but only when the UV's are connected. That fixes some artifacts when
baking and using tangent space normal maps. It does mean increased
memory usage because it now stores 4 tangents per face like UV's,
and increased processing time, but there's no simple way around that.
scenes could crash, there was code to make sure osa level is
the same in all scenes, but that was set too late, after sample
tables are created.
Fix for some unitinialized vector warnings with FSA, these were
harmless, unfortunately.
This completes the pipeline make-over, as started in 2006. With this
option, during rendering, each sample for every layer and pass is being
saved on disk (looks like non-antialiased images). Then the composite
and color correction happens, then a clip to 0-1 range, and only in end
all samples get combined - using sampling filters such as gauss/mitch/catmul.
This results in artefact-free antialiased images. Even Z-combine or
ID masks now work perfect for it!
This is an unfinished commit btw; Brecht will finish this for strands.
Also Halo doesnt work yet.
To activate FSA: press "Save Buffers" and the new button next to it. :)
Problem: artist wants character to walk in grass, but still have all rendered
in seperate render-layers, for postpro effects and vblur. How to efficiently
create a mask image you can put *over* the character for the grass?
Solution has two parts; this commits allows any layer inside of the renderlayers
to become a Z-mask (Z values for solid gets filled in, but not rendered).
Second part of commit is render option "Only render stuff that's in front of
a zbuffer value that was filled in (saves render time)
Also, duplis are now taking into account, the proper way to exclude
them is to set the material to be not traceable.
Removed an unnecessary pointer from the VlakRen struct to save some
memory, not really that significant, but still, saves 70 mb for 10
million faces.
This is actually just the alpha value as currently being calculated
by the mist code. It is in many cases not very useful to have this as
alpha in shading result, also for postprocess and composite.
Note: this pass also works with "Mist" not set in World, of course.
=============================
A new approximate ambient occlusion method has been added, next to the
existing one based on raytracing. This method is specifically targetted
at use in animations, since it is inherently noise free, and so will
not flicker across frames.
http://www.blender.org/development/current-projects/changes-since-244/approximate-ambient-occlusion/http://peach.blender.org/index.php/approximate-ambient-occlusion/
Further improvements are still needed, but it can be tested already. There
are still a number of known issues:
- Bias errors on backfaces.
- For performance, instanced object do not occlude currently.
- Sky textures don't work well, the derivatives for texture evaluation
are not correct.
- Multiple passes do not work entirely correct (they are not accurate
to begin with, but could be better).
====================
- "From Dupli" option for orco and uv texture coordinates. For dupliverts,
duplifaces and dupli particles, this uses the orco and uv at the point
on the parent surface. Can for example be used for texturing feathers
and leafs. Note that uv only works for duplifaces and particles emitted
from faces, these are not defined at vertices.
- "Width Fade" option for strand render, to fade out along the width of the
strand. Committing this so it can be tested, might be changed or removed
even, if it doesn't give nice results.
=================
Big commit, but little user visible changes.
- Dupliverts and duplifaces are now rendered as instances, instead
of storing all of the geometry for each dupli, now an instance is
created with a matrix transform refering to the source object.
This should allow us to render tree leaves more memory efficient.
- Radiosity and to some degree raytracing of such objects is not
really efficient still. For radiosity this is fundamentally hard
to solve, but raytracing an octree could be created for each object,
but the current octree code with it's fixed size doesn't allow this
efficiently.
- The regression tests survived, but with I expect that some bugs will
pop up .. hopefully not too many :).
Implementation Notes
====================
- Dupligroups and linked meshes are not rendered as instances yet,
since they can in fact be different due to various reasons,
instancing of these types of duplis that are the same can be added
for them at a later point.
- Each ObjectRen now stores it's own database, instead of there being
one big databases of faces, verts, .. . Which objects that are actually
rendered are defined by the list of ObjectRenInstances, which all refer
to an ObjectRen.
- Homogeneous coordinatess and clipping is now not stored in vertices
anymore, but instead computed on the fly. This couldn't work for
instances. That does mean some extra computation has to be done, but
memory lookups can be slow too, and this saves some memory. Overall
I didn't find a significant speed impact.
