Merge pull request #1518 from sideeffects/send_upstream_tscnotes20221101

Meeting notes for Nov 1st, 2022

Author: jmlait

tsc/meetings/2022-22-01.md

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+Minutes from 153rd OpenVDB TSC meeting, November 1st, 2022
+
+Attendees: *Jeff* L., *Andre* P, *Dan* B., *Ken* M.
+
+Additional Attendees: Greg Hurst (United Therapeutics), Sebastian Gaida
+
+Regrets: *Nick* A., *Rich* J.
+
+Agenda:
+
+1) Confirm quorum
+2) Secretary
+3) OpenVDB release
+4) PyBindings 11
+5) Audit of DCCs
+6) File IO
+7) VDB Max
+8) CI
+9) Next meeting
+
+------------
+
+1) Confirm quorum
+
+Quorum is present.
+
+2) Secretary
+
+Secretary is Jeff Lait.
+ 
+3) OpenVDB release
+
+Success, thanks to Andre!  Mostly worked smootly, but we have to
+remember to spell check changes.  It was very useful that we had
+pre-run the weeklies.
+
+A PR is present for the website update for Greg's help docs.
+
+CHANGES.txt needs the 10.0.1 change and spell checking. 
+
+Greg will post a intro tutorial on the Wolfram community when website
+is updated.
+
+We'll wait for Wolfram to okay with being listed as an adopter before
+we add them to the adopter list.
+
+We will not update example version numbers in the release check list.
+
+4) PyBindings 11
+
+Issue 1124.  matthewdcong is looking at building python bindings for
+NVidia and plans on adding this to the OpenVDB.
+
+ILM has boost::python but is a different approach.  But doesn't help
+us move away from boost::python.
+
+Hope is the new one would be good enough for ILM to eventually switch;
+but their version probably is too deeply integrated to do.
+
+Matthew should join and present his work so far and what we'd like it
+to look like.  Eg, vdb_tool-like?
+
+ILM has "VDB Group" - associated vdb primitives, like a velocity field
+and distnace field.  Needs to be some mechanism to pair up/collate
+VDBs.  Hard to integrate into Houdini where VDB are atomic.  Within a
+group topology does not have to be shared, but by convention they
+often are.  Groups are disjoint.   Could be a directory name per vdb.
+
+5) Audit of DCCs
+
+Larry Gritz has started a spreadsheet for how long things are
+supported by various DCCs and what studios are still using.  We tend
+to be on the leading edge in deprecating quickly.
+
+Most are following VFX Platform and Houdini.  
+
+6) File IO
+
+Can we remove all the IO code from tree/Hierarchy into a separate
+.h/.cc?  Then do all the IO through that mechanism.  This will make a
+new file io easier.  Hopefully user still uses Archive, it just is
+implemented elsewhere.  
+
+This may require always initialization openvdb, even for writing.  A
+lot of root node methods require an absolute coordinate, so makes
+working with offsets very hard in the file io.  
+
+Can friend be added without changing ABI?   
+
+Plan is to remove support for the pre-open-source file formats.
+
+Support for 1.0 on will remain.  Saving into the new format would be
+opt-in, so people can use once their pipeline has migrated.
+
+7) VDB Max
+
+This is pending, has been tested internally and is ready to push up
+soon.  Designed around fog volumes.  
+
+8) CI
+
+Are some of the machines disappearing soon?  At some point we have to
+pay for these.  Goal is to use November stats to figure out how much
+we have to pay for.  ASWF is tracking costs, but currently it is for
+free.  Weekly CI outside of a release can use lower powered machines
+as it is not critical.  There are GPU resources now available; we
+might want to add GPU unit tests.
+
+The latest weekly build cost 12 hours of billable compute.
+
+9) Next meeting
+
+Next meeting is on November 9th, 2022. 2pm-3pm EDT (GMT-4).