Aim was to get a total refresh of the animation system. This
is needed because;
- we need to upgrade it with 21st century features
- current code is spaghetti/hack combo, and hides good design
- it should become lag-free with using dependency graphs
A full log, with complete code API/structure/design explanation
will follow, that's a load of work... so here below the list with
hot changes;
- The entire object update system (matrices, geometry) is now
centralized. Calls to where_is_object and makeDispList are
forbidden, instead we tag objects 'changed' and let the
depgraph code sort it out
- Removed all old "Ika" code
- Depgraph is aware of all relationships, including meta balls,
constraints, bevelcurve, and so on.
- Made depgraph aware of relation types and layers, to do smart
flushing of 'changed' events. Nothing gets calculated too often!
- Transform uses depgraph to detect changes
- On frame-advance, depgraph flushes animated changes
Armatures;
Almost all armature related code has been fully built from scratch.
It now reveils the original design much better, with a very clean
implementation, lag free without even calculating each Bone more than
once. Result is quite a speedup yes!
Important to note is;
1) Armature is data containing the 'rest position'
2) Pose is the changes of rest position, and always on object level.
That way more Objects can use same Pose. Also constraints are in Pose
3) Actions only contain the Ipos to change values in Poses.
- Bones draw unrotated now
- Drawing bones speedup enormously (10-20 times)
- Bone selecting in EditMode, selection state is saved for PoseMode,
and vice-versa
- Undo in editmode
- Bone renaming does vertexgroups, constraints, posechannels, actions,
for all users of Armature in entire file
- Added Bone renaming in NKey panel
- Nkey PoseMode shows eulers now
- EditMode and PoseMode now have 'active' bone too (last clicked)
- Parenting in EditMode' CTRL+P, ALT+P, with nice options!
- Pose is added in Outliner now, with showing that constraints are in
the Pose, not Armature
- Disconnected IK solving from constraints. It's a separate phase now,
on top of the full Pose calculations
- Pose itself has a dependency graph too, so evaluation order is lag free.
TODO NOW;
- Rotating in Posemode has incorrect inverse transform (Martin will fix)
- Python Bone/Armature/Pose API disabled... needs full recode too
(wait for my doc!)
- Game engine will need upgrade too
- Depgraph code needs revision, cleanup, can be much faster!
(But, compliments for Jean-Luc, it works like a charm!)
- IK changed, it now doesnt use previous position to advance to next
position anymore. That system looks nice (no flips) but is not well
suited for NLA and background render.
TODO LATER;
We now can do loadsa new nifty features as well; like:
- Kill PoseMode (can be option for armatures itself)
- Make B-Bones (Bezier, Bspline, like for spines)
- Move all silly button level edit to 3d window (like CTRL+I = add
IK)
- Much better & informative drawing
- Fix action/nla editors
- Put all ipos in Actions (object, mesh key, lamp color)
- Add hooks
- Null bones
- Much more advanced constraints...
Bugfixes;
- OGL render (view3d header) had wrong first frame on anim render
- Ipo 'recording' mode had wrong playback speed
- Vertex-key mode now sticks to show 'active key', until frame change
-Ton-
Works as follows;
- press the 'show bake settings' button (no space left... :)
- define start/end frame for bake, and an interval step.
The baked result interpolates nicely (Bspline, 4 keys) so in general a
step size of 2 or 3 still gives OK results.
- Press "BAKE". This will do a full animation + playback. Press ESC if it
you don't want it.
Once Baked, the BAKE button becomes a FREE BAKE. As reminder the softbody
buttons get blocked with error() menu.
This saves OK in a file. Renders any frame, including fields and moblur.
You can also set a "Timeoffs" for the softbody. And yes, this should be
in the NLA once... :)
NOTE! With this commit, files saved with the old (first commit) version by
Jens Ole won't read the settings back... he stored all sofbody variables in
Object, which was moved to a new struct when I did my first commit on SB
(over a month ago)
Also note that I moved particle deflecting & softbody to a new include.
