2023-10-05 Sculpt/Texture/Paint Module Meeting

Meetings
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Attendees

  • Julien Kaspar
  • Sergey Sharybin
  • Hans Goudey

Hans is visiting the Blender Institute for the coming couple of months. We had an off-the-schedule module meeting. The main topic was picking development up of the dynamic topology patch. The main outcomes of the meeting:

  • The current PR will be used as a user-level inspiration and a guide for the technical challenges
  • Hans and Sergey will work on implementing the following topics:
    • Attribute interpolation for dynamic topology brushes
    • Performance of the dynamic topology brushes
    • Boundary preservation seems to be an integral part of good dynamic topology sculpting. Scope and complexity are not yet predicted.

The work will be done in small incremental steps following the regular Blender development processes and code reviews. This means that artists can expect a series of small quality of life improvements landing as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, the module is still considered “Under Maintenance”. This means that we can not plan new big projects due to developer team availability. However, we are always open for small improvements and fixes submitted for review! Julien will take care of the UI/UX aspects of the changes, and Sergey and Hans are open for the technical aspects of those PRs.

There are still no regular meetings planned as the designs and plan are clear enough and “just” need to be executed.

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Good news. Will Joe Eagar’s Temp-Sculpt-Dyntopo branch be included in the process, or is that considered to be an independent initiative?

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The code from the branch is unlikely to be included because of the amount of technical debt it adds. The branch will be used for the verification of artists-facing design implementations and possible inspiration during code process.

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I do hope at the least that Joe Eager’s work can serve as a way to accelerate the project since it already implements things like attribute preservation and optimizations in a way that is ready for production (people have tested and it works well). The raw code might not end up being used, but the algorithms are there.

I also hope that there can still a role for Joe even though he is no longer on a paid contract (such as submitting patches).

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I also hope the many additions and refinements of Pablo Dobarro’s discontinued Sculpt Dev branch will soon be ported to the main Blender builds. There are abandoned gems in there, tried and tested by users of those Sculpt Dev builds.

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That + some of the uncommitted patches would be great… :slightly_smiling_face:

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