How difficult is it to implement ptex into Cycles? Can this be done by anyone? What expertise do they need to have?
@nicholasbishop - Are there any gotchas to be aware of when dealing with integrating ptex into cycles? Is it a straightforward process? What level of expertise does it require?
I looked at it briefly. It did not appear very simple, or at least not simple to do non-hackishly. By that I mean, you could certainly pack an entire Ptex buffer into a 1D texture and decode it within Cycles, but ideally you’d want to stream in tiles from the texture at the needed resolution (and de-allocate unneeded bits too.) That seemed to me tricky 
But that was just the result of my one-day investigation, didn’t actually sit down and discuss this with anyone knowledgeable about Cycles.
Do you know any project/plan for improving sculpt capability? A more precise brushs is (IMHO) a priority in this field.
A more precise brushs is (IMHO) a priority in this field.
What do you mean by more precise brushes?
I’m pretty (ok, kind of somewhat) sure that with openimageio you get ptex support for free thanks to GSOC.
What happened with the skin modifier ?
Yes and no – it does load Ptex, but it treats Ptex (correctly) as a format that packs multiple images. So when Cycles loads the texture, it’s essentially just reading one image from the input (i.e. the texture belonging to the first face.)
The OIIO API has simple functions for accessing the other parts of the texture, but how to hook these up well with Cycles is not clear to me.
I’ve sent an email to the list but due to a concert I had been preparing I am a bit lagging behind with coding right now. So I have not really pushed for a response yet.
I think the key is using oiio’s texture reading stuff (so all the uv reading is abstracted away) which I’m not sure cycles is currently doing.
But, then again, I read the docs a while back and was very confused on how it all works…
Ptex doesn’t actually use UV’s, you just have one texture per face. OIIO does provide access to those as sub-images, so there’s no problem on that side. It’s a question of integration with Cycles – how to provide “streaming” access to those sub-images.
I would also love to see the drag/drop outliner patch integrated!
Others that come to mind would be the mdd/pc2 live meshcache modifier from loolarge and the advanced modifier array.
An mdd cache modifier would be spectacualar!!! I had no idea one had been prepared, and if its ready PUT IT IN!! 
Based on comments I have recieved, if the outliner is modified – this is the direction it should go – where the outliner is organizable by layers
For so long now the #1 improvement I would like to see is a bevel which does not triangulate the mesh.
Very interesting stuff. Thumbs up!
Indeed, Ptex can be exported into a regular UV format. I still lean towards not including it until there’s a Blender renderer that supports it natively though.
thx for the remesh modifier! are you going to finish the skin-modifier soon…or is the plugin available to install it easily over the preference/addon menue?
I don’t know if if this news would warrant a new fresh announcement, but it looks like the Blender team really wants to give patch creators a chance to get their hard work into trunk http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2012-January/035122.html
Any news about the outliner patch? Would be a shame if it’s not included.
how about vpaint
image source + overlay?