Documentation & Test blend files:
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http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:MiikaH/GSoC-2012-Smoke-Simulator-Improvements
Credits:
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Miika Hamalainen (MiikaH): Student / Main programmer
Daniel Genrich (Genscher): Mentor / Programmer of merged patches from Smoke2 branch
Google: For Google Summer of Code 2012
Forgot DNA needed stable names... :/ Correct spelling would involve keeping the old one for load code anyway, so better live with incorrect spelling here.
This commit extends limit of ID and objects to 64 (it means 63 meaning
characters and 1 for zero-terminator). CustomData layers names are also
extended.
Changed DNA structures and all places where length constants were hardcoded.
All names which are "generating" from ID block should be limited by MAX_ID_NAME-2,
all non-id names now has got own define called MAX_NAME which should be used all
over for non-id names to make further name migration stuff easier.
All name fields in DNA now have comment with constant which corresponds to
hardcoded numeric value which should make it easier to further update this
limits or even switch to non-hardcoded values in DNA.
Special thanks to Campbell who helped figuring out some issues and helped a lot
in finding all cases where hardcoded valued were still used in code.
Both of forwards and backwards compatibility is stored with blender versions newer
than January 5, 2011. Older versions had issue with placing null-terminator to
DNA strings on file load which will lead to some unpredictable behavior or even
crashes.
* Added option to preview surface wetmap instead of paint.
* Changed default paint color to blue for better visibility.
* Fix: Random sized particles didn't work anymore.
* Fix: Particle initial velocity issues when using canvas substeps and a particle brush.
Softbody was still using a flag to determine if it should use the final or
deform derivedmesh, but this wans't exposed in the UI. Others systems use the
collision modifier, now softbody uses it also to get vertices and faces, but
with own collision code.
Committed changes from previous weeks, biggest changes are:
* Canvas can now have multiple "surfaces" that each can have specific format, type and settings.
* Renewed UI to support this new system.
* Aside from old "image sequence" output format, Dynamic Paint can now work on vertex level as well. Currently vertex paint and displace are supported.
* Integrated vertex level painting with Point Cache.
* Added viewport preview for Point Cache surfaces.
Due to massive amount of changes, old Dynamic Paint saves are no longer supported. Also some features are temporarily missing or may not work properly.
* Viscoelastic springs between the fluid particles can simulate all kinds
of viscous and elastic substances, such as jelly and honey. This is
achieved by creating springs dynamically between neighboring particles
and adjusting their rest length based on stretching/compression.
* This nearly completes the currently intended functionality for particle
fluids. The last missing thing is a surfacing extraction algorithm,
which is needed for a proper representation of a sph fluid.
* I also cleaned up and renamed some of the fluid parameters to make the
ui a bit easier to understand.
* One addition to the patch is an option to use "initial rest length" for
the springs, which uses the lengths between the particles at the time of
spring creation as the spring rest lengths instead of interaction radius/2.
This makes the fluid keep it's original shape better (good for very
viscoelastic materials), but can create large density differences inside
the fluid (not really physically correct for a fluid).
* Viscoelastic springs are stored in point cache as extra data.
* Not strictly necessary right now, but better for future.
* Struct data (only boids at the moment) is now written as structs (with dna) so they work between 64 and 32 bit machines too.
* I've getting bad feelings about the point cache index_array for a while (cause for this bug too), so from now on memory cache uses a simple binary search directly on the index data to handle queries to specific data points.
* This is a bit slower than just checking from a dedicated array, but it's much less error prone, uses less memory and makes the code more readable too, so it's not a tough choice.
* Massive reorganization of pointcache code, things are now cleaner than ever.
* For all but smoke the cache is first written to memory when using disk cache and after that written to disk in one operation. This allows less disk operations and the possibility to compress the data before writing it to disk.
* Previously only smoke cache could be compressed, now the same options exist for other physics types too (when using disk cache). For now the default compression option is still "no compression", but if there aren't any problems this can be set to "light compression" as it's actually faster than no compression in most cases since there's less data to write to the disk. Based on quick tests heavy compression can reduce the file size down to 1/3rd of the original size, but is really slow compared to other options, so it should be used only if file size is critical!
* The pointcache code wasn't really 64bit compatible (for disk cache) until now, so this update should fix some crashes on 64bit builds too. Now all integer data that's saved to disk uses 32 bit unsigned integers, so simulations done on 64bit should load fine on 32bit machines and vice versa. (Important disk cache simulations made on 64bit builds should be converted to memory cache in a revision before this commit).
* There are also the beginnings of extradata handling code in pointcache in anticipation of adding the dynamic springs for particle fluids (the springs need to be stored as extradata into point cache).
* Particles were being read from the cache with a slightly wrong framerate. In most cases this probably wasn't noticeable, but none the less the code is now correct in every way.
* Small other fixes here and there & some cosmetic changes to cache panel, but over all there should be no functional changes other than the new disk cache compression options.
* This whole re-organization also seems to fix bug #25436 and hopefully shouldn't introduce any new ones!
* Separate caches were causing quite a lot of problems both in principle and practice.
* For example it doesn't really make sense to have different frame ranges for normal and high resolution smoke, but this was fully possible before.
* Also to fully bake the smoke you had to do a "Bake All Dynamics", which completely defeats the whole point of the feature!
* As a result of this change the smoke cache usage is much much simpler and less error prone.
* This is quite a big change, but hopefully there should be less rather than more problems as a result :)
Some other related changes:
* Changing the cache name now works for disk caches properly too, it now just renames the cache files so should be faster too!
* Smoke is now always forced to disk cache with step 1 on file load as there were some strange cases where smoke was trying to use memory cache.
* Disabled smoke debug prints from console.
* Disabled changing smoke parameters when smoke is baked.
