Notes for meeting of Monday, 20 April 2020. 11:00 CEST / UTC 9:00 on #blender-coders on blender.chat.
2.83
- bcon3 is in effect on blender-v2.83-release, remember to merge fixes in that branch back to master.
- bcon2 column on workboard is now cleaned up, check the workboard for to work on.
- There is a new task to centralize the status of the 2.83 missing tasks.
2.90
- Master is open, merge big features early.
- If one needs to break backwards compatibility in some areas then a major release like 2.90 is a good time. But try to avoid it when possible.
Google Summer of Code
- Deadline to send slots requests is tomorrow, April 21. All main decisions should be made today.
- Mentors please click on “Want To Mentor” for the proposals you would consider mentoring.
- A reminder that mentors are to only publicly talk about the accepted projects if we get any accepted and only then.
Google Season of Documentation
- This year Blender Foundation will apply for the GSoD program.
- Dalai Felinto will create a basic ideas page and share the link. More details coming on the mailing-list.
Others
- Antonio Vazquez asked about the state of LANPR. The project is realistically not going to be ready for 2.90 due to the main developer unavailability. Antonio proposes to see if this could be tackled as a side project by contributors.
- Sebastian Parborg brought up a topic of discussion regarding the User Interface team communication process. The meetings are not for discussions though, so the topic was to be addressed after the meeting.
New Features and Changes
Blender 2.83
These are the last changes for the 2.83 release.
- Undo: the faster object mode undo system is now enabled by default. (Bastien Montagne)
- Fluids: improve Replay cache method and set it as the default, so fluid simulation automatically shows in the viewport. (Sebastián Barschkis, Aaron Carlisle)
- Splash: minor visual improvements. (Yevgeny Makarov, Harley Acheson, Julian Eisel)
Blender 2.90
Development for the next release has started, these features will not be in 2.83.
Mesh Modeling
- Extrude, Dissolve and Intersect: new tool to automatically split and remove adjacent faces when extruding inwards. (Germano Cavalcante)
User Interface
- Operator search will now search through menu entries, to better show relevant operators and where to find them in menus. For developers that need more low level search, Developer Extras can be enabled after which the old operator search will be available in the Edit menu. (Campbell Barton)
- User interface layout for checkboxes was improved, to make it easier to group related settings and make the interface more compact by avoiding subpanels in some cases. (William Reynish, Julian Eisel)
- Shader node in the material properties editor now show socket colors matching the shader editor, and are positioned on the left side. (Julian Eisel)
- Pie menus support for A-Z accelerator keys, for quickly selecting items with the keyboard. (Campbell Barton)
Python API
Add-ons that expose operators only through search or that user checkboxes in layouts may need to be updated to follow new conventions.