[gentoo-dev] [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[gentoo-dev] [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Sebastian Pipping]

Hello!


Gentoo's official logo originates from a Blender file [1] created by
Daniel Robbis over 8 years ago.  He used Blender 2.04 and Python 1.6 at
that time.

When rendering that .blend file with Blender 2.49b (or a more recent
version), Blender does not apply the reflection texture needed [2] to
give the metal look that you know.  I don't know why that is.  All I
know is that Blender does find the file: it's not about the location.

Trying Blender 2.04 binaries on a Windows VM, it turned out that Blender
2.04 is still able to render our logo as expected.  In my eyes rendering
our logo should not depend on a proprietary operating system or binary
blobs.  The source tarball of Blender 2.04 is hard to find (if available
at all), the available sources of 2.03 [7] are incomplete.  Binaries of
2.04 [8] are 32bit only and crash on startup on my system.

The earliest source tarball after 2.04 that upstream offers for download
[3] is Blender 2.26.  That version does not compile with GCC 4.4 and
turns out to be home with Python 2.2.  In hope that this version would
be able to render our logo in the way that Blender 2.04 did, I tried
fixing compilation against GCC 4.4.5.  That worked [4].  The need for
Python 2.2 became clear when all of Python 2.4, 2.4 and 2.6 made it
segfault in Python related code instantly.  Therefore I tried bringing
our old Python 2.2-r7 ebuild to life.  Smaller changes like -fPIC were
needed but it wasn't too hard.  You can find the Python 2.2-r8 in the
betagarden overlay [6].  In the end I could do

  sudo eselect python set python2.2

to compile and run Blender 2.26 and make it render g-metal.blend (after
adjusting the path to the reflection texture) with metal look in a
resolution of a few megapixel on transparent background.
I have the impression, that the rending is the same as of Blender 2.04.


However, this is not a good long-term solution.  For instance Portage
doesn't operate under Python 2.2 so an ebuild for Blender 2.25 is a
tricky thing to do nowadays.

Among the options I see is the following:

 A) Find out how to render g-metal.blend with recent Blender
    (2.57b at best) to give pixel-identical results to Blender 2.04.
    Needs an advanced Blender user ideally.

 B) Port Blender 2.26 to a recent version of Python.

Are there any other options?

What do you think?

I would also like to encourage you to reproduce the process I described
to spot any problems I overlooked.

Thanks for reading up to this point.

Best,



Sebastian


[1]
http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-src/gentoo-web/blend/g-metal.blend
[2]
http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-src/gentoo-web/blend/metallandscape1.jpg
[3] http://download.blender.org/source/
[4] http://git.goodpoint.de/?p=blender-2.26.git;a=summary
[5]
http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/dev-lang/python/python-2.2-r7.ebuild?hideattic=0&view=markup
[6]
http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/betagarden.git;a=commitdiff;h=a3712c45dee61717cbc09b39ff868af7a3ccaa89
[7] http://download.blender.org/source/chest/blender_2.03_tree.tar.gz
[8] http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.04/

Re: [gentoo-dev] [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Michał Górny]

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On Fri, 29 Apr 2011 02:29:42 +0200
Sebastian Pipping <sping@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Gentoo's official logo originates from a Blender file [1] created by
> Daniel Robbis over 8 years ago.  He used Blender 2.04 and Python 1.6
> at that time.
> 
> When rendering that .blend file with Blender 2.49b (or a more recent
> version), Blender does not apply the reflection texture needed [2] to
> give the metal look that you know.  I don't know why that is.  All I
> know is that Blender does find the file: it's not about the location.
>
> [...]
> 
> Among the options I see is the following:
> 
>  A) Find out how to render g-metal.blend with recent Blender
>     (2.57b at best) to give pixel-identical results to Blender 2.04.
>     Needs an advanced Blender user ideally.
> 
>  B) Port Blender 2.26 to a recent version of Python.
> 
> Are there any other options?

Maybe it's time to make the SVG variant the official logo, and leave
the blender file as a historical variant.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

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[gentoo-dev] Re: [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Fri, 29 Apr 2011, Michał Górny wrote:

>> Among the options I see is the following:
>> 
>>  A) Find out how to render g-metal.blend with recent Blender
>>     (2.57b at best) to give pixel-identical results to Blender 2.04.
>>     Needs an advanced Blender user ideally.
>> 
>>  B) Port Blender 2.26 to a recent version of Python.
>> 
>> Are there any other options?

Could you bisect Blender to find out why it doesn't work with the new
version?

> Maybe it's time to make the SVG variant the official logo, and leave
> the blender file as a historical variant.

The Blender variant looks better though, especially at high
resolutions.

