We’re at BCON-4, features are freezed and all that stands between us and a world of new feature feasting is some bugfixes and cleanups before the release. 2.4 will be a great realease, one to remember. And so it’s time to look further into the future. What are the next batch of stuff on your wishlist?
Even though 2.4 is a massive upgrade (so massive, in fact, that it jumped from 2.37 straight to 2.4), still I see 2.4 mainly as an animation (physics, new armatures, IPO-drives etc) and FX (fluids, particles etc) version. Those are it’s main attractions. I’m guessing the next couple of releases will be mostly releasing stuff that didn’t make it into 2.4 (like pytexture and various patches that didn’t get enough testing before CVS-freeze). That aside, what will be on your wishlist after that? Moving towards 2.5 and beyond. And try to not be too narrow in your wishes. Sure, you can narrow it down to isolated features, but please don’t post like “I would like that merge-patch” or other very specific enhancements (unless they have great impact on the toolset).
Personally I would love to see that, going towards 2.5, Blender will improve a lot on the modelling tools. Todays tools are great and all, but looking at the projects page I see great potential in taking this a step further. For example the HE-mesh could make way for highly anticipated mesh-tools like proper bevel and other powerful polygon tools. Also I would love to see improvments in the subsurf area to allow more powerful crease handling (todays implementation isn’t really adequate for powerful editing). Also it would really be nice if the Nurbana implementation would be integrated ASAP, accompanied with a strong toolset.
If 2.4 will be remembered as a milestone for animations, I would love to see a joined effort on making 2.5 a milestone for modeling.
I would love some sort of muscle dynamics system and a particle flow system similar to that in 3DS MAX in blender 2.5, - I was a bit disappointed that 2.4 won’t have moveable obstacles in Fluid similations - but with such an upgrade from 2.37 I’m not complaining - still, if blender 2.4 is anything to go by I can see a day where Blender will surpass commercial programs, I really do…
Even more UV unwrapping tools (in particular ones to continue the process after LSCM unwrapping, since that usually only gets you part of the way there).
For subdivision surfaces, apply the same subdivision algorithm and number of itterations to the surface’s UVs. The user should be able to turn it on and off, of course, and it should show up in the UV editor visually when turned on. This is important for getting distortion-free texture mapping on subdivision surfaces.
Maybe this already exists and I don’t know about it, but I’d like to be able to have more than one UV set (or “unwrap”) per surface/mesh. It can be really useful in some cases.
Pivot targets for IK chains. For example, if I have a “leg” IK chain that consists of two bones, I want to be able to make the knee point at an empty so that I can easily control the leg rotation. I don’t know of any convenient way to do that right now. It’s really important to be able to do this for most character rigs.
Shader tree.
Ability to write shaders via Blender’s Python API (the Python texture access is a good start.)
Integrated Aqsis support.
A render pass system.
If/when I have the time I would, of course, be more than happy to help impliment some of these features.
does it have to be integrated? Theres already a few scripts lurking around that do just that.
Personally, I’d just be happy if they ungrouped the damn icons again. whoever thought that it was a good idea was patently wrong. It slows workflow and makes not an iota of sense considering that the buttons window header is just about the only place in blender where there is masses of room. Screw two clicks, I want to get where I need to be with one…that’s the way it was, and the way it should be.
also, I’d like a lot of the icons back in the 3d window. take a look @ 1.8, it had icons for just about everything…and the delegation of space was much better as well. look at the difference in the amount of information displayed in the 1.8 3d window and in the current version.
1.8 was built for sheer editing speed, and we have lost a lot of that…so can we have it back?
How about a grouping tool? (like the one that max uses)
Not just parenting, but that all the items in the group are actually treated as one item… Would help clean up the workspace
-volumetric particles
-multiple uv layouts
-moveable fluidsim obstacles
-m@dcow’s 1111st post
-a muscle system
-some kind of terrain/foliage gernerator
-procedural materials
-ability to have slope/ land smoothness affect texture
-n-gons
-better shader system
-even better softbodies
-units of measurement %|
and most of all:
RENDER REWRITE
i’ve got a trial version of vue, and it renders really fast, and really nicely. same with maya ple. blender internal just kills me, and yafray takes too long to render.
We can make lights illuminate only the layer they are on. It would be handy in some situations if there was a way to make a light illuminate all layers except for the layer it is on.
I agree with everything except n-gons but as long as there is a way to turn them off, I’d be happy.
I’d also like to have a 3D cursor in the IPO window and some people mentioned the UV editor too. Even if you could scale around the current time marker like in the Action editor, that would be good. I’d still like the cursor though and preferrably with lines coming out of it that reach the edges of the screen so you can align multiple keys easily.
Being able to render straight into the UV editor would be nice as Endi said. The render window goes against the non-overlapped subdiv window philosophy and rendering into the 3D window doesn’t work because it disappears too quickly. Also, if these images can be stored in a palette so you can easily compare previous renders.
