Minutes from 41st OpenVDB TSC meeting, February 20th, 2020, (GMT)

Attendees: *Nick* A., *Dan* B., *Jeff* L., *Ken* M.

Additional Attendees: Bruce Chernia (Intel), JT Nelson (Blender)

Regrets: *Peter* C.

Agenda:

1) Confirm quorum
2) Secretary

1) Quorum was confirmed.

2) Secretary was Jeff Lait

3) PR 455

Looks good.  But Peter suggested he did not want to merge?

Resolved: Add and name the C++ tool guassianSharpen, but keep the UI name
Sharpen.

4) Default branch

Default branch is now Develop.  We must change branch when we do PRs.

5) VDB Merge

The initial round of feedback on the UI has been read.  Another push
will be done for final verification.

The confusing Activity Union toggle Will be moved into the activity collation
options.

6) JT Nelson

Working on Blender integration of VDB.  Have a fracture modifier integrated.
Working on crushing technology.

Adding solid geometry support.

Should there be blender path in the openvdb directory?  We've not maintained
Maya branch well.  We should consider outreach to Autodesk to see if they can
maintain it.

7) Roadmap

What does priority mean?  Personal affiliation vs OpenVDB priority?

We decided this is some combination of the two.

a) AX

A new release next week.  Performance improvements.  End of March will be ready
for feature branch.  Needs documentation and testing.  Language spec still
incoming.  Can prioritize the spec.  Spec is currently in Doxygen and private,
Will be ported to Google Doc for commenting.

b) Fast Sweeping

PR exists, not yet pushed.  Very close.

c) Sharpening

Discussed this meeting.

d) Counting Tools

Agreed it can live in both places.  Leave for Google Summer of Code

e) Merging Tools

Part of VDB Merge project, ongoing.


f) Topology Tools

Moving tree API to tool and accelerate.  Likely want to deprecate tree methods.

g) Fill Tools

Straight forward method to move off tree and into tools.

h) Densify

Similar to Fill Tools

i) BBox

Similar to Fill Tools

j) Extrema

More complications.  Confusion exists now, is easy to make very slow by
accident.  Should be separate tool.

k) Mask/Bool Resample

Low res -> High res has to be optimized.

l) Reducing Memory Footprint

No discussion noted.

m) Adding more interpolation types

Higher order, monotonic cubic

o) Point Merging

Ongoing phases.

p) Surfacing

VDB From particles is used a lot for surfacing.  Need better surfacing.  Artist
prefered fast base surface and then do their own adjustments.  But likely time
to look at again.

Add a single SOP that does the single method?  Like Zhu-Bridson.  But
rasterization is the key.  What about MPM kernels?  Similar rasterizer.

Solution seems to have add the rasterization infrastructure and Zhu-Bridson
solution.  This could then be extended to MPM kernels.

q) Mesh Support

Contentious discussion of if this is a good thing.  Some members feel it is
an overreach of what VDB is supposed to be.  Others feel real world production
experience shows it to be an extremely useful component.

Topology information can be passed as light weight information.  Separate side
car of primitive data and topology information.  Works well for changing
topology meshes like fluid meshes.

8) Next meeting

March 5th 2020. 2pm-3pm EST (GMT-5).