Ulrich

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Michał Górny]

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On Sun, 1 May 2011 06:10:02 +0200
Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> wrote:

> > Maybe it's time to make the SVG variant the official logo, and leave
> > the blender file as a historical variant.
> 
> The Blender variant looks better though, especially at high
> resolutions.

Isn't it possible to create a better SVG then? I think such a variant
would be much more portable and reproducible than blender files.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Sebastian Pipping]

On 05/01/2011 06:10 AM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> Could you bisect Blender to find out why it doesn't work with the new
> version?

If 2.26 still produced good results, 2.37a already does not.  Bisecting
involves fixing compilation for each version.  I stopped getting 2.30 to
compile because it seemed to take forever (longer than fixing 2.26,
2.37a and 2.40 together) and two people had their hands on a port of the
logo to Blender 2.57 by then, one of them still has.  It's too early to
give details.  What I can say is that personally I would want a very
close match in case of a Blender-based replacement, closer than what I
have seen so far.  It still seems possible though.

Best,



Sebastian

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Sebastian Pipping]

On 05/01/2011 08:06 AM, Michał Górny wrote:
> Isn't it possible to create a better SVG then?

It may be.  Of the three variants trying to match the Blender version
that I have seen so far, none is a replacement of equal quality on the
bling scale to my impression.  They feel like tradeoffs, not like the
real thing.  Maybe they try to come too close to the ray-traced
rendering, but I'm not sure if I really want to propose a different
direction either.


> I think such a variant
> would be much more portable and reproducible than blender files.

What I dislike about the idea of moving to a new logo is that we would
give up part of our culture just because we were unable to move it from
past to present to future.  Imagine this dialog:

 A: "Hey guys, I noticed you have a new logo?"
 B: "Yeah, blender rendering changed - so we dropped it."

I don't really want to be B in that dialog.  I see the pragmatic aspect
of moving to SVG but it also has the taste of giving up to me.  To
vercome that taste, a very strong replacement would be needed.

If we replace the Blender "g" we may also need a substitute for the
red-white Blender "gentoo" as seen at
http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/*docroot*/images/gentoo-new.gif
if just for the sake of consistency.

I am wondering what effect the Blender nature of a logo does have on the
capability and will of people to create fan art based on it compared to
an SVG version.  It seems like there is only a handful of 3D Gentoo
wallpapers but does that mean it would have been more with an SVG
version, instead?  On what levels could SVG work as a catalyst?

If we ported the logo to Blender 2.57 now: what can we do to not be
running after Blender rendering changes for all time or to reduce their
impact on us?  Is this a natural cost or an evil one?

Just my 2 cents.

Best,



Sebastian

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Sebastian Pipping]

On 05/01/2011 06:10 AM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> Could you bisect Blender to find out why it doesn't work with the new
> version?

I tried a few more versions now.  While Blender 2.31a still applies the
reflection texture, Blender 2.32 does not anymore.  At least on
<http://download.blender.org/source/> these two appear as consecutive
releases.  Both of these seem to run fine with Python 2.4.6, which is
still in Gentoo.  Without good image diffs, I cannot tell for sure if
the rendering has changed since Blender 2.04.

Best,



Sebastian

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Michał Górny]

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On Thu, 05 May 2011 04:31:10 +0200
Sebastian Pipping <sping@gentoo.org> wrote:

> > I think such a variant
> > would be much more portable and reproducible than blender files.
> 
> What I dislike about the idea of moving to a new logo is that we would
> give up part of our culture just because we were unable to move it
> from past to present to future.  Imagine this dialog:
> 
>  A: "Hey guys, I noticed you have a new logo?"
>  B: "Yeah, blender rendering changed - so we dropped it."

Well, the concept is to have the same logo but in new format. Of
course, that would require some of professional work to ensure
best-match rendering if even possible.

And I don't think it's really giving up. It's just moving
to the future, putting back good, ol' things in the museum. However,
it'd be still best to fix it.

> If we replace the Blender "g" we may also need a substitute for the
> red-white Blender "gentoo" as seen at
> http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/*docroot*/images/gentoo-new.gif
> if just for the sake of consistency.

True.

> I am wondering what effect the Blender nature of a logo does have on
> the capability and will of people to create fan art based on it
> compared to an SVG version.  It seems like there is only a handful of
> 3D Gentoo wallpapers but does that mean it would have been more with
> an SVG version, instead?  On what levels could SVG work as a catalyst?