In the Mac version at least can someone disable the close window button. Technically that’s against Apple’s use interface guidelines but so is being able to close a window when there are unsaved documents inside and I know which is worse. Also disabling q for quit would be good because it is quite easy to press between the frequently used tab and w keys. If I need to quit, I will go to the file menu like every other program. Seriously, we have one way to open the program but 5 ways to quit it (q hotkey, quit from file menu, command-q, close button and force quit).
More than anything, I’d like a more robust Python implementation. The setup is not intuitive and some functions don’t seem to work. Essentially, I want to be able to do anything I can do via the interface in Blender via Python. This would allow better exporters to 3rd party renderers and much more functional scripts.
I’d like a symmetry modifier that worked on a mesh without flushing the UVs and things. Something like that for bones too.
I’d like if custom Python interfaces were scalable like Blender default ones.
Also make the interface controls consistent with the 3D window. To zoom the 3D window, you use the wheel and ctrl-wheel is pan. In the panels, mouse wheel pans and ctrl-wheel zooms.
Maybe a single key to make any panel fullscreen instead of ctrl up and down. Maya has spacebar but if you hold it, it produces the menu like Blender’s spacebar menu. If you remap the letter q instead of quit, that would work.
Dockable floaty panels instead of fixed ones that are produced via hotkey 0-9 and the layers are moved to the outliner. This way, it’s easier to lock individual layers and you can name them. Some floaty panels would contain the mesh tools that are usually accessed by hotkey like bevel or loop-cut so that way you don’t have to keep dragging through the same menus when doing lots of the same commands. Menus IMO are a major workflow killer. The w menu could do with being scrapped and replaced with a special tools palette for example.
Combine the bone displays into one. Octahedron + stick + b-bone = sticks that show the segments with arrows pointing in the dircetion of the parenting. The arrows can be cone with a slice in it to act as a fin to show the bone angle at a glance.
Replace envelopes with an automatic rig function that sets up vertex groups based on an envelope-like shape. The problem with envelopes is they don’t do solid volume checking so you get problems with fingers. If envelopes are modified to do that then also allow them to be scaled in any axis independently. Ideally, I think they would be best as cylinders. These cylinders would have circular ends that could be scaled in two axes and rotated around the same axes. These circles could then be scaled towards or away from each other.
Being able to render out to file in parts so your machine doesn’t try to display a huge resolution image while rendering.
Light that casts no shadows being able to judge the intensity of light hitting a face based on simple depth-based calculations or allowing the ability to paint occlusion manually. I know for example which parts of a scene I want dark so I’d like if I could paint it.
Proper displacement mapping that efficiently subdivides edges.
An easy way to duplicate a hierarchy. Right now, I think I have to select the parent and all the children, then duplicate but I’d like if just duplicating the parent gave the option to take the children with it.
when rendering, we should have an option to make the render window show the REAL rendering resolution like before. atm, blender “resize” the image so it fits on screen. Although I have no scientific proof of this, I have the impression it kind of slow the render a bit. And even if it doesn’t, I’d like to see the true size of my pixels when rendering. (I’m suggesting a on/off button for resizing the render)
As I said in another post, I would like to see Blender keep all of it’s stuff related to 3D art, but also 3D practical uses. Like solid modelling, and assigning materials like Steel to certain models, and testing how much weight you can put on it with out it breaking, and more physics stuff. I would like to see the CAD (Computer Aided Design) side of Blender, where you can add dimentions and measurements and the like. That is all that is on my wish list. Maybe also the ability to pause renderings.
Like solid modelling, and assigning materials like Steel to certain models, and testing how much weight you can put on it with out it breaking, and more physics stuff. I would like to see the CAD (Computer Aided Design) side of Blender, where you can add dimentions and measurements and the like
Blender is an artistic tool. For solid modeling, CAD, etc you need a tool that is specialized in that area. Imagine Solid Edge doing character animation, that would be strange too…
For everybody how hasn’t seen it already, there is a feature request area on the official Blender website.
Actually, that’s quite an interesting proposal. Although I wouldn’t want to see the current renderer disappear, another more modern one could just be added to the drop-down menu.
Hmm… yeah, I’m going to add that to my list, too. However, I’m going to reserve it as something I’d like to implement myself, as I have a semi-new rendering architecture I’ve been wanting to try writing for a while. Keep in mind, though, that I won’t have the time to take something like this on for at least a year or two. I’m quite busy at the moment…
Also, I consider integrated Aqsis support to be more important than a new internal renderer.
Most Blender user don’t render at the resolution you do Ecks ;)[/quote]
Actually, I’ve been a little frustrated by that too. Because of the resizing it throws off the osa, which means I have to save the image and view at 100% externally in order to make sure the smoothing is correct, unless there is a way to do that internally.
Though I am amazed by the progress Blender has made, I would also like to see more tools/updates for non-animation things. Like mentioned before, fluid, bones, softbodies, IPOs and all that are for animation (obviously). I’ve never really used any of the “high-end” programs, so I’m not sure of what I’m missing, but adding some modeling/texturing/lighting tools would be greatly appreciated.
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