Sorry for the double email, the previous one bounced back, this is the actual address I use for the committers mailing list
Bezier Curve tools revamp Hello to all members of the Blender Developers mailing list, especially Ton Roosendaal and all blender developers and contributors, my name is Duarte Ramos, and I am seeking a way to sponsor Blender development of a specific set of features regarding Bezier curve tools by making a monetary donation for a development grant. I wish to inquire about it's feasibility and whole way to go about accomplishing it. TL,DR: - Do you (Blender Foundation) accept/manage sponsored development of this nature? - To whom and how should these matters be addressed? - Does improving bezier curves and tools fit in the whole development process and global vision for the future roadmap? - Are the features asked for feasible (from both technical and ideological point of view)? - Are there any available developers willing/motivated/capable of working on such features? The long version I have been a Blender user for about seven years now, closely following development and lurking around the mailing lists and commits logs. What started out as an experiment mostly just for fun and curiosity, ended up becoming my main source of income for my freelance work. I am an architect working mostly in arch viz and rendering of architecture and interior design (you can see some of my early work here http://www.duarteramos.pt/home.html#ArchViz); for a long time I used it simply as a hobby, but lately I find myself relying more and more on Blender for my commercial work. Bezier curve editing clearly is not on the same level of refinement as other areas of modeling, which is totally understandable given Blender's main target audience for whom what we currently have is probably more than enough. I however would love nothing more than to see them improved, and to such end I am willing to make a monetary donation to help in the development of new functionality, so I would like to know if the Blender Foundation would be willing hire/mentor a developer to work on such features; also since I am led to believe that you maintain a relatively open policy about who works on what based at least partially on personal interest, I guess it's also relevant to ask if there are any available developers or programmers, knowledgeable enough and motivated to work in such areas. While modeling for architecture I find myself often using bezier curves as an actual modeling tool and final rendering geometry (lots of extrusion or path based geometries), my main aim here would thus be improving workflow by reducing the need for destructive operations like converting bezier curve objects to meshes. For now what I would initially like to propose would be: - The ability to assign material slots to curve segments, - The ability for the 'derived mesh generator' to use said material slots directly from curve object or from a bevel object in the generated mesh. - Material slots for built-in bevels and rims, perhaps a system akin to the one used with the solidify modifier, with material index offsets(?) From the user interface point of view this would likely 'just' require making curve segments selectable (like mesh vertex, edge, face selection modes), and the ability to store material slot data to those segments. The 'derived mesh generator' would then have to be able to read these and apply them to the created mesh geometry (with bevels, extrusions and fills). I have prepared a more detailed and complete list of improvements all related to Bezier Curves that I'd like to share. Most are probably too extensive or out of scope for this limited funding, and would likely break backwards compatibility, yet the time seems right for these topics seem to fit well into the 2.8 Workflow Sprint ( http://code.blender.org/2015/07/blender-2-8-the-workflow-release/ ) and the upcoming 2015 conference discussions, with more time to plan and less urge to keep backwards compatibility, allowing for deeper more radical changes. Depending on your opinion about the feasibility of this project and the developer time this limited funding could 'hire' maybe more topics can be tackled, or perhaps instead make some groundwork and set some solid foundations as basis for further improvements in this area if time/funding allows. I was hoping this e-mail would also serve as publicity to get the attention of any additional potentially interested users or companies who may want to contributing with additional funding that can grant more development time. I regard these changes as general improvements that will benefit every user, or at the very least not disrupt whoever doesn't need them. Hopefully they'll be valuable for numerous more artists outside architecture or construction industry, like professionals in the Motion Graphics industry like television, publicity, 2D graphic animation (for example http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?295010-Blender-text-conversion-improvements-wishlist ), especially if these improvements also affect text objects, or perhaps people in industrial design ( http://plus.google.com/101076135528517730950/posts/DHGBFYHoBcA )or precision modeling. Only additional request/condition I would set is that all this gets made in a manner conducive to it's inclusion in Blender main development trunk, preferably within the time-frame for the 2.8 release if feasible. I just want to avoid seeing these features buried in some lost development branch, or have to use some outdated obscure custom build to take advantage of new features. I apologize for the wall of text, I am very enthusiastic about this and eagerly awaiting to hear your opinions on these matters. Looking forward to your reply Best regards Duarte Ramos _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
