Minutes from 141st OpenVDB TSC meeting, July 26th, 2022, (EDT)

Attendees: *Ken* M., *Jeff* L., *Nick* A., *Andre* P

Additional Attendees: JT Nelson (Blender), Greg Hurst (United Therapeutics),
Sebastian Gaida, Karl Marrett, Peter Cheng (DreamWorks Animation),
Bruce Cherniak (Intel)

Regrets: *Dan* B., *Rich* J.

Agenda:

1) Confirm quorum
2) Secretary
3) Forum
4) Third party root folder
5) PR-1317
6) PR-1441 and PR-1442
7) Wolfram Script in the CI
8) PR-1381 and 1432
9) Houdini 19.5 uses OpenVDB ABI 9
10) OpenVDB Asset
11) Discussion about custom data per node
12) Next Meeting

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1) Confirm quorum

Quorum is present.

2) Secretary

Secretary is Andre Pradhana.

3) Forum

Nothing to discuss.

4) Third party root folder

Nick is trying to get VDB into a place where we can host external/third party
code in a reliable way, i.e. a root folder directory to host third-party.

5) PR-1317

Nick expresses his wish to have AX to be more closely integrated with vdb_tool
during development. The tricky technical part is to get LLVM to work on
Windows.

Ken took out the examples that were probably more confusing than educational.
Each example given serves a purpose and is useful.

Ken is working on adding Python as an option, which is an alternative to the
reverse-polish notation that is currently implemented. Jeff mentions that
perhaps the more useful way to proceed is to make this tool work inside of a
Python code; but this is a different product than what Ken is aiming for.

We plan to get this in VDB 10. We will review it as it is, not as what we wish
it can be. We can talk about adding amendments in the future.

6) PR-1441 and PR-1442

Nick adds code coverage for website deployment and added CI for Numpy.
It will be good for Dan to review the PR related to the CI.

7) Wolfram Script in the CI

Greg Hurst will follow up on getting the Wolfram Script in the CI. Greg
is writing a documentation on the Mathematica Link.

8) PR-1381 and 1432

Jeff asks for a review on PR-1381, where he makes CSG Difference Operation
to automatically prune degenerate tiles. PR-1432 is a Houdini SOP to do
convex-hull based activation. It depends on convex-hull tool in Houdini,
hence it is a SOP and not an OpenVDB tool. This is very good for clipping
an OpenVDB grid because it can activate a region based on a convex-hull.

9) Houdini 19.5 uses OpenVDB ABI 9

Jeff confirms that Houdini 19.5 uses OpenVDB ABI 9.

10) OpenVDB Asset

JT mentions that he works with the asset repository group. He mentions a desire
to get a few OpenVDB asset examples. He will mention this topic again after
SIGGRAPH.

11) Discussion about custom data per node

Nick mentions a discussion he has about adding a custom data per node. We have
transient data in OpenVDB, but a user may want a more complex specification.
NanoVDB allows you to store min, max, and average per leaf node. Ken mentions
that he is developing a channel accessor in NanoVDB that allows you
to access data living in a side-car.

12) Next Meeting

Next meeting is August 2nd, 2022. 12pm-1pm EST (GMT-5).
