Move the `ME_SHARP` flag for mesh edges to a generic boolean
attribute. This will help allow changing mesh edges to just a pair
of integers, giving performance improvements. In the future it could
also give benefits for normal calculation, which could more easily
check if all or no edges are marked sharp, which is helpful considering
the plans in T93551.
The attribute is generally only allocated when it's necessary. When
leaving edit mode, it will only be created if an edge is marked sharp.
The data can be edited with geometry nodes just like a regular edge
domain boolean attribute.
The attribute is named `sharp_edge`, aiming to reflect the similar
`select_edge` naming and to allow a future `sharp_face` name in
a separate commit.
Ref T95966
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D16921
Currently the `MLoopUV` struct stores UV coordinates and flags related
to editing UV maps in the UV editor. This patch changes the coordinates
to use the generic 2D vector type, and moves the flags into three
separate boolean attributes. This follows the design in T95965, with
the ultimate intention of simplifying code and improving performance.
Importantly, the change allows exporters and renderers to use UVs
"touched" by geometry nodes, which only creates generic attributes.
It also allows geometry nodes to create "proper" UV maps from scratch,
though only with the Store Named Attribute node for now.
The new design considers any 2D vector attribute on the corner domain
to be a UV map. In the future, they might be distinguished from regular
2D vectors with attribute metadata, which may be helpful because they
are often interpolated differently.
Most of the code changes deal with passing around UV BMesh custom data
offsets and tracking the boolean "sublayers". The boolean layers are
use the following prefixes for attribute names: vert selection: `.vs.`,
edge selection: `.es.`, pinning: `.pn.`. Currently these are short to
avoid using up the maximum length of attribute names. To accommodate
for these 4 extra characters, the name length limit is enlarged to 68
bytes, while the maximum user settable name length is still 64 bytes.
Unfortunately Python/RNA API access to the UV flag data becomes slower.
Accessing the boolean layers directly is be better for performance in
general.
Like the other mesh SoA refactors, backward and forward compatibility
aren't affected, and won't be changed until 4.0. We pay for that by
making mesh reading and writing more expensive with conversions.
Resolves T85962
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D14365
**Changes**
As described in T93602, this patch removes all use of the `MVert`
struct, replacing it with a generic named attribute with the name
`"position"`, consistent with other geometry types.
Variable names have been changed from `verts` to `positions`, to align
with the attribute name and the more generic design (positions are not
vertices, they are just an attribute stored on the point domain).
This change is made possible by previous commits that moved all other
data out of `MVert` to runtime data or other generic attributes. What
remains is mostly a simple type change. Though, the type still shows up
859 times, so the patch is quite large.
One compromise is that now `CD_MASK_BAREMESH` now contains
`CD_PROP_FLOAT3`. With the general move towards generic attributes
over custom data types, we are removing use of these type masks anyway.
**Benefits**
The most obvious benefit is reduced memory usage and the benefits
that brings in memory-bound situations. `float3` is only 3 bytes, in
comparison to `MVert` which was 4. When there are millions of vertices
this starts to matter more.
The other benefits come from using a more generic type. Instead of
writing algorithms specifically for `MVert`, code can just use arrays
of vectors. This will allow eliminating many temporary arrays or
wrappers used to extract positions.
Many possible improvements aren't implemented in this patch, though
I did switch simplify or remove the process of creating temporary
position arrays in a few places.
The design clarity that "positions are just another attribute" brings
allows removing explicit copying of vertices in some procedural
operations-- they are just processed like most other attributes.
**Performance**
This touches so many areas that it's hard to benchmark exhaustively,
but I observed some areas as examples.
* The mesh line node with 4 million count was 1.5x (8ms to 12ms) faster.
* The Spring splash screen went from ~4.3 to ~4.5 fps.
* The subdivision surface modifier/node was slightly faster
RNA access through Python may be slightly slower, since now we need
a name lookup instead of just a custom data type lookup for each index.
