From PlumiferosWiki

Coders: please send an email to  and/or to  when you 
start coding a feature from this list, so we avoid the overlapping. Thanks.

Contents 1 Features that have been coded during Plumiferos Project 2 Feature Wishlist 3 Animation System 3.1 Animation Editors 3.1.1 IPO Editor 3.1.2 Action Editor 3.1.3 NLA Editor 3.2 Armatures 3.2.1 General 3.2.2 Constraints 4 Sequence, Composition, Rendering Systems 4.1 Node Compositor 4.1.1 Compositor (ASAP) 4.1.2 Compositor (Good to have) 4.2 Sequence Editor 4.3 Render 4.3.1 Bake Render 4.3.2 Render & OpenGL 5 Modelling Tools 6 GUI Features 7 Library Management 7.1 General 8 Material, Lighting Texture Systems 8.1 Material Nodes 8.2 Textures 8.3 UV Editor 9 Playback

Features that have been coded during Plumiferos Project

1. Frame Stamp Render Option: prints frame, timecode, camera, scene, filename and user texts over OpenGL/normal render. Developed by RCRuiz (Gracias Ramon !) StampInfo Patch
2. BlendFromShape menu to display in several columns to allow selection of all available shape keys. Developed by Aligorith. (in CVS)
3. "Mute" option in NLA editor, to "silent" an NLA strip at will, meaning the action strip animation is not displayed temporarily. Developed by RCRuiz and Aligorith simultaneously ! (Aligorith also added reverse strip). (in CVS)
4. Traslation/Rotation/Size limits constraints for bones. Developed by Aligorith. (in CVS).
5. Selection of all keyframes in same frame in Action Editor (K Key). Developed by Letterrip. (in CVS).
6. Custom "Shape" button for bones, just next to Stick, Envelope, Octahedron to easily turn custom widgets into stick/octahedron without having to delete/rewrite OB field in Bone panel. Developed by Aligorith (in CVS)
7. Save Output Node. To be able to save different parts of a composition as diferent image sequences in different folders and stuff like that. Developed by Ton. (in CVS).
8. Scale, Histogram, Rotate nodes for compositor. Developed by Damiles.
9. Scale node for compositor. Developed by Brecht. (in CVS).
10. Vertex Group in Lattices. Developed by Ton. (in CVS).
11. Bezier Alpha Mask editing in compositor. Developed by Damiles.Bezier Alpha Mask Patch
12. Viewers work inside Group Nodes, so we don't have to ungroup to check a particular node inside the group. (in CVS)
13. Select Object Hooks. Coded by Campbell Barton. (in CVS)
14. Dilate/Erode node: to expand or contract the size of a border obtained via Sobel or other edge detector. (in CVS)
15. Draw Extra "Name" and "Axis" options to work when object is in Bounds Draw Type. Developed by Lguillaume. (in CVS)
16. ShapeKey panel to work for lattices. Developed by Ton. (in CVS)
17. Python API: Constraint Module. Developed by Ken Hughes. (in CVS)
18. Python API: "link" option available to import objects. Coded by Campbell Barton. (in CVS)
19. Clouds2 texture plugin, integrated as built-in texture type. Coded by Letterrip.
20. Select Bone parent in Pose and Edit modes. Coded by Aligorith. (in CVS)
21. Basic Transform in Sequencer (traslate, rotate, scale). Coded by Damiles. (in CVS)
22. R, G, B, A hotkeys for the Image Viewer to quickly see Red, Gren, Blue, Alpha channels. C to go back to RGB. Patch to Image Viewer that enable RGB with buttons Channel patchs (Damiles)
23. Frame start/frame end for file output nodes and browse to folder. Coded by Ton. Already in CVS.
24. Directional blur node, to be able to fake motion/vector blur in simple, directional shots. Damiles is working in the Directional blur node. First Version: Directional Blur*
25. Time scale for sequence editor strips. This let you speed up or slow down a strip playback. Coded by Peter Schlaile (in CVS).
26. "Only Needed" option in Insert Keyframe menu. Insert keyframes only in curves that really had a transformation. Coded by Aligorith. (in CVS)
27. Outliner Search function. Coded by Aligorith. (in CVS)
28. 3D View locking to objects or bones. Coded by Ton. (in CVS)
29. Display of time (HH:MM:SS.d) in window header besides the frame number. Coded by Felipe Sanchez (local patch)
30. Proxy Object. Makes possible edition of data linked from library. Developed by Ton. (in CVS)
31. NLA Modifiers and Match Offset Bone. Gets rid of feet sliding problems and much more. Developed by Ton. (in CVS)
32. Shift+O, turns subsurf on/off for linked groups too !. Coded by Ton (in CVS)
33. Sequence Editor, Importing of multiple video files concatenates everything on a single channel. Coded by RCRuiz. (patch in tracker)
34. Markers in Action Editor !. Developed by Aligorith. (in CVS)
35. Poseable Linked Groups !. Thanks to Proxy Object development. Developed by Ton (in CVS).
36. A/B split wipe in viewer to allow simultaneous display of separate images for quick comparisons. Developed by Ton (in CVS)
37. Some kind of reference system for the Time node, like frames vs value, because it's kind of hard to animate something precisely, as per frame basis. Also some zooming. Maybe snapping. A different but useful (better) approach is already in CVS, developed by Ton.
38. More or improved Color Correction tools for the Compositor. damiles coded Gain, Gamma and Brightness/Contrast nodes.
39. Ghost and Path drawing for bones in pose mode are calculated now also in a frame range, making things faster. Developed by Aligorith (patch in tracker)
40. Layer shows distinctive mark when has objects in it. Developed by Felipe Sanchez (local patch)
41. Layer shows distinctive colour when has objects in it. Developed by BeBraw (patch in tracker) (simultaneous with precedent work from Felipe)
42. Render passes ! (shadow, color, diffuse, specular, etc). Developed by Ton (in CVS).
43. Some kind of Ignore Textures option to be able to render without loading the textures, just materials. Coded by Kent Mein. (in CVS)
44. Action Editor: Channel locking. Whenlocked, keyframes cannot be edited. Coded by Aligorith. (in CVS)
45. Collapsable channels in NLA Editor. Coded by Aligorith (in CVS)
46. Light Groups with exclusive option. Coded by Ton (in CVS)
47. Markers in all animation windows. Developed by Aligortih (in CVS).
48. Action constraint recoded. Now takes size and loc as inputs. Rotation of targer bones now works in a predictable way. Developed by Aligorith (patch in tracker)
49. Long keyframes in Action Editor to indicate "pauses" in animation. Developed by Aligorith (in CVS)
50. Snapping for bones in pose mode. Developed by Aligorith. (in CVS).
51. Recentering of armatures in object mode. Developed by Aligorith (in CVS)
52. Camera in Fly Mode autodetects if camera's vertical axis is aligned to global Z and therefore applies Z-lock to avoid unwanted rotations. Coded by Campbell Barton (in CVS).
53. Some improvement in blur filters to better recreate circle of confusion. Or Defocus node. Coded by Alfredo de Greef (in CVS)
54. Radial/Zoom blur with center reference and the possibility to anim the center. Coded by coyhot (François Grassard). Zoom patch Radial patch.
55. Visual Loc/Rot keyframing working right. Coded by Aligorith (in CVS)
56. Shift+N in NLA creates empty action. Coded by Aligorith (in CVS)

