Blender Foundation

Web Page: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/GSoC/2009/Ideas

Mailing List: bf-committers@blender.org

The Blender Foundation is an independent organization (a Dutch "stichting"), acting as a non-profit public benefit corporation, with the following goals:

• To establish services for active users and developers of Blender
• To maintain and improve the current Blender product via a public accessible source code system under the GNU GPL license
• To establish funding or revenue mechanisms that serve the foundation's goals and cover the foundation's expenses
• To give the worldwide Internet community access to 3D technology in general, with Blender as a core

Projects

• Blender Light Paint using Spherical Harmonics Inspired by Illumination Brush, this project aims to create an interactive tool for Blender to preview, modify, and create image-based lighting environments specified by HDR light probe images. Artists can change the HDR light probe by directly painting colours on the models. This tool will be integrated with the existing image-based rendering routines in Blender in order to help artists determine the final renderings.
• Collada Support Improvements For Blender COLLADA is a flexible and versatile digital assests exchange format created by the Khronos Group consortium. It is supported by the top commercial DCC tools like Maya, 3ds Max, Lightwave 3D, Cinema 4D and Unreal Engine. This project is about improving COLLADA import/export support in Blender.
• Implementation and Validation of Python Import/Export API Blender 2.5 Project has been in active development past 6 months. Many improvements have been made and it is a very big step towards robust architecture. In the light of these great changes I propose a small help to the Blender team. This project will help implement Python import/export API.
• Integration of OpenGL VBOs and vertex arrays for faster 3D Viewport rendering One of the biggest weaknesses of Blender is the inability to render high polygon counts while modeling. I believe the way blender uses OpenGL API is the biggest cause: it does immediate mode rendering. Using VBOs and vertex arrays, sometimes called the retained mode, would speed up the rendering substantially and provide a user with a more responsive interface.
• Raytrace Optimization This proposal aims at optimizing blender raytrace. Including: * Making it faster * Support for render instancing * Added support for generic objects (used to implement instancing but later can be expanded into LOD) * Script to measure performance * Removing worst-cases * Make it easier to try tweaks and different data structures.
• Refactor of Non-Linear Animation (NLA) System in Blender for 2.5 This project aims to refactor the Non-Linear Animation (NLA) system in Blender to function in conjunction with the new "Animato" animation system core in Blender 2.5. A more extensible framework for evaluating animation clips to layer and mix them will be developed, allowing for the addition of more powerful features at a later stage. This will be presented by a more modern and usable UI for the creation and editing of such data, which clearly exposes the true nature and power of NLA workflows.