Konstantin's weekly report #2

Development Development reports
#1

The main highlight of the last week - we got two new features implemented by Ivan url=http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=31271998[/url], url=http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=31271990[/url].

First feature allows you to quickly outline any region and fill any outline. That’s it - just right click any outline or region and choose “Make Outline”, “Make Advanced Outline” or “Make Region” option. No more tedious procedures of manual linking.

Second feature allows you to exclude any layer from rendering. The layer will remain visible on the workarea when you edit the composition, but it will not appear in the final render (and in the preview). This is very useful to put guides or comments into your files which shouldn’t appear in the final image. Personally, I plan to use this feature in our character template to hide the control widgets.

In my previous report I didn’t mention that Carlos have finished fixing the important bug in Cairo renderer. Fixing this bug have resulted in significant rewrite of Cairo rendering engine. Also, he have fixed another nasty bug, introduced by recent merge of bones branch. After all those changes I consider the status of current master branch as pretty much usable without much harm for end users. So, I’m going to dedicate some time to prepare development snapshots during this week.

That’s all for today. See you next week!

#2

Great work! Especially the first feature - often asked for but tough to explain to people.

Chris

#3

I’m worried about the slowdown of Cairo (new renderer version) in the Windows binaries. It would be a pita that it were full confirmed. :frowning:
-G

#4

I suspect this is related with Cairo rewrite. I can do several builds at different points of git history to test.

#5

Wonderful news - it’s incredible to see huge improvements in Synfig coming every week. The non-rendered layer is particularly useful as it allows you to show intent - that you intend a layer not to be in the final render.

I have many files with non-rendered layers switched off, but you end up with ugly layer names " – GUIDE" or something and it’s easy to forget whether or not a layer should be included.

#6

Would be nice to be able to make outline/advaced outline/ region from Geometry Layer such as Star/Rectangle/Circle.

#7

I notice that the centres are not linked, so if you create an outline of an object that is not in the centre of the canvas, the outline is in a different position to the shape.

Would it be a good idea to link the Origin as well as the Vertices so the outline always appears around the shape?

EDIT TO ADD: By the way, this is a wonderful feature and will save huge amounts of time!

#8

Already requested!
synfig.org/issues/thebuggeni … issues/471
-G

#9

Great minds think alike :laughing:

#10

Fixed.

#11

Is it planned to “include to rendering” feature for excluded one ?