Previously, the signature of a `MultiFunction` was always embedded into the function.
There are two issues with that. First, `MFSignature` is relatively large, because it contains
multiple strings and vectors. Secondly, constructing it can add overhead that should not
be necessary, because often the same signature can be reused.
The solution is to only keep a pointer to a signature in `MultiFunction` that is set during
construction. Child classes are responsible for making sure that the signature lives
long enough. In most cases, the signature is either embedded into the child class or
it is allocated statically (and is only created once).
When a function is executed for many elements (e.g. per point) it is often the case
that some parameters are different for every element and other parameters are
the same (there are some more less common cases). To simplify writing such
functions one can use a "virtual array". This is a data structure that has a value
for every index, but might not be stored as an actual array internally. Instead, it
might be just a single value or is computed on the fly. There are various tradeoffs
involved when using this data structure which are mentioned in `BLI_virtual_array.hh`.
It is called "virtual", because it uses inheritance and virtual methods.
Furthermore, there is a new virtual vector array data structure, which is an array
of vectors. Both these types have corresponding generic variants, which can be used
when the data type is not known at compile time. This is typically the case when
building a somewhat generic execution system. The function system used these virtual
data structures before, but now they are more versatile.
I've done this refactor in preparation for the attribute processor and other features of
geometry nodes. I moved the typed virtual arrays to blenlib, so that they can be used
independent of the function system.
One open question for me is whether all the generic data structures (and `CPPType`)
should be moved to blenlib as well. They are well isolated and don't really contain
any business logic. That can be done later if necessary.
This replaces header include guards with `#pragma once`.
A couple of include guards are not removed yet (e.g. `__RNA_TYPES_H__`),
because they are used in other places.
This patch has been generated by P1561 followed by `make format`.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D8466
Object sockets work now, but only the new Object Transforms and the
Particle Mesh Emitter node use it. The emitter does not actually
use the mesh surface yet. Instead, new particles are just emitted around
the origin of the object.
Internally, handles to object data blocks are passed around in the network,
instead of raw object pointers. Using handles has a couple of benefits:
* The caller of the function has control over which handles can be resolved
and therefore limit access to specific data. The set of data blocks that
is accessed by a node tree should be known statically. This is necessary
for a proper integration with the dependency graph.
* When the pointer to an object changes (e.g. after restarting Blender),
all handles are still valid.
* When an object is deleted, the handle is invalidated without causing crashes.
* The handle is just an integer that can be stored per particle and can be cached easily.
The mapping between handles and their corresponding data blocks is
stored in the Simulation data block.
Those are useful when you have to create containers with static
storage duration. If those would use Blender's guarded allocator,
it would report memory leaks, that are not actually leaks.
This updates the usage of integer types in code I wrote according to our new style guides.
Major changes:
* Use signed instead of unsigned integers in many places.
* C++ containers in blenlib use `int64_t` for size and indices now (instead of `uint`).
* Hash values for C++ containers are 64 bit wide now (instead of 32 bit).
I do hope that I broke no builds, but it is quite likely that some compiler reports
slightly different errors. Please let me know when there are any errors. If the fix
is small, feel free to commit it yourself.
I compiled successfully on linux with gcc and on windows.
This adds the `MultiFunction` type and some smallish utility types that it uses.
A `MultiFunction` encapsulates a function that is optimized for throughput by
always processing many elements at once.
This is an important part of the new particle system, because it allows us to
execute user generated node trees for many particles efficiently.
Reviewers: brecht
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D8030
