Thank you for this FAQ.
1)Would it be possible (or is there already) instructions about fully building a blender release? I mean it’s open source, but I could never make a build with the same SHA-1 as the one the BF does (for the librairies and for Blender itself). Would be nice to be able to check. For example, in the vanilla build from GIT, we don’t get the Ocean Modifier and the rendering perfs are also different.
2)The patch templates where a really good idea, could you continue?
3)Question 1 and 2 where meant to give the same possibility. Transform frustrated users to commiting programmers. You often say “it’s open source so code it” but as users we more have the impressions to be on a boat of which we don’t know the aim. Please help us be positive. I made some mistakes in the past, I see the devs are now bringing small nice improvement on regular basis and speak more with community. Give us the possibility to activate our potential now?
Once more my sincerest thanks and deepest gratitude for the Blender Devs and their fantastic work on this fantastic software. There are always kinks and personal peeves, and the users may seem ungratefully whiny brats, but I guess overall we are mostly satisfied, and I have consistently been seeing most of my annoyances with Blender solved with time.
For now I just one simple question that seems fitting for this AMA:
I often use nightly builds from the buildbot and I have noticed that many usefull addons included in those builds and even in release candidates are then often not found in Blender official releases. Why is that, and where do they go?
I have to keep a copy in my hard drive and manually install them.
I often use nightly builds from the buildbot and I have noticed that many usefull addons included in those builds and even in release candidates are then often not found in Blender official releases. Why is that, and where do they go?
Download from http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts
Addons may also get dropped if they no longer work or multiple addons get combined into one addon or the addon functionality gets incorporated into blender itself so it becomes obsolete
At the top of the page contains a link to download the bundled contrib addons
Official release contains Release addons, the buildbot also contains the Contrib addons
@cgstrive #41
- added http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/AskUsAnything#Whats_the_best_way_for_users_to_provide_feedback_to_developers.3F
- existing answer covers it? http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/AskUsAnything#Are_there_plans_to_improve_docs_for_new_developers.3F (for plans for education material)
- re: “what are the best ways currently to get involved with development?”
added: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/AskUsAnything#Whats_the_best_way_of_getting_involved_with_development.3F
@matali #42
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getting matching SHA-1 would be difficult since Blender builds include the build time-date, assuming you manage to tweak the build system to give the same as a release, then it should be possible. Features are disabled because libraries aren’t found (probably libfftw in your case). Rendering perfs… hard to say, compiler version/optimizations?
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I would like to, but would like others to help out too.
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not sure what the question is? (or its a statement?)
anything for adding some new features for API may be ?
is there a list of things to do for API ?
also any chance of adding more examples on wiki to help beginners for scripting !
now that we have the lib for Numpy
can this be use when doing some new Addon
I mean numpy has very powerfull commands set which can help simplify some calculations
but more difficult to understand !
thanks
happy bl
The wiki’s look is a bit dated and the FAQ will be hard to find there. I’d suggest putting it on the main page:
I have two questions, I hope they are not too specific:
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Does any of the core developers actually uses Blender on a daily basis to create images/animations or you are mostly programmers that care primarily about the code? There is such a vibe when one is using and learning the software.
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Would you prefer to have a more conventional development sprints once in a while, like the Krita development kickstarter campaigns allowing them to design the software in certain direction, rather than rapidly working on open movie requirements and bare essentials that are left out to be further developed down the road.
I like to experiment versions available in https://builder.blender.org/download/ llink, but into a lack of information (even if superficial) on major changes.
Chaff question is: The devs have something planned in feeling to disclose the changes introduced in the experimental bulids, as they do with rc’s? If there are already such information, where I find them?
I don’t think this is true.
Octane for example is supporting OSL:
Also if you check the github page for OSL, they do mention that they consider supporting other architectures than x86 (mentioning GPU as an example), so I doubt its completely off the table, just a long way away.
OSL on the gpu is almost certainly not through some “wrapper”, OSL compilation is a two step process, first to an intermediate bytecode/assembly like code (oslc), and then a second step that leverages LLVM to compile to x86 instructions (liboslexec). To support the GPU, you would need to create a new liboslexec implementation to translate to GPU instructions. This is obviously still a lot of work, but saying OSL is fundamentally not designed for this is not really accurate.
That said I’m not familiar enough to say that all the language itself could be ported, you may only end up with a subset.
The buildbot does automatic compillation of Blender each day AFAIK, so there’s no release list of features of every build released on buildbot.
