GSOC 2014 Projects announced!

The accepted projects for this year’s google summer of code have been announced.

For those not in the know:

Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. We work with many open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund projects over a three month period

As there needs to be ‘mentors’ available from the open source project itself, there’s a limited amount of spots. So that means it’s always exciting who’s proposal will be accepted!

The lucky seven this year are…

Interactive Quadrilateral Remeshing Based on Harmonic Functions
Alexander Pinzon Fernandez

A lot of computer graphics objects have an undesirable topology. Many artists require changing the topology of the mesh to facilitate the process of editing and animation. In recent years, the most popular mesh topology is composed of triangles and quadrilaterals that provide several desired features by the artists. This project proposes an interactive remeshing tool that generate a quad-dominant mesh based on harmonic functions.

Relative shape keys workflow enhancements
Grigory Revzin

Enhancements for relative shape key editing workflow: new blending-oriented Shape Keys panel GUI permitting for faster and more intuitive shape key editing. A simple commit workflow for shape keys is introduced.

BGE - Cleanup & Support
Inês Almeida

This proposal targets identified problems with BGE acknowledged in Blender’s roadmap along with plans for better integration as an interactive mode. The proposal aims to be a first step in that direction by addressing the bug tracker and known problematic parts of the GE. By the end of the program, the results should be less bugs and pending patches, parts of functionality/code more bug-proof and suitable for integration, happier users and a document identifying problems to be addressed next.

NURBS Modernization
Jonathan deWerd

I propose to revive a longstanding effort to improve NURBS support in blender with two broad goals: one, attaining import/export compatibility for common NURBS-based CAD and modeling formats, and two, adding industry-standard NURBS manipulation tools so that blender can actively participate in workflows containing NURBS primitives.

MantaFlow integration for fluid simulations
Roman Pogribnyi

Integration of MantaFlow for fluid simulations into Blender, mentored by Nils Thuerey

Cycles: Performance and Memory optimizations
Thomas Dinges

I’d like to improve the Cycles render engine, both in terms of performance and memory usage.

And last, but not least:

Viewport FX III
Jason Wilkins

This is a proposal to finalize the development of Viewport FX by implementing the last missing features and performing optimization and testing. Additional info about possible future work has been appended to the original proposal.

Congratulations and good luck everyone!

The remeshing, nurbs, and viewport FX III get me very excited!

Awesome stuff :D. I don’t understand what Viewport FX is though, is there a Blender page up for the GSoC 2014 proposals?

I just hope ViewportFX doesn’t get prequels, ala Star Wars and finishes up on a trilogy.

I don’t know if all students have one up yet, but the Viewport FX proposal is here.

The Viewport FX III proposal: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Jwilkins/GSoC2014/Viewport_FX_III_Proposal

edit: damn it, xrg! :stuck_out_tongue:

Great to see something for the BGE chosen. I’m always a fan of the BGE getting development time, and clean-up and bug fixes are always really nice.

I’m curious about Mantaflow. I can only find a couple very basic, unimpressive demos of it on youtube. It is a better fluid solver than what we already have?

edit: Ah, searching Nils Thuerey, it seems he was at Scanline VFX for a while, and they are known in Hollywood for their fluid sims. Officially excited now!

Viewport FX III will be a big thing because BEER will start architectural design within the next few months.
The goal is to get viewport look similar to rendered BEER.

Cool to see NURBS getting some love!

I’m curious to know more about the shape keys proposal though - the workflow doesn’t seem that broken…


Steve S

Good quality remeshing, Cycles optimizations, the BGE core being cleaned up so as to become far more viable for development, the modernized viewport finally being completed, looks like it will be a great Summer for Blender.

Also, is the student working on Nurbs going to gut the existing system to modernize it, because that code is from the 90’s and it may be the only way to go?

Hopefully the GSoCers will swing by here and introduce themselves before too long so we can ask them such stuff. (Assuming they aren’t frightened away by the Gooseberry thread and its many hellbabies first…)

Seems like a light GSoC year, but some exciting projects nonetheless. Excited to see what Thomas can crank out before GSoC even begins again this year :wink:

The remesh it is this one ? https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/10896/Harmonic%20Functions%20for%20Quadrilateral%20Remeshing%20of%20Arbitrary%20Manifolds.pdf?sequence=2

And will replace the modifier we have now ?

Cross fingers that that is the one o.O

crowdfunding for this please !


Viewport FX III
Jason Wilkins

Organization: Blender Foundation

Assigned mentors: Antony Riakiotakis

Short description: This is a proposal to finalize the development of Viewport FX by implementing the last missing features and performing optimization and testing. Additional info about possible future work has been appended to the original proposal.

I’d say light but solid. Lots in the way of improving current features or implementing sexier alternatives.

ooo remeshing and viewport fx lll my favorite

I believe the original remesh modifier wasn’t even meant to be like a retopo operation, but more in the vein of just providing a base for multires sculpting.

The paper here however makes it seem like this algorithm will be usable for full retopology (providing it receives user input). I trust Alexander to get it done since he has a good track record of completing projects.

Good one… but I really hope that can be something like “Integer-Grid Maps for Reliable Quad Meshing” or this “QEx: Robust Quad Mesh Extraction”, both methods are described and with Papers in this page:

http://www.rwth-graphics.de/publications/2013/

And… for the Interactive part, it could be something like this.

You are completly right! Alexander is a great programmer and did a excellent job in past GSOC for Blender.

Fingers crossed!