- OSA rendering for solid and ztransp now is different. Instead of e.g.
going 8 times over the databases times and rendering the z-buffer, it
now goes over the database once and renders each polygon 8 times. That
was necessary to keep instances efficient, and can also give some
performance improvement without instances.
- There was already instancing support in the yafray export code, now it
uses Blender's render instances for export.
- UV and color layer storage in the render was a bit messy before, now
should be easier to understand.
- convertblender.c was reorganized somewhat. Regular render, speedvector
and baking now use a single function to create the database, previously
there was code duplicated for it.
- Some of these changes were done with future multithreading of scene
and shadow buffer creation in mind, though especially for scene creation
much work remains to be done to make it threadsafe, since it also involves
a lot of code from blenkernel, and there is an ugly conflict with the way
dupli groups work here .. though in the render code itself it's almost there.
editmode was not exited, and vertex normals would not write at all! (probably own error)
- Edited tooltip for texture DVar (was some user confusion in the studio as to its purpose)
- Set render border is disabled when it has no area - so drawing a box outside the camera disables .
=========
- Fix crash in particle transform with the particle system not editable.
- Particle child distribution and caching is now multithreaded.
- Child particles now have a separate Render Amount next to the existing
Amount. The render amount particles are now only distributed and cached
at render time, which should make editing with child particles faster.
- Two new options for diffuse strand shading:
- Surface Diffuse: computes the strand normal taking the normal at
the surface into account.
- Blending Distance: the distance in Blender units over which to
blend in the normal at the surface.
- Special strand rendering for more memory efficient and faster hair and
grass. This is a work in progress, and has a number of known issues,
don't report bugs to me for this feature yet.
More info:
http://www.blender.org/development/current-projects/changes-since-244/particles/
=============
A new "Selected to Active" option in the Bake panel, to (typically) bake
a high poly object onto a low poly object. Code based on patch #7339 by
Frank Richter (Crystal Space developer), thanks!.
Normal Mapping
==============
Camera, World, Object and Tangent space is now supported for baking, and
for material textures. The "NMap TS" setting is replaced with a dropdown
of the four choices in the image texture buttons.
http://www.blender.org/development/current-projects/changes-since-244/render-baking/
=========
Merge of the famous particle patch by Janne Karhu, a full rewrite
of the Blender particle system. This includes:
- Emitter, Hair and Reactor particle types.
- Newtonian, Keyed and Boids physics.
- Various particle visualisation and rendering types.
- Vertex group and texture control for various properties.
- Interpolated child particles from parents.
- Hair editing with combing, growing, cutting, .. .
- Explode modifier.
- Harmonic, Magnetic fields, and multiple falloff types.
.. and lots of other things, some more info is here:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Particles_Rewritehttp://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Particles_Rewrite_Doc
The new particle system cannot be backwards compatible. Old particle
systems are being converted to the new system, but will require
tweaking to get them looking the same as before.
Point Cache
===========
The new system to replace manual baking, based on automatic caching
on disk. This is currently used by softbodies and the particle system.
See the Cache API section on:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/PhysicsSprint
Documentation
=============
These new features still need good docs for the release logs, help
for this is appreciated.
This is an additional option for 'TexFace', which uses the alpha of
the UV assigned faces as well as the colour. It appears in material
buttons as a little 'A' button next to 'TexFace', when 'TexFace is
switched on. It's a bit horrible, but no point tweaking that layout in
isolation at this stage.
This image is using texface alpha, with different assigned images, all
sharing the one material:
http://mke3.net/blender/devel/rendering/texface_alpha.jpg
Usually I consider texface (and teaching people to use it for UV
mapping) to be pretty evil, but in some cases, when you have lots of
separate images that you want to control in the one material, it can
be quite handy.
two separate files, raytrace.c and rayshade.c. The tracing code can now
be used separately from the renderer (will be used in a later commit),
and the raytracing acceleration structure can now also be easily replaced,
if someone wants to experiment with that.
* Geometry node: Front/back output
This is used as a mask for determining whether you're looking at the front side or back side of a mesh, useful for blending materials, my practical need was giving different materials to the pages of a magazine: http://mke3.net/blender/etc/frontback-h264.mov
Give 1.0 if it's the front side, and 0.0 if it's the back side.
