2022-9-21 Sculpt/Texture/Paint Module Meeting

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.
Write us a message in the module chat if you’re interested.

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

Agenda

Opening Discussions

Paint Mode Planning

A couple of weeks back we discussed the Paint Mode planning with Dalai:
The Paint Mode project in theory could be split into three smaller distinct projects:

  • 3D Texture Paint Brush
  • Layered Textures
  • Brush Managing

The first one expanded quite a lot in scope. The original plan was just to add a new Paint and Smear brush that uses a spherical falloff, unlike the current projection painting.
But since this new brush behaviour is directly based on sculpt mode, we started planning for a texture paint mode rewrite based on the sculpt mode code.
The design and goals of this project need to be discussed. Current desgn task creation will be scaled down and only used as a starting point for futher work.

Layered texture painting is currently prototyped by Brecht and will take longer to complete. The usefulness of this feature is also questionable if the basic painting functionality is not finished or usable.

The third project is what we decided on tackling right now. The brush management and proper asset browser integration will have many benefits and will remove roadblocks for new features.
It also benefits many different modes and workflows in Blender.

Jeroen is availbile again for the project and continued on related tasks in T96225. Joe will aid in discussions and reviewing patches.

Going forward we will be more aware of the time estimates of WIP features. The new auto-masking took a significant amount of time and refactors. This can be attributed to the recent addition of color attributes and the many bugs this still caused and that the auto-masking features were made to be compatible with the future texture painting features.
The time estimates need to be better communicated.

High Prio Bugs

Still depending on D15428:

In Review

In Progress

To Do’s

Joe:

  • (High Priority) Automasking patches
  • (Medium Priority) PBVH Draw Refactor
  • (Medium Priority) High priority bugs
  • (Low Priority) An overview of sculpt-dev features that we want to land in master

Other Topics

Brush Management Project

Julien filled in the module on the current progress. We’ll share more information soon.

16 Likes
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Current sculpt-dev’s IPmasks should be a priority to land in master.

Current operators of A pie-menu are too slow in master.
Shift R shortcut does not correspond to repeat last in sculpt mode.
Without that, it is a pain in the ass to grow, shrink, smooth a mask.
That is so smooth to do that in Sculpt-dev branch with IP masks as it should have been since 2.8.

That has nothing to do with Paint Brush, Layered Textures or Brush Managing.
But that is something that everybody expects, at each release, since years, now.

Fast basis masks operators, with interactive strength or iterations, is a lot more essential to workflow than auto-masking.
I know that is planned to refactor masks to be able to store them.
But really, mask operators to grow, shrink, contrast mask are basics that will be kept, anyways.
That will a relief to all users to have such must-have features, stopping to slow them down.

4 Likes
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Aside from the operators from the menus “Sculpt”, “Mask”, “Face Sets” all the important settings and operators for sculpting are available in both: the header area and also in the tool settings.

Ui-proposal:
Wouldn´t it increase the consistency of blenders sculpting-ui, if also these operators were additionally available in the tool settings.

blender_ui_proposal
blender_ui_proposal1920×1127 64.6 KB

Additional note:
The menu called “Sculpt” currently contains operations for hiding and showing portions of the mesh, which users would find more easily, if they were contained in a menu called “Visibility”.

Warmly.

1 Like