Difference between revisions of "Dev:GoogleSoC/ApplicationForm"

Revision as of 17:19, 10 March 2010

We 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: ???
• 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 2008? What do you hope to gain by participating?
  • We have student willing to participate in the project for next two years. By participating in GSoC we want to get a funding for him to increase his motivation and to complete 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 2007.

• What's 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: 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 haven't

• What criteria did you use to select the individuals who will act as mentors for your organization? Please be as specific as possible:
  • Individual selected as mentor in project must have a knowledge of C/C++ and Synfig Studio program code (or its 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. Selected individuals are highly-motivated, long-standing contributors of the project. Carlos López González aka Genete willing to be a mentor for the this student, because he is comply all those 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 town 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 proofed his capabilities by contributing the patches to the source code (http://cia.vc/stats/author/Diego%20Barrios%20Romero). As he lives in the same town as his mentor, mentor will have 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 backup mentor takes place of absence mentor. But the probability of our mentor disappearance is very low, because he is an active member of Synfig community since 2006 and declared himself as 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 are already met directly (offline) and discussed their plans for development. Student is contributing to wiki, participate in forums discussions and hangs on IRC channel.

• What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?
  • Participating student have 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 any equivalence in the world of Free Open Source Software. That's our highest motivation and because of that we are putting all our effort to keep Synfig Studio project alive. It would be a great help for the project maturity and to take some inertia for regular development, to be chosen as a Mentor Organization.

Ideas

As we already have mentor and student defined, they chose 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.

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

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

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

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