Feature Wishlist

This is our wishlist. It's made out of things we've been noticing would make our job easier or faster during these months. We made this wishlist in the hope that it will give feedback to developers about 3D animation production needs and points of view.

Many of the items that were previously here, are now in the precedent section, thus, in Blender CVS.

All developers that decide to work on any of these feature requests and either submit a patch or implement the feature in Blender CVS will be properly credited in Plumiferos' credits.

Animation System

Animation Editors

IPO Editor

1. Scaling of IPO curves to be corrected when switching time in NLA window from NLA to Action and viceversa. Currently it only shows Action Time, not NLA time.
2. "Ghost IPO curve image" drawn to show how an IPO curve looked before current editing. Useful when trying to reproduce shape with less nodes.

Action Editor

1. Chain channel sliders in action editor for shape keys. Once chained, channels would slide together once you select and drag any of them.
2. Add New menu item in Action Editor, to create a new action with no channels at all. Currently it creates an action with same channels as the previously edited action.
3. Action Editor: Ability to collapse/expand Constraint channels. Aligorith is working on this
4. Action Editor: Ability to rename channels (both Bone and Constraints channels). Aligorith is working on this
5. Action Editor: Show optionally individual transformation channels (RotX,Y,Z, LocX, Y, Z etc) in subtracks ala constraint
6. Action Editor: Grouping of Bone channels. User defined grouping of channels would be useful for many situations. This groups should be collapsable/expandable and have distinctive names. This could help for quick selections of bones, cleanup of view (similar to bone layering), etc. Aligorith is working on this
7. Option to Mute channel in action. This is useful to debug animation and track causes of undesired motion.

NLA Editor

Armatures

General

Constraints

1. Copy Rotation constraints. There are cases where the rotation of a bone is not copied, for instance, when target bone is rotated by an action constraint (and using Local), or the target is rotated by another CopyRot constraint.
2. Copy Location constraints working in local mode to inherit parent bone location transformation. Eg: if bone A is parented to bone B, and bone C is copyloc constrained to bone A using Local flag, when bone B is traslated, bone C remain still even when bone A did move.
3. Floor constraints to work on local coordinates. Useful when using this contraint on bones (constraining to other bones). For instance to make a character walk over a wall. If you rotate the "floor bone" currently, it won't work, because it's using global coordinates.