Note to users: The unfortunate side effect of this is that old high resolution simulations have to be baked again, but in return you get much better and more logical functionality. Sorry none the less!
* The existence of cached frames was checked each frame causing hundreds of disk operations per frame update.
* Pointcache now keeps an updated array of the cached frames for fast "frame exists in cache" queries.
* This fix also speeds up some other pointcache operations nicely.
sb->lcom : Center Of Mass .. might be used to create loc IPO
sb_>lrot : is a matrix[3] esitmates the roatation in world coordinates .. might be used to create rot IPO
sb_>lscale : is a matrix[3] esitmates the scaling in world coordinates .. might be used to create scale IPO
(no python for that yet .. but may be matt has mercy on me )
can be cropped direclty in soft body module by function
static void SB_estimate_transform(Object *ob,float lloc[3],float lrot[3][3],float lscale[3][3])
The targets lloc,lrot,lscale should work to be NULL, just in case you don't need it.
However i'd prefer if they were accessed via properties
which should be calculated automagically if
sb->solverflags & SBSO_ESTIMATEIPO
is set, like they do in draw_sb_motion(..) in drawobject.c
added static void draw_sb_motion(Scene *scene, Object *ob) to drawobject.c
for debuggering (had a hard time with destructive matrix operations )
if it causes any trouble with your build on any OS make sure to comment that away.
softbody.c and DNA should compile fine in any case.
The goodies:
* Curves can be used as normal dynamic effectors too with
the new "curve" field shape.
* Group visualization has optional duplication counts for
each object in the specified group.
* Object & group visualizations, which are done without
taking the dupliobject's global position into account
(unless the whole group is used). This is much nicer than
the previous behavior, but I added a "Use Global Location"
option for those who want to use it the old way.
* The active particle system's particles are now drawn a
with theme coloured outline instead of pure white.
* Added object aligned velocity factors (buttons categorized
and re-organized too).
Bug fixes:
* Absorption didn't work as the ui toggle button was forgotten.
* Some other force field ui tweaks.
* Crash after adding children and changing trails count.
* Display types "cross" and "axis" crashed.
* Particles weren't drawn with correct coloring.
* Billboards didn't update properly in viewport to camera
location changes.
* Particle rotation wasn't recreated correctly from point cache.
* Changing particles amount crashed sometimes.
* Some files with child hair crashed on loading.
* Compiler warning fixes.
* Adding boids crashed on frame 1;
* Unified scene wide gravity (currently in scene buttons)
instead of each simulation having it's own gravity.
* Weight parameters for all effectors and an effector group
setting.
* Every effector can use noise.
* Most effectors have "shapes" point, plane, surface, every point.
- "Point" is most like the old effectors and uses the
effector location as the effector point.
- "Plane" uses the closest point on effectors local xy-plane
as the effector point.
- "Surface" uses the closest point on an effector object's
surface as the effector point.
- "Every Point" uses every point in a mesh effector object
as an effector point.
- The falloff is calculated from this point, so for example
with "surface" shape and "use only negative z axis" it's
possible to apply force only "inside" the effector object.
* Spherical effector is now renamed as "force" as it's no longer
just spherical.
* New effector parameter "flow", which makes the effector act as
surrounding air velocity, so the resulting force is
proportional to the velocity difference of the point and "air
velocity". For example a wind field with flow=1.0 results in
proper non-accelerating wind.
* New effector fields "turbulence", which creates nice random
flow paths, and "drag", which slows the points down.
* Much improved vortex field.
* Effectors can now effect particle rotation as well as location.
* Use full, or only positive/negative z-axis to apply force
(note. the z-axis is the surface normal in the case of
effector shape "surface")
* New "force field" submenu in add menu, which adds an empty
with the chosen effector (curve object for corve guides).
* Other dynamics should be quite easy to add to the effector
system too if wanted.
* "Unified" doesn't mean that force fields give the exact same results for
particles, softbody & cloth, since their final effect depends on many external
factors, like for example the surface area of the effected faces.
Code changes
* Subversion bump for correct handling of global gravity.
* Separate ui py file for common dynamics stuff.
* Particle settings updating is flushed with it's id through
DAG_id_flush_update(..).
Known issues
* Curve guides don't yet have all ui buttons in place, but they
should work none the less.
* Hair dynamics don't yet respect force fields.
Other changes
* Particle emission defaults now to frames 1-200 with life of 50
frames to fill the whole default timeline.
* Many particles drawing related crashes fixed.
* Sometimes particles didn't update on first frame properly.
* Hair with object/group visualization didn't work properly.
* Memory leaks with PointCacheID lists (Genscher, remember to
free pidlists after use :).
% sign for percentage assuming it is between 0-100, while factor is
for values 0-1.
Move collision setting absorption from modifier to collision settings,
was inconsistent to have it there as the only one, and made it have
range 0.0-1.0 instead of 0-100.
- Hair dynamics have their own panel in particle settings with the settings from cloth panel that apply to hair.
- Basic internal friction force to quickly emulate self collisions and volume preservation. (Still very early code, but gives some idea of what's possible).
- Softbody simulation is no longer used for hair.
* Old files with sb dynamics should just load the hair without dynamics so new dynamics can be applied.
* Invasion of particles exceptions in sb code is finally over.
- Collisions with other objects are disabled for now and will be worked out in the future.
Other changes/fixes:
- Particle mode editing flag wasn't saved properly.
- Some old files with edited hair didn't load correctly.
- Disabled delete & specials menu in particle mode for non-hair editing.
- Fixed yet one more cloth & softbody pointcache update issue.
- Disconnect/connect hair now uses only the deformed mesh so it works correctly also for subsurfed emitters.
- Hair editing now updates correctly with a moving emitter.
