Development of Blender 2.8 Viewport

Development of Blender 2.8 Viewport

 

In its original version of Blender 2.8 it brought the workflow-based usability mantra. Within these constraints, we skipped the ideal pipeline for some well-defined workflows.

As an example we have the example of the viewport development project document and summarize some of the projects presented.

“There is a fundamental difference between an object's material appearance and the way that object is displayed in 3D view. Materials are part of the data, just as geometry is. One way to display is to view the material in full. When you want a high quality rendering of a lit scene, or you are working on the materials themselves. This is the best choice. There are other ways to view your data, useful in different situations or stages in your workflow.

Answer the question: what is your object that you need to see now? Perhaps the polygonal structure of your geometry is important - especially true during modeling! In this case, you want to see the faces and edges clearly, lighting and materials on the surface are less important and more likely to be distracting. Sometimes, the shape or shape of an object is the most important - sculpting is the best example. Individual polygon faces are less important, edges and materials are disturbing. Or draw in solid black to discern the silhouette of your object or character ”(merwin, June 2016).

To align the discussions with the artists and the technology we are bringing to Blender 2.8 we have tried to introduce some new concepts: tasks (individual components of a workflow), boards (rendering techniques and interactions within a viewport) and minimal viable products (some of the main initial products in the development cycle). These concepts are explained in their own section.

From these discussions with a small group of artists and developers, we created the current design for the viewport. The ideas presented here will evolve during the project and, once they start to be faced against real-world implementation challenges.