Minutes from 48th OpenVDB TSC meeting, May 7th, 2020, (EDT)

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

Additional Attendees: Johannes Meng (Intel), JT Nelson (Blender),
Andre Pradhana (DWA), Bruce Chernia (Intel)

Regrets: *Peter* C.

Agenda:

1) Confirm quorum
2) Secretary
3) Google Summer of Code
4) ASWF TAC Meeting Update
5) Forum Posts
6) Promotional Videos
7) AX Presentation
8) Next Meeting

1) Quorum was confirmed.

2) Secretary was Dan Bailey

3) Google Summer of Code

The ASWF was only awarded three slots for all five projects by Google. OpenVDB
have given up their slot in favour of other projects which had stronger
submissions. There's motivation to collectively accept our best submissions as
each successful GSOC project will make it more likely Google will give us more
slots next year. Dan to reach out to our candidate(s) and encourage their
contribution or re-submission for next year.

4) ASWF TAC Meeting Update

Ken attended the recent TAC meeting and gave a quick summary. The ASWF is
looking to create an ASWF fund to help support developers affected by Covid19 as
many companies are scaling down or furloughing employees.

5) Forum Posts

Windows build should work now. Nick to reply to recent post which is related to
building the OpenVDB Houdini plugin on Windows using Python3.

6) Promotional Videos

Hard to find the time to assemble videos, but all see the value in doing so to
building the community and attracting new developers to the library. Ken
proposed that AX might be a good candidate.

7) AX Presentation

Nick gave an overview on AX. The plan for integration into OpenVDB is to start
with the core OpenVDB AX library, then look to tackle the tools and the Houdini
SOP soon after that. Some discussion about the level of integration. The key
question is whether it should be an option to the core library itself that would
require LLVM as a dependency or as a separate AX library that depends on the
core OpenVDB library (and LLVM). While the latter is the simplest, there are
some challenges. There is an extension to the VDB viewer that can support AX
which would result in a cyclic dependency chain. The Python module may also be
problematic with this model. General agreement that the unit tests should remain
part of the core library, but perhaps this is an opportunity to reconsider where
the binaries and Python module should live. With CMake now being the primary
build system, restructuring the library is easier. Decision is to continue with
AX being a separate library, but more discussion needed on the other questions.

8) Next Meeting

May 14th 2020. 2pm-3pm EDT (GMT-4).
