Bastien will Do the code review of mantaflow
So maybe this mean mantaflow will be ready for blender 2.8?
Mantaflow looks interesting but I really hope they don’t replace the current Smoke sim with it. It’s nice and all but I’m not fond of the workflow.
The plan is that it Will replace both smoke and fluid in Blender. (mantaflow uses the same simulator for smoke and fluid) do note that during review things like workflow/UI changes are very common.
Don’t want to waste anymore time here but I just really hope they don’t replace elbeem and just add manta flow as an additional option.
New Features and Changes
As usual, the focus continues to be on bug fixing, approximately 125 bugs were fixed in the last two weeks.
- The Blender2.8 branch was merged to master. For builders and developers, see the bf-committers mail for details.
- Snapping settings now only affect Move transforms by default. For Rotate and Scale vertex snapping is not as useful and can get in the way, so these only do increment snapping when holding Ctrl. For the more rare cases where advanced snapping for Rotate and Scale is needed, the snapping popover has toggles to enable it.
- Context menus now take into account modes and selected data more.
- Grease pencil: new merge strokes operator, new 2D monkey primitives, and more tweaks.
- New application icons on all platforms, with more accurate logo colors and flatter look.
- Linux/X11: support multiple pen tablets connected at the same time.
So in the first month of blender 2.8 beta release they have fixed around 325 bug fixes!!! Which is huge !
9 Likes
With UVmapping largely functional now, one of the few major pain points remaining is the major speed regression in the direct editing and deformation of subsurfed objects.
Fortunately, the devs. know about many of these regressions and have plans to address them.
3 Likes
7 January 2019
New Features and Changes
The focus continues to be on getting Blender 2.8 stable. Approximately 75 bugs were fixed in the last week.
- Preferences have been redesigned, with a better organization that makes it much easier to find settings. (task )
- NLA blending of rotation now used proper interpolation of quaternions. Another step towards making the NLA editor work well in production.
- Viewport: updated default HDRIs. Added city, courtyard and interior, replaced grass field and night with different images.
- Icon set was updated, particularly editor icons.
- 2D animation template was updated with changes to properties layout, brush and material settings, and more.
Development
-
clang-formatis planned to be used for formatting all C/C++ code in Blender. This will be a disruptive change as all patches and branches will need (automatable) updates. But in the long run it will save time and increase code quality. (task ) - Proposal to close many mailing lists that are no longer actively used. (mail )
Weekly Reports
6 Likes
New Features and Changes
The focus remains on stabilizing 2.80, about 75 bugs were fixed last week.
- Video sequencer text strips now support selecting a font.
- Grease pencil:
- New cutter tool to trim strokes and help cleaning up drawings.
- New set of constraints and guides to draw different types of shapes.
- New segment selection mode to select strokes between intersections.
- New operator to change strokes cap mode.
- New option to display only keyframed frames.
- Texture Paint drawing now supports closest texture filtering.
- Viewport stereoscopy helpers drawing is back.
- NLA: ignore time range when evaluating a raw action. (explanation )
- Pie menus now stick only when tapping key.
7 Likes
At Last!! WOOT!
2 Likes
Yes! At long last!!! Finally! Thank you, Blender developers! Thank you!!!
Awesome work! Thank you!! Looking forward to the stable release of 2.8! 
New options and tools are great but for me already a bit overwhelming. Hope that fixing basic issues like T58985 do get attention too before release.
21 January 2019
New Features and Changes
As usual bug fixing took most of the core developers’ time, with about 75 bugs solved.
- Bevel now supports multiple miter patterns. (release notes ) ( Howard Trickey )
- NLA: implement a new blending mode that intelligently combines actions. (commit ) ( Alexander Gavrilov )
- Windows: support for Windows Ink, for better handling of pen input on modern devices like Surface. (commit ) ( Christopher Peerman )
- 3D viewport clipping (Alt+B) is available again for wireframe and solid draw modes. Not all object types are supported yet. ( Campbell Barton )
- Deleting many objects has been optimized, though the new code is not enabled yet by default. It can be tested by setting the debug value to 666. (commit ) ( Bastien Montagne )
- Alembic export can now optionally output curves / NURBS as meshes. ( Sybren A. Stüvel )
- Preferences have been further redesigned, adding more sections to avoid grouping unrelated settings together. More panels are also expanded by default, making it possible to quickly go through sections and see settings of each. ( Brecht Van Lommel )
Development
- Initial development on the everything nodes project has started, beginning with a generic function system. (doc ) ( Jacques Lucke )
Weekly Reports
16 Likes
The return off alt+b is awesome! And unexpected. Clement thought it was unlikely to happen.
3 Likes
FFmpeg: enable multi-threaded encoding of multiple frames, for a ~20% speedup.
how to turn on this 20%?
The new miter patterns are lovely, it’s a great addition. Thank you for the hard work @howardt!
3 Likes
New Features and Changes
About 90 bugs were fixed last week.
- Workbench support for depth of field. (commit ) ( Clément Foucault )
- Sculpt: add Topology Rake, to align edges along brush while painting. This helps to generate cleaner topology and define sharp features for dynamic topology. Best used on relatively low-poly meshes, it is not needed as much for high detail areas and has a performance impact. ( Jean Da Costa )
- macOS: add support for OpenMP, making smoke/fluid/cloth simulations faster. This bring macOS on par with Windows and Linux. ( Arto Kitula )
Development
- Module owners are invited to test if
clang-formatgives good results for the code they maintain. To test, check out thetemp-clang-formatbranch and runmake format. This works on Linux and macOS only for now, Windows support needs to be added. Further, we are still mainly missing documentation. (task )
Weekly Reports
11 Likes
Name hyperlinks
Off-Topic:
Fun Fact:
Q: Why would you hyperlink the names like that, rather than simply copy/paste the links as-is?
A: Because when I tried to paste them, https://i.imgur.com/jgvcHlr.png the formatting kept breaking some of the links, forcing me to improvise.
Edit 1: Did not pay attention to the timestamps I copied over!
Edit 2, hours later: Did not pay attention to the month, either! Double-checked, this time!
Blender developers meeting notes - 2019-02-04
Hi all,
Here are the notes from today’s developer meeting.
Next meeting is Monday, 11 February 10:00 CET / 09:00 UTC.
1) New Features and Changes
- About 105 bugs were fixed last week, total number of closed reports is
222, - Bevel: better corner shapes for inner arc miters. (Howard Trickey)
- Workbench support for material transparency. (Clément Foucault)
2) Development
- Jeroen Bakker starts work at the Blender Institute this week, welcome! He
will first focus on Cycles OpenCL optimizations, funded by AMD. - Bug tracker priority names have been changed to make their meaning more
clear. We also encourage developers to set High priority more often so
important bugs do not get buried. - Richard Antalik is working on a sequencer prefetch patch, which needs
design and code review: https://developer.blender.org/D3934
3) Google Summer of Code
- This is a period for organizations to apply.
- The list of ideas needs update with the deadline of February 6:
https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/GSoC/Ideas_Suggestions
**4) Weekly Reports
9 Likes
Jeroen Bakker is now my best friend 
So happy AMD spend more on Blender as they used it for the “go to” product to show of their new hardware.
Read through the proposed plan for the OpenCL optimization, and simply smiles from ear to ear. Eager beyond words to see what they can do to make OpenCL better.
3 Likes
Ooh… hidden feature: Time travel ! 
5 Likes
3 hours later:
D’oh!
Give me a moment…
…Alright, fixed. Thanks for letting me know!