- Added Softbody effect for Lattices (not too useful yet without
vertexgroups though)
- Added default vertex "goal" value + button, to be assigned when no
vertexgroup exists (or vertex isn't in the group)
- Made softmin and softmax work as documented (defining min and max range)
- made changes in buttons send 'update' signal to softbody
And:
- added Nkey Properties to show lattice coordinates
User level notes are in Wiki here;
http://wiki.blender.org/bin/view.pl/Blenderdev/Softbodies
And will be added in blender3d.org CMS later.
Tech level notes are still pending, but here's the most relevant ones;
- made ob->soft struct SoftBody to hold all settings, and read/save in
files
- added (temporal!) conversion for the old settings. So: read old files
with softbody experiments now, and save over!
- cleaned API calls for softbody, which are only 5 of them now:
sbNew()
sbFree()
sbObjectStep() (animation steps)
sbObjectToSoftbody() (full re-initialize data)
sbObjectReset() (only reset motion)
- API calls accepts time in frames now, within softbody.c it converts
Further, internally code was cleaned some (missing tabs etc). Also tried
to keep a well defined structure with hints how to add support for more
objects. Can write notes about that...
into drawobject.c (just used for calculating weight
map)
- removed two_sided (replace with glLightModeli calls)
- huge rewrite of drawobject.c for meshes, extracting simple
drawing functions and then reworking to bring some order
and clarity back to the code.
A lot was changed here so it is likely I missed a few
things in testing although I tried to be very careful.
Please let me know if you find any changes in drawing.
from within mesh_modifiers (kernel deform.c). It copies vertices to a
temporal particle system (struct SoftBody with BodyPoint structs) to do
physics tricks with it.
For each frame change the delta movements (based on standard ipo anim or
even other deforms (later) are applied to the physics system. How to apply
and calculate satisfying results is not my thing... so here I'll commu-
nicate with others for.
Since it's in the modifier stack, the SoftBody code can run entirely on
original data (no displists!).
Right now I've implemented 2 things;
- "Goal" which is a per vertex value for how much the current position
should take into account (goal=1 is without physics). This is a powerful
method for artists to get control over what moves and not. Right now i
read the vertex color for it.
- And some spring stuff, which now only works based on force moving it to
the originial location. This doesnt work with 'goal'... erhm.
- You can re-use physics vars from engine, used right now is (in Object)
- damping
- springf (spring factor)
- softflag (to set types, or activate softbody for it
- The SoftBody pointer in struct Object is only runtime, nothing saved in
file
To prevent all users going to complain it doesn't work, I've hidden the
functionality. :)
The buttons to set softbody 'on' only show now (psst psst) when the object has
name "soft" as first 4 characters. You can find the buttons in the F7 Particle
Interaction Panel (which should be renamed 'physics properties' later or so.
Demo file:
http://www.blender.org/bf/softbody.blend
1) Curve deform
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Curve_Deform.392.0.html
Works simple as expected, but keep track of the rotation axis
in F7 buttons (Track X Y Z)
Only Mesh deform supported now.
Code changes:
- centralized deformation calls in curve_modifiers() mesh_modifiers()
etcetera. Here also other effects can be added like wave. Now the
evaluation order is fixed, but should become optional. It also doesnt
use the Displist anymore as deform-input. That latter part is unfinished
yet.
This code also is used for Hooks and will be needed for softbody
- made convention stricter that displists are being checked on in
drawobject(), this to prevent routines to make new displists recursively
(like armature does). Now a freedisplist() is sufficient to signal that
a new displaylist should be made.
2) Object Hooks
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Object_Hooks.391.0.html
Support for Hooks is added to Mesh, Lattice, Curve and Surface objects.
For Armatures this would require some more work & research.
Main goal for this feature is to provide quick & simple access to the
underlying geometry in Objects on Object level, supporting hierarchies and
Ipos etc.
