The transform operators in nodes will now use the unselected nodes to generate snapping points. Unlike object snapping, node snapping works for the x/y axes separately and snaps node borders to same borders of unselected nodes. The sensitive area for node borders extends over the whole view2D range, to enable simple alignment of nodes in both x and y direction.
For snap points in the node editor an additional enum value is stored to indicate the type of node border (left/right/top/bottom). This works as a constraint on possible node alignments: only same border types align with each other.
Snapping actually was working already, but grid spacing was set to 1.0, which is basically pixel size in the node editor. Increased this to 1x grid step for fine snapping and 5x grid step for rough snapping.
Grid drawing in node editor now draws 2 levels in slightly different shades to indicate the different snapping modes better.
Node editor also supports the general use_snap tool setting to enable automatic snapping during transform. For now only the incremental snapping is supported, in future could be extended to enable alignment between nodes in a number of ways.
By holding shift and "cutting" a node link a new reroute helper node can be inserted. This consists of a single socket that can be used to insert additional connection points into a link. This can be used to keep a connection point in the tree when deleting a node, or to control the path of long connections for layout cleanup.
For an detailed user-level description of new features see the following blogpost:
http://code.blender.org/index.php/2012/05/node-editing-tweaks/
TL;DR:
* Frame node gets more usable bounding-box behavior
* Node resizing has helpful mouse cursor indicators and works on all borders
* Node selection/active colors are themeable independently
* Customizable background colors for nodes (useful for frames visual
distinction).
This operator still had some built-in assumptions about the connectivity of input/output sockets (1-to-n in all current node systems). For future node systems (e.g. flow-based particles) and for general customizable nodes the operator is now fully symmetric and supports all kinds of connectivity limits (1:1, 1:n, m:1, m:n).
The operator data can also store a list of node links as opposed to a single link now, so that multiple links can be redirected at once. Holding the CTRL key when clicking a socket, all links from/to that socket are detached and can be moved to a different socket. This is useful for quickly appending a node without moving every individual link.
* Removed the struct_type identifier from sockets completely. Any specialization of socket types can be done by using separate collections in RNA and customized socket draw callbacks in node type. Sockets themselves are pure data inputs/outputs now. Possibly the sock->storage data could also be removed, but this will change anyway with id properties in custom nodes.
* Replaced the direct socket button draw calls by extra callbacks in node types. This allows nodes to draw sockets in specialized ways without referring to the additional struct_type identifier. Default is simply drawing the socket default_value button, only file output node overrides this atm.
* File output node slots now use a separate file sub-path in their storage data, instead of using the socket name. That way the path is an actual PROP_FILEPATH property and it works better with the UI list template (name property is local to the data struct).
* Node draw contexts for options on the node itself and detail buttons in the sidebar now have an extra context pointer "node" (uiLayoutSetContextPointer). This can be used to bind operator buttons to a specific node, instead of having to rely on the active/selected node(s) or making weak links via node name. Compare to modifiers and logic bricks, they use the same feature.
* Added another operator for reordering custom input slots in the file output node.
*Add menu is now translated.
*Nodes' title is now translated.
*Nodes' sockets' labels are now translated.
However, about the last point, and unless I’m mistaking, we’ll have to add the "i18n tag" N_() to all sockets' names, in the input/ouput templates declaration, in all nodes' files, as those sockets are collections created at runtime, I think po-generating script has no way to access that from bpy.types... Quite a piece of (borring) work. :/
Socket selection is indicated by a simple white highlight circle.
Multiple inputs can be selected by holding SHIFTKEY (just like regular node select). Only one output socket can be selected at a time for each node, but several outputs in different nodes are allowed.
The auto-connect operator will prefer selected sockets on nodes for creating links. If either the output or input side have no selected sockets it will fall back to the previous behavior of chosing 'best' sockets first (colors, then vectors, then values). This could be improved in the future, but is out of scope here.
There are a number of features that use a kind of "internal linking" in nodes:
1. muting
2. delete + reconnect (restore link to/from node after delete)
3. the new detach operator (same as 2, but don't delete the node)
The desired behavior in all cases is the same: find a sensible mapping of inputs-to-outputs of a node. In the case of muting these links are displayed in red on the node itself. For the other operators they are used to relink connections, such that one gets the best possible ongoing link between previous up- and downstream nodes.
Muting previously used a complicated callback system to ensure consistent behavior in the editor as well as execution in compositor, shader cpu/gpu and texture nodes. This has been greatly simplified by moving the muting step into the node tree localization functions. Any muted node is now bypassed using the generalized nodeInternalRelink function and then removed from the local tree. This way the internal execution system doesn't have to deal with muted nodes at all, as if they are non-existent.
The same function is also used by the delete_reconnect and the new links_detach operators (which work directly in the editor node tree). Detaching nodes is currently keymapped as a translation variant (macro operator): pressing ALTKEY + moving node first detaches and then continues with regular transform operator. The default key is ALT+DKEY though, instead ALT+GKEY, since the latter is already used for the ungroup operator.
Unlike the existing file output node this node has an arbitrary number of
possible input slots. It has a base path string that can be set to a general
base folder. Every input socket then uses its name as an extension of the base
path for file organization. This can include further subfolders on top of the
base path. Example:
Base path: '/home/user/myproject'
Input 1: 'Compo'
Input 2: 'Diffuse/'
Input 3: 'details/Normals'
would create output files
in /home/user/myproject: Compo0001.png, Compo0002.png, ...
in /home/user/myproject/Diffuse: 0001.png, 0002.png, ... (no filename base
given)
in /home/user/myproject/details: Normals0001.png, Normals0002.png, ...