But you can go to http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-blender-cvs/ select a date and look the developer notes on every patch… some are more descriptive than others.
Also, you can check until what patch is compilled the build, just look for these strange codes (Eg: blender-2.74-bc2f77e-win64.zip, the code you’ll need to look is bc2f77e). Go to the lists.blender.org site and use the find function of your browser to find what was the last patch included in the build.
Sure is a long list… Be aware that as of now, there are 2 “flavours” of Blender in the buildbot nowadays, the Gooseberry Branch is what the artists at Blender Institute are using in the Gooseberry project.
Although the purpose of this thread isn’t to start a Q&A session (indeed, title isn’t optimal, but description seems quite clear), I think it’s fine to have some questions answered here as long as it doesn’t end up in chaos. So writing down some answers:Tiles, 3) Blender itself isn’t a company and therefore doesn’t create any income, I guess you’re referring to the Blender Foundation/Blender Institute? Even though the BF makes income (e.g. through the development fund), it isn’t a company, it is a nonprofit foundation, meaning all incomes have to be spent to further achieve its purpose or mission and it’s not allowed to make profit. The BI on the other hand is a valid company just like Autodesk but you still can’t really compare them as they follow a completely different purpose.
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That heavily depends from which income the money comes from. The money from the dev fund is 100% spent for Blender development, the “pet projects” - as you call it - is financed by sponsors, e-shop and the Blender cloud. If you want a more detailed answer I’d recommend you to ask Ton personally, he normally is quite open to answer such questions.
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This isn’t really related to Blender development, but I’ll shortly answer: I highly doubt it, we talked quite a bit about his future plans when I visited the studio for 2 weeks and as I see things, he really enjoys his role as a movie producer, but Blender will always stay his baby and luckily I don’t see him retire in the near future. But again: Better ask him directly
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Campbell and Sergey are doing a weekly patch review session now, so the reviewing process has improved a lot. Most of the new patches now get a first review within a week. There aren’t many new patches waiting for review left, so they now even have the time to check some really old patches.
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Also not really development related, better ask somewhere else.
@Tiles"]Tiles 10) & [URL="/u/00Ghz
But unfortunately, I have to agree that UI is still missing the love it needs. Since the UI-team was formed lots of projects were started but never finished. I mainly blame missing developer resources for this. In the meanwhile Antony has joined the team who has worked on/is working on things like Viewport 2.0, the widget project, massive paint improvements, … It is really good to have him on board!
I personally was engaged with the UI-team about a 3/4 year ago and worked on lots of things since then. The last half year I didn’t have much spare time left for UI (due to studying and my work for the BF), but in a few weeks I should have quite some time to kick of some bigger projects - I think I can get things cracking finally 
So long story short: Yes, there still isn’t going on enough on the UI side, but I’m quite optimistic this will change soon.
I had a question on what the main Cycles developers think about things that still need to be finished for the engine to be truly competitive. Specifically things like a volume render pass or ways to speed up the deformation motion blur. Also, just how much more optimization do they think is still ahead?
Are there plans to allow the particle and/or smoke system to use image textures from Cycles nodes as emission maps? The texture tab in the particle and smoke system does not appear to allow it.
It’s not because of missing libraries, as activating those options manually in CMAKE works. Can we find the Buildbot setup and scripts somewhere to at least have comparable custom builds?
I’m obvious not a BF dev, but I would suggest looking in:
https://git.blender.org/gitweb/gitweb.cgi/blender.git/tree/HEAD:/build_files/buildbot
Thanks for your answers JulianSeverin
@RickyBlender, #46, for a while we maintained a list of API changes, http://www.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_74_release/change_log.html but not sure it really helped, a lot of generated info, as for docs on scripting, its come up before and its something we might do for the Blender cloud, tutorials is a huge area, not sure existing devs have a lot of time to spend writing educational material.
@bned, #48, good questions but think they fit more of an interview style / blog post.
@firefox.jco, #49 added: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/AskUsAnything#How_do_I_find_whats_been_added_to_daily_builds.3F
@jdent02 #53, @Osmium #54. too spesific for general Q&A, other devs may answer…
@matali #55: buildbot config: https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/B/browse/master/build_files/buildbot/
As far as I can see, there is only config files for Linux and MacOS there.
I checked the logs from buildbot and the cmake win64 build was using a script from there.
The UserVoice platform works quite well and looks affordable: https://www.uservoice.com/plans/?ref=top_pricing
It’s the one used I think recently by Allegorithmic, Microsoft, Autodesk etc.