2 June 2020

Announcements Weekly Updates
1

Notes for meeting of Tuesday, 2 June 2020. 11:00 CEST / UTC 9:00 on #blender-coders on blender.chat.

Announcements

  • The latest Blender Animation Studio movie - Coffee Run - is finished and online.

2.83

  • There is one UI showstopper (T77173) which Julien Eisel will see that it is fixed today.
  • No other show stoppers, the existing EEVEE issues (T70445, T72098) are for 2.90.
  • Release tomorrow, June 3rd. Tagging and final builds aimed at CEST morning.

2.90

  • All modules to tag the tasks as well as bugs and known reports scheduled for 2.90.
  • Next Tuesday (Jun 9th) Brecht Van Lommel and Dalai Felinto will meet with each module owners for a final pass in the roadmaps. Expect an email with the proposed time.

Google Summer of Code

  • Coding officially started this week for all the students.
  • All the students will have a thread on devtalk to gather feedback, as well as a thread for their weekly reports (links).

A few students shared a one-line pitch of their project. More next week.

  • Ankit Meel (ankitm): I’m writing OBJ, STL & PLY importers and exporters in C++ for faster processing & less memory usage.
  • Falk David (filedescriptor): I’m working together with Antonio on a grease pencil tool that allows the user to manipulate strokes using curves.
  • Himanshi Kalra (Calra): I am working on regression tests and this week involves finishing the prototype that automatically generates blend objects for testing.

Others

  • Dalai Felinto proposes to simplify the release cycle by merging bcon4 and bcon5. That leaves LTS to be the new bcon5.

New Features and Changes

Blender 2.90

Modeling

  • Objects: new interactive primitive add tool. (details) (Campbell Barton)
  • Mesh Edit: improve performance when editing heavy meshes without modifiers, around 2x faster in tests. (Campbell Barton)
  • Ruler: snapping support for ruler tool. (Germano Cavalcante)
  • Modifiers
    • Add normalize weights option to vertex weight modifiers (Cody Winchester)
    • Add invert vgroup weights options to operands of Mix modifier.
  • Curves: overlay option to display handles for selected points only. (Antonio Vazquez)

Sculpt

  • Cloth Filter: similar to the cloth brush, but it applies the cloth simulation deformation to the whole mesh in an uniform way. The simulation can be controlled using the mask to pin vertices and the face sets to define force action areas. (Pablo Dobarro)
  • Pose Brush (Pablo Dobarro)
    • Face sets FK mode: this origin mode simulates an FK deformation in the entire model when clicking on the face sets, as if they were controls of a fully rigged character.
    • Scale/Transform deform mode: an alternative deformation brush for the Pose Brush intended to quickly change the proportions of the mesh. The regular mode scales using the segment’s origin as a pivot. The inverted mode drags the entire segment using the grab delta.

Other

  • Blender: change bugfix release versioning from a/b/c to .1/.2/.3 (Brecht Van Lommel)
  • Cycles:
    • Change perspective depth pass to be more standard (Brecht Van Lommel)
    • Add per-object shadow terminator offset setting, to avoid artifacts with smooth normals on low-poly meshes. (Stefan Werner)
  • Video Sequencer (Peter Fog)
    • Add select under playhead, and shortcuts for left, right, under.
    • Add warnings for failed proxy encoding
    • Improve naming and layout in various menus and panels.
  • File Browser (Harley Acheson)
    • Adds support for Windows Shell Links (shortcuts).
    • Extended macOS Alias usage.
    • Better visualization of linked items.
  • User Interface: improved editor border selection and dragging. (Harley Acheson)

Weekly Reports

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