* Extended material node
This is the same as the material node, but gives more available inputs and outputs, (basically just connecting up more of ShadeInput and ShadeResult to the node). I didn't want to add it to the normal simple Material node since you don't always need all that stuff, and it would make the node huge, but when you do need it, it's nice to have it.
== Comp nodes ==
* Invert node
Inverting is something that happens all the time in a node setup, and this makes it easier. It's been possible to invert previously by adding a mix node and subtracting the input from 1.0, but it's not the best way of doing it. This node:
- makes it a lot faster to set up, rather than all the clicking required with the mix node
- is a lot more usable amidst a complex comp setup, when you're looking at a node tree, it's very helpful to be able to see at a glance what's going on. Using subtract for inverting is easily mixed up with other nodes in which you are actually subtracting, not inverting, and looks very similar to all the other mix nodes that usually litter a comp tree.
- has options to invert the RGB channels, the Alpha channel, or both. This saves adding lots of extra nodes (separate RGBA, subtract, set alpha) when you want to do something simple like invert an alpha channel. I'd like to add this option to other nodes too.
There's also a shader node version too.
* Also a few fixes that I committed ages ago, but seems to have been overwritten in Bob's node refactor:
- adding new compbufs to the set alpha and alphaover nodes when you have only one noodle connected to the lower input
- making the fac value on RGB curves still work when there's nothing connected to it
- Radius R, G, B sliders had too small number increase on clicking.
- Preview render now renders with higher SSS error setting to speed it up a
bit.
- bug #6664: 3d preview render had artifacts. re->viewdx/dy wasn't set then,
which is needed to estimate the area of each point. Have set this now, not
in the nicest way, there is some bit duplicated code, but I don't want to
refactor existing code with the chance of breaking it at this point.
- bug #6665: grid like artifacts with parts rendering. The two extra pixels
around parts used for filtering were used as well, leading to double points.
Added support for multiple UVs in the render engine. This also involved
changing the way faces are stored, to allow data to be added optionally
per 256 faces, same as the existing system for vertices.
A UV layer can be specified in the Map Input panel and the Geometry node
by name. Leaving this field blank will default to the active UV layer.
Also added sharing of face selection and hiding between UV layers, and at
the same time improved syncing with editmode selection and hiding.
Still to do:
- Multi UV support for fastshade.
- Multires and NMesh preservation of multiple UV sets.
Please read:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Imaging.834.0.html
Or in short:
- adding MultiLayer Image support
- recoded entire Image API
- better integration of movie/sequence Images
Was a whole load of work... went down for a week to do this. So, will need
a lot of testing! Will be in irc all evening.
- New Passes: UV and Rad(iosity)
- New Nodes: UV Map and Index Mask
- Z-combine now is antialiased
As usual, please check the log. Has nice pics!
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Composite__UV_Map__ID.830.0.html
For devs: the antialias code from Vector Blur is now exported in compo
too. Works pretty good. Even fixed a bug in antialias, so vectorblur
will be better.
Also: found out that OpenGL display list speedup accidentally was still
triggered with the rt button... so it did not work by default.
- Bug: material emit was ignored (showed in preview render backdrop)
- Bug: world exposure was ignored
- Bug: lamp halo was ignoring 'render layer light override'.
Further reshuffled the way shadows are being pre-calculated, this to enable
more advanced (and faster) usage of Material lightgroups. Now shadows are
being cached in lamps, using a per-sample counter to check if a recalc is
needed. Will also work (later) for Raytracing node shaders.
- New: Material LightGroup option "Always", which always shades the lights
in the group, independent of visibility layer. (so it allows to move such
lights to hidden layer, not influencing anything).
Full log:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Render_Passes.829.0.html
In short:
- Passes now have option to be excluded from "Combined".
- RenderLayers allow to override Light (Lamp groups) or Material.
- RenderLayers and Passes are in Outliner now, (ab)using Matt's nice
'restriction collumns'. :)
- Crash, caused by commit of 1 hour ago to fix 'All Z' render problem
- Bug: yesterday's fix for node material renders caused some issues with
precalculating correct shadow.
- Composite Translate node: input sockets allowed multiple inputs
-t <threads>
It overrides the settings as saved in scenes. Only works for background
rendering, to force thread amounts to match the cpus in system.