As I see the concept of a logo, it is bound to a pretty strict
rendering. It's fun to have it in 3D but I'm not sure if, say, rotating
it or changing lighting would still make it the same logo.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Marijn]

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On 05/05/11 07:36, Sebastian Pipping wrote:
> On 05/01/2011 06:10 AM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>> Could you bisect Blender to find out why it doesn't work with the new
>> version?
> 
> I tried a few more versions now.  While Blender 2.31a still applies the
> reflection texture, Blender 2.32 does not anymore.  At least on
> <http://download.blender.org/source/> these two appear as consecutive
> releases.  Both of these seem to run fine with Python 2.4.6, which is
> still in Gentoo.  Without good image diffs, I cannot tell for sure if
> the rendering has changed since Blender 2.04.

I confess I know next to nothing about Blender, but what exactly makes
it so hard to port the logo to a recent version?

Marijn
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Sebastian Pipping]

On 05/05/2011 03:44 PM, Marijn wrote:
> I confess I know next to nothing about Blender, but what exactly makes
> it so hard to port the logo to a recent version?

My experience modelling in Blender is zero, so it's hard to tell to
right now me.  From a few cases of remaking vector art from raster
images in Inkscape, I can imagine that it's difficult to get very close
in Blender too, if not more.  I hope to have a better answer soon.

Best,



Sebastian

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Matthew Summers]

On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 11:47 AM, Sebastian Pipping <sping@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 05/05/2011 03:44 PM, Marijn wrote:
>> I confess I know next to nothing about Blender, but what exactly makes
>> it so hard to port the logo to a recent version?
>
> My experience modelling in Blender is zero, so it's hard to tell to
> right now me.  From a few cases of remaking vector art from raster
> images in Inkscape, I can imagine that it's difficult to get very close
> in Blender too, if not more.  I hope to have a better answer soon.
>
> Best,
>
>
>
> Sebastian
>
>

This may be a nice opportunity to reach out to the blender community
and ask for assistance and/or training. The information from such
interaction could easily be documented to form a corpus for use in the
future.

-- 
Matthew W. Summers
Gentoo Foundation Inc.

Re: [gentoo-dev] [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender,2.04, Python 2.2

[Mario Bodemann]

Hi folks,

Sebastian told me about the problem of not being able to render the
logo in recent blender versions. So this is were I stepped in: I tried
it and used the geometries from the old .blender file, and the
yellowish reflecting image.

Problem was to recreate the exact representation of the original logo,
by new means of rendering and relighting. I tried to solve them by
creating a new material for the g and carefully adjusting the
parameters. Also I added a new modifier for the geometry to get rid of
the ugly seam at the sharp edge. (This does not modify the geometry,
only the rendering of it)

However, here are my preliminary results:

 - the modified .blend-file[1] (tested with blender 2.57b)
 - new rendered logo image [2]
 - original logo image (for comparison)[3]

What do you think?

Greetings, Mario.

[1]
http://git.goodpoint.de/?p=g-metal-blend.git;a=blob_plain;f=g-metal.blend;hb=master
[2]
http://git.goodpoint.de/?p=g-metal-blend.git;a=blob_plain;f=g-metal.png;hb=images
[3]
http://git.goodpoint.de/?p=g-metal-blend.git;a=blob_plain;f=g-metal-orig.png;hb=images

Re: [gentoo-dev] [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender,2.04, Python 2.2

[David Abbott]

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 5:15 AM, Mario Bodemann <theclaw@cs.tu-berlin.de> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Sebastian told me about the problem of not being able to render the
> logo in recent blender versions. So this is were I stepped in: I tried
> it and used the geometries from the old .blender file, and the
> yellowish reflecting image.
>
> Problem was to recreate the exact representation of the original logo,
> by new means of rendering and relighting. I tried to solve them by
> creating a new material for the g and carefully adjusting the
> parameters. Also I added a new modifier for the geometry to get rid of
> the ugly seam at the sharp edge. (This does not modify the geometry,
> only the rendering of it)
>
> However, here are my preliminary results:
>
>  - the modified .blend-file[1] (tested with blender 2.57b)
>  - new rendered logo image [2]
>  - original logo image (for comparison)[3]
>
> What do you think?
>
> Greetings, Mario.
>
> [1]
> http://git.goodpoint.de/?p=g-metal-blend.git;a=blob_plain;f=g-metal.blend;hb=master
> [2]
> http://git.goodpoint.de/?p=g-metal-blend.git;a=blob_plain;f=g-metal.png;hb=images
> [3]
> http://git.goodpoint.de/?p=g-metal-blend.git;a=blob_plain;f=g-metal-orig.png;hb=images
>
>
Hi Mario,
Thanks for taking the time to do this, looks great by me.
Regards,
David
-- 
David Abbott (dabbott)
Gentoo
http://dev.gentoo.org/~dabbott/

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Sebastian Pipping]

Hi!


Please excuse bringing up a topic as old as this, again.
Only bringing up half, actually.