Most settings for the node can be found in the sidebar (NKEY). New input sockets
can be added with the "Add Input" button. There is a list of input sockets and
below that the details for each socket can be changed, including the sub-path
and filename. Sockets can be removed here as well. By default each socket uses
the render settings file output format, but each can use its own format if
necessary.
To my knowledge this is the first node making use of such dynamic sockets in
trunk. So this is also a design test, other nodes might use this in the future.
Adding operator buttons on top of a node is a bit unwieldy atm, because all node
operators generally work on selected and/or active node(s). The operator button
would therefore either have to make sure the node is activated before the
operator is called (block callback maybe?) OR it has to store the node name
(risky, weak reference). For now it is only used in the sidebar, where only the
active node's buttons are displayed.
Also adds a new struct_type value to bNodeSocket, in order to distinguish
different socket types with the same data type (file inputs are SOCK_RGBA color
sockets). Would be nicer to use data type only for actual data evaluation, but
used in too many places, this works ok for now.
- use more logical names for strings, noticed too many strings called `str` when reviewing name patch.
- pass __func__ macro to uiBeginBlock(), quite a few names were wrong (copy/paste error).
Instead of generally hiding all unused sockets in collapsed mode, the sockets now have a new explicit flag SOCK_AUTO_HIDDEN, which is only toggled when the hide_toggle operator is called. This way the auto-hidden sockets stay as they are when nodes are duplicated etc. The new flag is necessary to distinguish between manually hidden sockets (via hide_sockets_toggle operator) and automatically hidden sockets and restore the node state when unhiding a node.
The hiding code uses the SOCK_IN_USE flags already present. These were only temporarily set by the shader node code for determining needed texture coordinate types. Now they are used persistently and updated along with the sock->link pointers.
The buttons for "hiding" (collapsing) a node, hiding unlinked sockets, additional options, the preview and for opening a node group were all using a custom mouse test function, which was broken. They now use actual buttons instead of just displaying icons. Before executing the respective operators the button's node has to be selected and activated, so the buttons use an intermediate handle function, which selects the node and then calls the operator.
material node. This is a confusing system, but two features were missing from
2.4x that made this at least a bit more clear:
* The top right icon in the node now shows brighter again for the active node.
* Setting a material datablock in a node makes that node active.
This patch adds a new CLIP_EVENTS flag for uiBlock, which will prevent the ui_but_find_mouse_over search function from looking into "lower" uiBlocks (i.e. those further back in the list). The order of block creation for nodes has also been updated to use the z-ordering (just the nodetree->nodes list).
In order for this to work, the bounding box values of the uiBlocks have to be set explicitely to fit the node size, those are usually either zero or calculated from the internal buttons.
Now, compositing, shading and texture nodes have a consistent muting system, with default behaving as previous (for compo), and which can be optionaly customized by each node.
Shader nodes are also GLSL muted.
However, Cycles is currently unaware of muted nodes, will try to address this…
This prevents access to non-existent typeinfo during type initialization,
when node types have been removed and such nodes are deleted from older files.
All blenkernel functions now only set the node->update flag instead of directly
calling the update function. All operators, etc. calling blenkernel functions
to modify nodes should make a ntreeUpdate call afterward (they already did that
anyway).
Editor/RNA/renderer/etc. high-level functions still can do immediate updates by
using nodeUpdate and nodeUpdateID (replacing NodeTagChanged/NodeTagIDChanged
respectively). These old functions were previously used only for setting
compositor node needexec flags and clearing cached data, but have become generic
update functions that require type-specific functionality (i.e. a valid typeinfo
struct).
This branch adds mostly organizational improvements to the node system by renaming the node folders and files. A couple of internal features have been added too.
Detailed information can be found on the wiki page:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Phonybone/Particles2010
this will reconnect nodes as if the deleted node is muted.
Operation is added to the space_node node menu and to the keymap as CTRL-X
to test this just add some nodes to the space_node
select one or multiple nodes and press CTRL-X
It should reconnect the nodes as they were muted
limitations:
1. it performs a delete and reconnect per node. It does not evaluate all selected nodes as one whole
2. mute only supports Value, Vector and Color data types, so does this feature
3. not usable for nodes where input and output does not match (like colorToBW)
Where reconnect could not be preformed the links will be removed from the model.
Undo works with this delete with reconnect.
Changed selection flag used for the selected_nodes context property from SELECT to NODE_SELECT. These are just incidentally the same, but NODE_SELECT should be used for nodes.
In addition don't store unfinished links in the nodetree->links list any more. This makes code a bit safer because all links in that list can be considered valid now. The temporary bNodeLinkDrag structs used by the modal linking operator are now also stored in a list in SpaceNode, so these links can be drawn too (this separation also allows different display of temporary links, e.g. currently they are drawn on top of all nodes).
One node update call (for nodes within group nodetrees) was using the
wrong nodetree (node-editor's nodetree, not the group) which meant
that the wrong RNA context for such nodes would get used, resulting in
errors when trying to keyframe such nodes.
Hopefully this is the last time I have to fix these bugs...
