2022-8-17 Sculpt/Texture/Paint Module Meeting

Blender Development Meetings
#1

Practical Info

This is a weekly video chat meeting for planning and discussion of development related to the sculpting and painting in Blender. Any contributor (developer, UI/UX designer, writer, …) working on these features in Blender is welcome to join and add proposed items to the agenda.

For users and other interested parties, we ask to read the meeting notes instead so that the meeting can remain focused.

Attendees

  • Joe Eagar
  • Julien Kaspar
  • Daniel Bystedt
  • Artur Mello Lattaro

Agenda

Needs Commit

None :+1:

High Prio Bugs

In Review

Targeted for 3.4. We will set the priority to high:

Lower priority:

In Progress

Targeted for 3.4 release. Deadline for Bcon2 = September 27

  • :gear: D15122 Cavity Automasking Mode
    This task still needs feedback adjustments, but these only concern UI polishing at this point.
    For performance improvements, this patch relies on :gear: D15496 Sculpt Attribute API, so that will also be marked as a high priority.
    Julien will provide more detailed mockup to resolve UI issues.
    Daniel also provided feedback recently. This concerns brush and mode auto-masking being enabled at the same time, which can be confusing. These issues can be addressed soon with the Brush Management project and minor UI improvements. Julien will create a task for this.
  • :gear: D15297 Normal Based Automasking Modes
    Still needs feedback adjustments.

Undefined deadline:

To Do’s

Joe:

  • Auto-masking features as high priority
  • Remaining high priority bugs
  • Afterwards: Continue on brush refactor design
  • Joe will also write an overview of the featurs being worked on in sculpt-dev

Julien:

  • Review and give feedback on auto-masking patches
  • Discuss and create missing design tasks

New Tasks

None

Other Topics

Brush refactor backwards compatibility

Joe discovered that breaking backwards compatibility for brush assets after the planned brush refactor is now less likely
:anchor: T100137 Brush Properties
This means this task has less pressure on it to happen before the brush asset implementation.

Input curves for brushes

We discussed how likely it is to mix more than one for a single brush property.
In some cases it could be useful, but there might be other solutions ot offer the same needed customisability.
A different implementation via texture nodes for example.
But in any case, for regular brush properties we’d need to define clear use cases to base the features on.

A previous suggestion to show uinput curves via a popup could save us space in the UI.
Cocnersn were raised on accidental closing of popups, whcih is a common problem with pen device users.
A solution would be to extend the margin of how far away the cursor needs to be from a popup for it to close. This would greatly improve usability with pen devices in general.,
Julien will create a design task for this.

Node editor for brushes

Joe suggested to have a public discussion and involvement with the community for node editor brush design. We agreed that this would be a good action to take once we have something more concrete.
But for now, the use cases and problem definitions are still not clear.
We need to very soon research what node brushes could be used for in sculpt mode and why.

Brush nodes were originally envisioned as a different way of customizing them. But there is also the concept of giving more lower level, per vertex control over them. The first approach is more desirable for existing brushes and brush development.
Texture nodes on the other hand would work per-vertex and can give the needed low level control.
Other ways of more freely cusotmising brushes like via property stacks can also be explored.

But the main concern that was raised is the importance of this feature.
So the highest priority for this project is that goals need to be clearly defined and aligned with users needs.

‘Roll’ texture mapping method

:anchor: T98070 Improved Rake functionality
Daniel argued that a feature like this would have a big short term benefits to users.
We’ll talk with Dalai on a planning for features in upcoming releases and where this fits in
This seem like a small enough feature for Joe to work on the side on.

Auto-Masking UI improvment

There is still frequent confusion if brush or mode auto-masking options should be used.
While the brush management project can help with some UI features, there is a bigger issue to solve.

We need to make the auto-masking toggles in the options panel more accessible and discoverable.
Exposing them more directly in the header will be a good first step.
Julien will work out a design.

Moving module meeting to another day of the week

Daniel suggested to move away the meeting day from away from Wednesday.
Will check with rest of module members to pick a better day.

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