The button was intended to guide new users of Freestyle, but actually that is a matter
of documentation. The button is unlikely to be frequently used once users get familiar
with Freestyle panels in other contexts. Now that Freestyle has been part of Blender
since a while, it seems time to clean the UI.
New properties 'line_color' and 'line_priority' are added to Material ID data blocks.
The 'line_color' property allows users to specify a per-material line color that can be
used as a Freestyle line color through Material color modifiers of line style settings.
The new line color property is intended to provide a solution for line color
stylization when a proper Freestyle support for Cycles is implemented (likely
as part of the upcoming Blender 2.72 release; see Patch D632). Materials in
Cycles are usually set up using shader nodes, and Freestyle won't be capable
of retrieving colors and other properties from node-based materials any soon.
The new line color property of materials addresses this foreseen limitation by
providing artists with an intuitive alternative mean to specify line colors on a
per-material basis independently from node trees.
The 'line_priority' property gives users a way to control line colors at material
boundaries. When a line is drawn along a feature edge at material boundaries,
one of the two materials on both sides of the edge has to be picked up to
determine the line color. So far there was no way to control this selection
(which was in effect at random). Now the material with a higher line color
priority will be selected.
The new per-material line settings are shown in the new Freestyle Line tab in
the Material context of the Properties window (only when Freestyle is enabled).
* The button icon for jumping to the Render Layers tab of the Properties context is
now RENDERLAYERS. Previous icon BUTS was too general.
* Thickness position options are grayed out if not applicable. These options are applied
only when plain chaining is used with the Same Object option enabled.
Toggle buttons are now placed to the left of those labels separating sets of line style
options, so as to save some space (in line with the new UI elements added in the
commit f60a66f417).
Line styles now have a set of new options for rearranging the stacking order of lines.
This gives artists more control to determine which lines should be drawn on top of others.
Two available sort keys are the distance from camera and curvilinear 2D length.
Since the distance of a line from camera may vary over vertices, another option called
integration type is used to compute the sort key for a line from the values computed at
individual vertices. Available integration types are MEAN, MIN, MAX, FIRST and LAST
(see the tool tips for more detail).
Notes:
* Did not touch to addons, that's up to the authors. ;)
* Did not removed any "name" field below lists. We might want to do this in some cases (less UI clutter), but probably not always, so will let maintainers of the related areas decide here.
Notes:
* Made those edits by full checking of py files, so I should have spoted most needed edits, yet it remains quite probable I missed a few ones, we'll fix if/when someone notice it...
* Also made some cleanup "on the road"!
the Parameter Editor mode. The Material Boundary toggle button takes
effect only in the Python Scripting mode. Instead the Parameter Editor
mode automatically determines which edge types need to be computed on the
basis of user-specified line selection criteria in terms of edge types.
Problem report from Light BWK through personal communications, thanks!
- update copying code for linestyles to copy gaps
- update copying code for freestyle line modifiers to copy mapping flags and seeds
- fix drawing code for Material modifiers after a recent refactoring
Added a label to guide users to line style settings in the Render Layers context
(in line with the similar labels found in the Cloth and Soft Body modifier panels),
so that Freestyle options per render layer can be more easily found.
* Do not share poll with other files, create own poll classes.
* Avoid some splits() and use rows instead (less code).
* Remove some commented C code.
* layout = self.layout declarations come before variable declarations.
Suggested by Brecht Van Lommel and Campbell Barton through code review comments.
Previously style modules were external Python script files whose absolute paths
were kept in .blend files. Now style modules are stored in .blend files as text
datablocks.
Style modules are configured in three steps:
1. Open an external style module file (or create a new text datablock) in the
Text Editor in Blender.
2. Add a style module to the list of style modules (by pressing the "Add" button)
in the Render Layer properties window.
3. Click the name entry and select the style module from the drop-down menu.
