From BlenderWiki
Weekly Report #01
Hi Blenderheads, Sculptors and Developers,
First short week is over and it is time to do a first report about what I have done so far. I started with a smaller feature to improve the sculpting toolset:
Adaptive spacing
The spacing system within sculpting, controls how the individual dabs are placed when drawing on a mesh. A big spacing value results in a dotted line whilst a small spacing value results in a smooth continuous line. Without adaptive mode the spacing between each dab is calculated by the distance to the last dab on screen in 2D coordinates. This results in a lower dab density and artifacts when the surface curves away from the view. With the new adaptive spacing, the distance is calculated depending on the distance drawn on the surface in 3D.
I pushed my first version and a cleanup commit to my branch so people can check it out and can give some feedback! It is not finished yet but it is not to far away from done. The branch is currently named “soc-2017-sculpting_improvements” but will most likely renamed later:
https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/B/browse/soc-2017-sculpting_improvements/
You can check out the original discussion about the adaptive spacing here:
https://developer.blender.org/T50939
Silhouette Planning
Besides the adaptive spacing, i started working on my main project the Silhouette Brush. Most of the effort went into planning. It turns out, the “Silhouette Brush” might not even become a brush like the others. Its usage differs from the other brushes which allow to draw and get instant feedback about it. With the Silhouette Tool an area is first defined from which a 3D shape will get generated. After digging the code I decided not to implement the tool like the other brushes. Instead I plan to create an operator for it. Here are two mockups illustrating the case:
Brush version: http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=116024 Operator version: http://pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=116023
My biggest concern with an operator tool is that the workflow diverges too far from the other brushes. Therefore the current plan is to implement it right next to the other brushes, similar to how you can do grease pencil drawings while sculpting (press d).
As you can see it is in a very early development stage and will change a lot.
To get feedback on my first ideas I also created a thread on BA which i will update.
You can find it here: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?427124-GSoC-2017-Silhouette-Brush