On 05.05.2011 07:36, Sebastian Pipping wrote:
> On 05/01/2011 06:10 AM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>> Could you bisect Blender to find out why it doesn't work with the new
>> version?
> 
> I tried a few more versions now.  While Blender 2.31a still applies the
> reflection texture, Blender 2.32 does not anymore.  At least on
> <http://download.blender.org/source/> these two appear as consecutive
> releases.

While doing digital cleaning over here I ran into my patches to make
ancient Blender compile again for Gentoo logo rendering.

I have streamlined those into ebuilds and a dedicated overlay

  https://github.com/gentoo/blender-gentoo-logo-overlay

and filled the void in the Gentoo wiki

  https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Artwork/Artwork#The_blue_.22g.22_logo

with a few words and pointers.

The ebuilds are:

  dev-lang/python/
    python-2.2-r8.ebuild

  media-gfx/blender/
    blender-2.26.ebuild
    blender-2.31a.ebuild

So whoever needs to render Blender files from 2003 again at some point
should find working ebuilds to do that.  Feel free to join keeping them
in good installable shape.

Thanks and best,



Sebastian

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Diego Elio Pettenò]

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On 23 February 2015 at 22:11, Sebastian Pipping <sping@gentoo.org> wrote:

> I have streamlined those into ebuilds and a dedicated overlay
>

Thanks!


> So whoever needs to render Blender files from 2003 again at some point
> should find working ebuilds to do that.  Feel free to join keeping them
> in good installable shape.
>
>
Maybe it's time to rethink the logo and get someone to make a more
future-proof SVG? :)

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Daniel Campbell]

On 02/23/2015 02:29 PM, Diego Elio Pettenò wrote:
> On 23 February 2015 at 22:11, Sebastian Pipping <sping@gentoo.org
> <mailto:sping@gentoo.org>> wrote:
> 
>     I have streamlined those into ebuilds and a dedicated overlay
> 
> 
> Thanks!
>  
> 
>     So whoever needs to render Blender files from 2003 again at some point
>     should find working ebuilds to do that.  Feel free to join keeping them
>     in good installable shape.
> 
> 
> Maybe it's time to rethink the logo and get someone to make a more
> future-proof SVG? :) 
> 

Can't the logo be remade in a more recent version of Blender? Assuming
you can run two separate Blender instances, it would mostly be copying
the poly/vertex values from one to the other.

I'm not versed in 3-D but it would surprise me if there wasn't a
standard mesh format.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender 2.04, Python 2.2

[Sebastian Pipping]

On 23.02.2015 23:34, Daniel Campbell wrote:
> Can't the logo be remade in a more recent version of Blender? Assuming
> you can run two separate Blender instances, it would mostly be copying
> the poly/vertex values from one to the other.
> 
> I'm not versed in 3-D but it would surprise me if there wasn't a
> standard mesh format.

There was an attempt to port to a recent version of Blender.  When
comparing renderings, the result is close, but not 1:1.  Please check
Mario's reply of 2011 in this very thread
(http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/70870).

Best,



Sebastian

Re: [gentoo-dev] [rfc] Rendering the official Gentoo logo / Blender,2.04, Python 2.2

[Sebastian Pipping]

On 07.06.2011 11:15, Mario Bodemann wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> Sebastian told me about the problem of not being able to render the
> logo in recent blender versions. So this is were I stepped in: I tried
> it and used the geometries from the old .blender file, and the
> yellowish reflecting image.
> 
> Problem was to recreate the exact representation of the original logo,
> by new means of rendering and relighting. I tried to solve them by
> creating a new material for the g and carefully adjusting the
> parameters. Also I added a new modifier for the geometry to get rid of
> the ugly seam at the sharp edge. (This does not modify the geometry,
> only the rendering of it)
> 
> However, here are my preliminary results:
> 
>  - the modified .blend-file[1] (tested with blender 2.57b)
>  - new rendered logo image [2]
>  - original logo image (for comparison)[3]
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> Greetings, Mario.
> 
> [1]
> http://git.goodpoint.de/?p=g-metal-blend.git;a=blob_plain;f=g-metal.blend;hb=master
> [2]
> http://git.goodpoint.de/?p=g-metal-blend.git;a=blob_plain;f=g-metal.png;hb=images
> [3]
> http://git.goodpoint.de/?p=g-metal-blend.git;a=blob_plain;f=g-metal-orig.png;hb=images

For the record, I have resurrected that repository at

  https://github.com/gentoo/blender-gentoo-logo

now.  For the images [2][3], have a look at the "images" branch:

  https://github.com/gentoo/blender-gentoo-logo/tree/images

Best,



Sebastian