Sequence, Composition, Rendering Systems

Node Compositor

Compositor (ASAP)

1. Blur code handles filter sizes smaller than 1.0 badly, it then just skips filtering (Ton's words). This is an issue if you use a gradient or zbuffer as mask for the blur node.
2. Text input values for RGB curves points. We need this to create an S curve to convert from linear to logarithmic space our images to save them on cineon format and to be able to invert the curve to convert them back. In the future will be nice to have a lin-log log-lin converter node.
3. Ignore/passthru mode for nodes, to be able to turn off an individual node but still see the result of the others.
4. To improve interactivity while working, the possibility to work at half or quarter resolution in the whole project. Right now only working in full resolution.

Compositor (Good to have)

1. Integration of the compositor to the IPO curves system, to be able to animate parameters better. Anne Thrax seems to be working on this. No patch available yet.
2. Color Ramp with directional handles (x, y start and x, y end), to be able to create gradient masks in different directions. Maybe it could be a texture.
3. Posibility to rename the nodes, not just the node groups.
4. Percent option for blur node, so blur ammount doesn't change when testing in LD vs HD.
5. Posibility to save the Vector data to exr for render output, as Save Buffers does now.

Sequence Editor

1. Link/unlink Audio & Video strips.
2. Load multiple video files at once, putting them one after the other in the timeline. Patch by RCRuiz provides initial functionality. Diego is working on improving audio track import
3. Fast snapping of strips with other strips. Currently there is a (somewhat hidden) feature, which is dragging strips by pressing SHIFT and rolling MouseWheel. Dragging like this, makes strips to snap to the end of previous strips. This is fine, however it works on all strips to the right of cursor. A new option would be this works only on selected strips.initial patch from Felipe works. Needs some debugging
4. Subtitle track for Sequence Editor, as implemented in Adobe Premiere or Cinelerra.Felipe is working on this
5. Frame number/timecode to be visible in sequencer window header. Ideal solution would be to also have start and end frame just like timeline. Using a separate window for timeline is really nuts :) patch from Felipe provided functionality
6. Clip file name to be displayed in some place available all the time, like the transform panel. When you are editing in a zoomed out window, you can easily lost track of what file is which strip. This also happens if you work with many channels/tracks, seems this info is available only in lower part of the screen.patch from Felipe provided functionality
7. Continuous Zoom of preview. Right now it works on a few steps. Alwasy too big or too small :) At least it should be an option for the preview to cover the whole window (and still look complete picture). patch from Felipe provided functionality
8. Relative paths to work on audio file import

Render

1. Keyframe animated nodes and if possible, integration with IPO Curve Editor.
2. Static Particle colour to follow UV mapped textures in generator mesh.
3. Static Particle colour to use vertex colour paint of generator mesh.
4. Strand particles to have other deformation options to simulate feather.

Bake Render

1. Bake options to bake Spec, Nor, Ref, channels as a color. (like if this map was a B/W color image)
2. Bake option to bake just procedural textures.

Render & OpenGL

1. Be able to display FPS over 3D window when previewing animation (CTRL + A), to check performance. For instance if the preview is too slow (and you can see choppy animation) it should display the FPS (for instance 5 frames/sec) the cpu is achieving. This way you could measure performance and detect anomalies. Not related to sound playback or the like.
2. OpenGL rendering to follow camera's passpartout. Currently you have to manually adjust 3d window, and be lucky enough it ressembles image proportions. The idea is, no matter how the 3d window looks like, the OpenGL render shows only the visible part from the camera, using image resolution as indicated in image format panel.

Modelling Tools

1. Center New, Center Cursor, etc, to work on meshes with ShapeKeys. Patch available from Aligorith
2. Joining/Splitting of meshes with shapekeys. Briggs is working on make modelling tools be aware of ShapeKeys. No patch available yet. malefico.
3. Old 3D Curve Twist bug to be fixed. 3D Curves twist when they are shaped in extreme angles. Very annoying if thinking of using curves in rigging...

GUI Features

Library Management

General

1. Be able to make local (append) all objects inside a linked group.

Material, Lighting Texture Systems

Material Nodes

• More Input options for material nodes (Emit, TransLu. Hard, Alpha, RayMir, etc..)
• Blur node (could be used for blurring procedural textures and for making blurred reflections).

Textures

UV Editor

• Cursor in UV editor to use as pivot and reference (as the 3D cursor does).
• Edge select mode. Edge loop selection, and "Select more/less" (like ctrl +/- in edit mode).
• Tools like: Smooth (the same as "Smooth" in "W" menu, when in Edit Mode), and "Select Swap" option.

Playback

• Ability to play audio when doing playback of video files with soundtrack (not only video as currently) (PLAY button or CTRL+F11 feature)

  intrr: A quick "hack" to do this is to load the video file into a sequencer screen, and then press ALT-A.