For funny jokers: amount is clipped for MAXTHREADS :)
Bake-render:
Quad faces still didn't get handled properly, error visible for vertex
color or UV textures.
Also: added error meny when a Bake cannot work because there are no Images
or no Images with buffers
Here's the full release log with example file.
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Render_Baking.827.0.html
For people who don't read docs; just press ALT+CTRL+B on a Mesh
with texture faces!
Todos:
- maybe some filter options extra?
- Make normal maps in Tangent space
Full log:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Irregular_Shadow_Buffe.785.0.html
In short: this is a shadow buffer approach that always results in crispy
shadows, independent of lamp buffer size or zoom level. This shadow buffer
system also supports transparent shadow.
This is part of work on refreshing Shadow Buffers in Blender. You now can
choose of two types (Classical, Irregular). More types will follow. Also
quality issues for Classical shadow buffers are going to be reviewed,
especially to solve the lousy Biasing.
For the CVS log record; it is based on articles:
Gregory Johnson et al, University of Texas, Austin. (Regular grid method).
Timo Aila and Samuli Laine, Helsinki University of Technology. (BSP method).
- ImagePaint now uses ImBuf directly, and the rect blending functions
were moved into the imbuf module.
- The brush spacing, timing and sampling was abstracted into brush.c, for
later reuse in other paint modes.
Float ImagePaint support.
Textured Brushes:
- Only the first texture channel is used now.
- Options for size and offset should be added, but need to find some space
in the panel, or add a second one ..
The raytracer wasn't calling node shaders yet, so results showed only
shading for the base material.
This now works, but there's a conflict in the internal Blender shader that
makes recursive raytracing with nodes unpredictable. Basicaly the conflict
is that when a ray wants to shade a point, it should be able to check the
material for mirror properties, but this is undefined for node trees...
Probably we need to separate raytrace entirely from material shading. Is
a good topic for NodeShader 2.0, when we really split up materials in
shading components.
I'll add a note in the release log about this. Best results you get now
when you don't include mirror/ray-transp insde a node tree, in that case
a regular material mirror can render that material perfectly.
suffered for the entire movie. :)
It only happened when rendering large frames, using a lot of memory and
typically when you also use other software in meantime.
Reason: the main thread does the drawing updating, while rendering is
still continuing. When using Ztransp, there was a free buffer done
when possibly a draw could still be in progress. Only crashed when drawing
is slow... explaining why it only showed up in more complex cases.
- Shaded drawmode is back (shift+z).
Note it still only uses orco texture; but lighting/shading is using
the internal render module entirely.
- "Make Sticky" option back.
(Also fix in sticky texture render, was wrong scaled)
This commit brings back:
- Field Render
- MBlur Render (old style)
- Border render with or without cropping
Note: Field Render is not supported in Compositor yet. Blurring or filter
will destroy field information.
Both MotionBlur as Field render are done before Compositing happens.
Fixes:
- The "Save Buffers" option only worked on single frame renders, not for
Anim render.
- Found an un-initalized variable in Render initialize... this might have
caused the unknown random crashes with render.
Code restructure:
Cleaned up names and calls throughout the pipeline, more clearly telling
what goes on in functions.
This is visible in the updated first image of the Wiki doc:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/RenderPipeline
Using "Fresnel" for transparency only worked when material had "ZTransp"
set. That's not a real problem, but it made Fresnel not work for Materials
used in Nodes.
Now a Fresnel on alpha works always.
Material Nodes: The Texture node didn't do the standard "2d mapping" yet
in case an Image Texture is used. Caused wrong mapping for example for UV
coordinate inputs.
- Bug fix: the upper tile in a collumn for Panorama render didn't put the
mainthread to sleep properly. Now panorama renders 25% faster if you had
set Y-Parts to 4.
- Enabling Compositing in Scene for first time now adds a "Composite" node
too, so render output gets applied.
- An attempt to render with "Do Composite" without "Composite" node will
throw an error and stops rendering. In background mode it will just not
render at all, and print errors.
- Errors that prevent rendering now give a popup menu again.
- Having MBlur or Fields option on will now normally render, but with an
error print in console (not done yet...)
