Difference between revisions of "Dev:GoogleSoC/ApplicationForm"

Revision as of 20:27, 10 March 2010

We have missed the SoC so far. Before 2007 we didn't have an application ready in time. We signed up for the 2008 Google SoC, but didn't get accepted. We haven't signed up since then.

Administrators and Mentors

Please read the Summer of Code Mentoring HOWTO.

• Administrator: Konstantin Dmitriev aka Zelgadis, LinkID: zelgadis
• Mentor: Carlos López González aka Genete, LinkID: genete
• Student: Diego Barrios Romero aka Eldruin, LinkID: eldruin
• Backup Mentor: Chris Norman aka pixelgeek, LinkID: pixelgeek
• Backup Administrator: Franco Iacomella aka Yaco, LinkID: yaco

Draft application

Questions from http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/org_app/take/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2010/orgapp (needs registration)

• Organization's Name:
  • Synfig Project Development Team

We have used that name here: http://synfig.org/wiki/Synfig:Copyrights --Zelgadis 06:51, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

• Description:
  • Our team is developing a powerful, industrial-strength vector-based 2D animation software package, called Synfig Studio. It designed from the ground-up for producing feature-film quality animation with fewer people and resources. While there are many other programs currently on the market to aid with the efficient production of 2D animation, we are currently unaware of any other software that can do what our software can.

• Homepage:
  • http://synfig.org/

• Main organization License:
  • GNU GPL v2 or later.

• Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2010? What do you hope to gain by participating?
  • We have student willing to contribute to the project for the next two years. By participating in GSoC we want to get funding for him to increase his motivation and to help complete a particular feature during this summer.

• Did your organization participate in past GSoCs? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation.
  • Unfortunately, no.

• If your organization participated in past GSoCs, please let us know the ratio of students passing to students allocated, e.g. 2006: 3/6 for 3 out of 6 students passed in 2006.
  • Not applicable

• If your organization has not previously participated in GSoC, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?
  • Yes, in 2008.

• What is the URL for your ideas page?
  • http://synfig.org/wiki/Dev:GoogleSoC#Ideas

• What is the main development mailing list for your organization? This question will be shown to students who would like to get more information about applying to your organization for GSoC 2010. If your organization uses more than one list, please make sure to include a description of the list so students know which to use.
  • http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/synfig-devl This one is for development related items.
  • http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/synfig-user This one is for user related items

• Where is the main IRC channel for your organization?
  • #synfig on irc.freenode.net
  • Comment: We keep logs at: http://dooglus.rincevent.net/synfig/logs. Also we use forums for community interaction at: http://synfig.org/forums/

• Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now. Please note that it is a very good idea to ask students to provide you with their contact information as part of your template. Their contact details will not be shared with you automatically via the GSoC 2010 site.
  • No, we do not.

• What criteria did you use to select the individuals who will act as mentors for your organization? Please be as specific as possible:
  • The individual selected as the mentor in the project must have a knowledge of C/C++ and Synfig Studio program code (or it's specific area). It could be easily determined from the svn/git commit history (http://synfig.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=synfig/synfig;a=summary). He also must be a regular on IRC and wiki or forums (see previous http://dooglus.rincevent.net/synfig/logs/, http://synfig.org/Special:Recentchanges and http://synfig.org/forums/). Synfig Studio is an animation program, so the selected mentor should know its common animation concepts: keyframes, waypoints, layers, blend methods and so forth. Selected individuals are highly-motivated, long-standing contributors of the project. Carlos López González (aka Genete) is willing to be a mentor for this student, because he is complying with all these requirements: he is experienced enough with Synfig code (http://cia.vc/stats/author/Carlos%20Lopez), he is experienced in animation (http://www.youtube.com/user/Genete) and more than that - he lives in the same city as the student and they already have direct meetings working on Synfig code.

• What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?
  • We already have student willing to work on the particular project idea during SoC. That student already proved his capabilities by contributing the patches to the source code (http://cia.vc/stats/author/Diego%20Barrios%20Romero). As he lives in the same city as his mentor, the mentor will have the opportunity to visit him personally in case of his disappearance.

• What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?
  • During the SoC we have one backup mentor. If existing mentors become unavailable or unresponsive during the project period a backup mentor will take the place of absent mentor. But the probability of our mentor disappearing is very low because he has been an active member of the Synfig community since 2006 and has declared himself as a very responsible person.

• What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?
  • Student and mentor have already met directly (offline) and have discussed their plans for development. The student is contributing to the wiki, participating in forum discussions and hangs out on the IRC channel.

• What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?
  • The participating student has made his decision to choose Synfig as his "final career project". That means that he will stick with the project for at least 2 years.

• Is there anything else you would like to tell the Google Summer of Code program administration team?
  • We strongly believe that Synfig Studio is a software that has no equivalent in the world of Free Open Source Software. It's already used by artists all around the world to produce animation (see Synfig Demo Reel - http://www.archive.org/download/SynfigDemoReel/sdr_final_512kb.mp4, Cut The Circle Animated Short - http://www.icaro.org.ar/proyectos/ctc/doku.php, Morevna Project - http://morevnaproject.org/). It would be a great help to the project's maturity and to it's regular development to be chosen as a Mentor Organization.

Ideas

As we already have a mentor and a student defined, they chose a particular idea to work on:

Implement OpenGL render engine

You may notice that Synfig Studio is SLOW, making it practically unusable on hardware that is over 6 years old. The biggest reason for this is that all of the color calculations are done in floating point -- because Synfig Studio was built from the ground up with High-Dynamic-Range Imaging in mind. HOWEVER, this will not be the case forever.

Today's graphics processors are powerful and we want to speed up Synfig Studio by implementing the rendering via OpenGL.

First attempts for such implementation were made earlier (1), (2) and the first tests showed speed increase up to 14 times.

Unfortunately the person who initiated the development of the OpenGL branch was unable to continue development because of personal issues and the branch were abandoned.

We want to pursue implementing full OpenGL-powered rendering for Synfig Studio. That will result in faster redraw for the workarea during the animation construction and thus make a much better user experience. A good performance of the application during playback and screen redraw is vital for implementing other resource-consuming features like bones and sound support (we need close to real-time response for that).