of that performance issue as well).

Benchmarks and more information tracking the changes can be found in the BA thread on editmode performance.

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I am so confused why people keep mentioning subdiv/opensubdiv along mesh editing performance. Those are modifiers, and have nothing to do with mesh editing performance.

My point is that modifier/GN performance in Blender is currently okay. Could be better of course, but it’s acceptable compared to other DCCs out there. What’s not acceptable, or comparable to other DCCs out there is just the mesh edit performance, as in performance in edit mode on high poly meshes, without any modifiers at all.

I am not saying that modifier/subdiv performance doesn’t need to be improved. I am just saying that when the vast majority talk about Blender’s mesh editing performance being bad, subdiv/opensubdiv/modifier performance doesn’t even cross their mind. So if Blender 3.0 came out with even 10x the modifier performance, most people would still not consider it any improvement in the area of mesh editing performance. So it’s a good idea to not conflate the two.

I can confirm that my example with moving car rim polygons FPS was increased from:

2.8 FPS (SDS Modifier enabled) and 3.5 FPS (SDS Modifier deleted) in 2.90.1
to
3.1 FPS (SDS Modifier enabled) and 4.2 FPS (SDS Modifier deleted) in 2.93
and
3.3 FPS (SDS Modifier enabled) and 4.4 FPS (SDS Modifier deleted) in 3.0.0 Alpha (13.06.2021 build)

boost about 20-25% in my case is not so significant, but in general it’s a noticeable progress.

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