After meeting Ton at SIGGRAPH, elements of further development seem clearer:
- due to Freestyle’s internal geometric data format and the calculations based on it, there is no easy solution for using Freestyle on strands. I’ll have to study more into detail if a conversion to triangles is possible.
- strokes will be rendered by Blender’s internal renderer in separate layers, with one style module per Freestyle layer. Hopefully, this limitation will be eased when the node-based system is in place.
- a lot of user feedback needs to be gathered about how to ease using and tweaking style modules. Either a front-end to important style modules could be built (therefore having the corresponding parameters configurable in a Blender panel), or style modules could be gathered on a web site and tested on simple scenes (similarly to http://www.blender-materials.org), made by more “technical” Blender users.
Usability is no doubt a big challenge to make Freestyle accessible to a larger array of users. I would therefore appreciate receiving more feedback on how to improve the current model and propositions.
I am also looking for someone to create a Windows build of my branch. I am wishing to collaborate closely with that person to get it working for all of the Blender users who have requested a Windows version of my GSoC work. I received some code patches during the summer from a couple of you but I am not sure I can use them with my last revision. I wish to incorporate them now. The summer program being over, I think it is important to make sure this type of integration is done to allow a bigger pool of users to test the code. While I am it, I am open to resolving any bug you might encounter using my branch.
Going back to school and settling to a new place these next few days, I cannot work on these issues right away. I should be able to start working on the project again later next week.