**Future Improvements**
* Remove uses of "vert_coords" functions:
* `BKE_mesh_vert_coords_alloc`
* `BKE_mesh_vert_coords_get`
* `BKE_mesh_vert_coords_apply{_with_mat4}`
* Remove more hidden copying of positions
* General simplification now possible in many areas
* Convert more code to C++ to use `float3` instead of `float[3]`
* Currently `reinterpret_cast` is used for those C-API functions
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D15982
Attributes are unifying around a name-based API, and we would like to
be able to move away from CustomData in the future. This patch moves
the identification of active and fallback (render) color attributes
to strings on the mesh from flags on CustomDataLayer. This also
removes some ugliness used to retrieve these attributes and maintain
the active status.
The design is described more here: T98366
The patch keeps forward compatibility working until 4.0 with
the same method as the mesh struct of array refactors (T95965).
The strings are allowed to not correspond to an attribute, to allow
setting the active/default attribute independently of actually filling
its data. When applying a modifier, if the strings don't match an
attribute, they will be removed.
The realize instances / join node and join operator take the names from
the first / active input mesh. While other heuristics may be helpful
(and could be a future improvement), just using the first is simple
and predictable.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D15169
Historically tracks and reconstruction for motion tracking camera
object were stored in the motion tracking structure. This is because
the data structures pre-dates object tracking support, and it was
never changed to preserve compatibility.
Now the compatibility code supports more tricks and allows to change
the ownership without breaking any compatibility. This is what this
change does: it moves tracks from motion tracking structure to the
motion tracking camera object, and does it in a way that no
compatibility is broken.
One of the side-effects of this change is that the active track is
now stored on motion tracking object level, which allows to change
active motion tracking object without loosing active track. Other
than that there are no expected user-level changes.
Using the attribute name semantics from T97452, this patch moves the
selection status of mesh elements from the `SELECT` of vertices, and
edges, and the `ME_FACE_SEL` of faces to generic boolean attribute
Storing this data as generic attributes can significantly simplify and
improve code, as described in T95965.
The attributes are called `.select_vert`, `.select_edge`, and
`.select_poly`. The `.` prefix means they are "UI attributes",so they
still contain original data edited by users, but they aren't meant to
be accessed procedurally by the user in arbitrary situations. They are
also be hidden in the spreadsheet and the attribute list.
Until 4.0, the attributes are still written to and read from the mesh
in the old way, so neither forward nor backward compatibility are
affected. This means memory requirements will be increased by one byte
per element when selection is used. When the flags are removed
completely, requirements will decrease.
Further notes:
* The `MVert` flag is empty at runtime now, so it can be ignored.
* `BMesh` is unchanged, otherwise the change would be much larger.
* Many tests have slightly different results, since the selection
attribute uses more generic propagation. Previously you couldn't
really rely on edit mode selections being propagated procedurally.
Now it mostly works as expected.
Similar to 2480b55f21
Ref T95965
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D15795
This is very similar to D14077. There are two differences though.
First is that vertex creases are already stored in a separate layer,
and second is that we can now completely remove use of `Mesh.cd_flag`,
since that information is now inherent to whether the layers exist.
There are two functional differences here:
* Operators are used to add and remove layers instead of a property.
* The "crease" attribute can be created and removed by geometry nodes.
The second change should make various geometry nodes slightly faster,
since the "crease" attribute was always processed before. Creases are
now interpolated generically in the CustomData API too, which should
help maintain the values across edits better.
Meshes get an `edge_creases` RNA property like the existing vertex
property, to provide more efficient access to the data in Cycles.
One test failure is expected, where different rounding between float
the old char storage means that 5 additional points are scattered in
a geometry nodes test.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D15927
Similar to the other refactors from T95965, this commit moves sculpt
face sets to use a generic integer attribute named `".sculpt_face_set"`.
This makes face sets accessible in the Python API.
The attribute is not visible in the attributes list or the spreadsheet
because it is meant for internal use, though that could be an option
in the future along with other similar attributes. Currently the change
is small, but in the future this could simplify code by allowing use
of more generic attribute APIs.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D16045
Converting to the SoA format (T95965) immediately when reading meshes
means that none of the changes from versioning would be applied first.
This means important fixes like f14995aba7 aren't properly applied,
so modifications could be done to invalid CustomData. To fix this, move
the SoA changes into versioning code, in a new versioning_400.cc file.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D15919
