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.
Autosmooth didn't copy additional texture coordinates such as sticky
correctly. This was part of the vertex struct in 2.41 and older, but it
became dynamic in 2.42.
- Halos were not sorted, for ages! Meaning that they were rendered in order
of creation, instead of back to front.
- Made ESC testing for halo render to check per halo, is a fast routine now
anyway.
The old implementation was added quite hackish (talking about 10 yr ago).
You also had to make a small image slice, which was extended Xparts in
size. That also required to adjust the camera angle. Very clumsy.
Now; when enabling the Panorama option, it will automatically apply the
panorama effect on the vertically aligned tiles. You can just enable or
disable the "Pano" button, to get a subtle lens effect like this:
(without pano)
http://www.blender.org/bf/rt.jpg
(with pano)
http://www.blender.org/bf/rt1.jpg
For Panorama render, the minimum slice size has been hardcoded to be 8
pixels. The XParts button goes up to 512 to allow that. In practice,
rendering 64 slices will already give very good images for a wide angle
lens of 90 degrees, the curvature of straight lines then is equal to
a circle of 256 points.
Rendering a full 360 degree panorama you do by creating an extreme wide
angle camera. The theory says camera-lens 5 should do 360 degrees, but
for some reason my tests reveil it's 5.1... there's a rounding error
somewhere, maybe related to the clipping plane start? Will look at that
later. :)
Also note that for each Xpart slice, the entire database needs to be
rotated around camera to correct for panorama, on huge scenes that might
give some overhead.
Threaded render goes fine for Panorama too, but it can only render the
vertically aligned parts in parallel. For the next panorama slice it has
to wait for all threads of the current slice to be ready.
On reading old files, I convert the settings to match as closely as
possible the new situation.
Since I cannot bump up the version #, the code detects for old panorama
by checking for the image size. If image width is smaller than height, it
assumes it's an old file (only if Panoroma option was set).
After a couple of experiments with variable blur filters, I tried
a more interesting, and who knows... original approach. :)
First watch results here:
http://www.blender.org/bf/rt0001_0030.avihttp://www.blender.org/bf/hand0001_0060.avi
These are the steps in producing such results:
- In preprocess, the speed vectors to previous and next frame are
calculated. Speed vectors are screen-aligned and in pixel size.
- while rendering, these vectors get calculated per sample, and
accumulated in the vector buffer checking for "minimum speed".
(on start the vector buffer is initialized on max speed).
- After render:
- The entire image, all pixels, then is converted to quad polygons.
- Also the z value of the pixels is assigned to the polygons
- The vertices for the quads use averaged speed vectors (of the 4
corner faces), using a 'minimum but non-zero' speed rule.
This minimal speed trick works very well to prevent 'tearing' apart
when multiple faces move in different directions in a pixel, or to
be able to separate moving pixels clearly from non-moving ones
- So, now we have a sort of 'mask' of quad polygons. The previous steps
guaranteed that this mask doesn't have antialias color info, and has
speed vectors that ensure individual parts to move nicely without
tearing effects. The Z allows multiple layers of moving masks.
- Then, in temporal buffer, faces get tagged if they move or not
- These tags then go to an anti-alias routine, which assigns alpha
values to edge faces, based on the method we used in past to antialias
bitmaps (still in our code, check the antialias.c in imbuf!)
- finally, the tag buffer is used to tag which z values of the original
image have to be included (to allow blur go behind stuff).
- OK, now we're ready for accumulating! In a loop, all faces then get
drawn (with zbuffer) with increasing influence of their speed vectors.
The resulting image then is accumulated on top of the original with a
decreasing weighting value.
It sounds all quite complex... but the speed is still encouraging. Above
images have 64 mblur steps, which takes about 1-3 seconds per frame.
Usage notes:
- Make sure the render-layer has passes 'Vector' and 'Z' on.
- add in Compositor the VectorBlur node, and connect the image, Z and
speed to the inputs.
- The node allows to set amount of steps (10 steps = 10 forward, 10 back).
and to set a maximum speed in pixels... to prevent extreme moving things
to blur too wide.
- Live scanline updates while rendering
Using a timer system, each second now the tiles that are being processed
are checked if they could use display.
To make this work pretty, I had to use the threaded 'tile processor' for
a single thread too, but that's now proven to be stable.
Also note that these updates draw per layer, including ztransp progress
separately from solid render.
- Recode of ztransp OSA
Until now (since blender 1.0) the ztransp part was fully rendered and
added on top of the solid part with alpha-over. This adding was done before
the solid part applied sub-pixel sample filtering, causing the ztransp
layer to be always too blurry.
Now the ztransp layer uses same sub=pixel filter, resulting in the same
AA level (and filter results) as the solid part. Quite noticable with hair
renders.
- Vector buffer support & preliminary vector-blur Node
Using the "Render Layer" panel "Vector" pass button, the motion vectors
per pixel are calculated and stored. Accessible via the Compositor.
The vector-blur node is horrible btw! It just uses the length of the
vector to apply a filter like with current (z)blur. I'm committing it anyway,
I'll experiment with it further, and who knows some surprise code shows up!
A full detailed description of this will be done later... is several days
of work. Here's a summary:
Render:
- Full cleanup of render code, removing *all* globals and bad level calls
all over blender. Render module is now not called abusive anymore
- API-fied calls to rendering
- Full recode of internal render pipeline. Is now rendering tiles by
default, prepared for much smarter 'bucket' render later.
- Each thread now can render a full part
- Renders were tested with 4 threads, goes fine, apart from some lookup
tables in softshadow and AO still
- Rendering is prepared to do multiple layers and passes
- No single 32 bits trick in render code anymore, all 100% floats now.
Writing images/movies
- moved writing images to blender kernel (bye bye 'schrijfplaatje'!)
- made a new Movie handle system, also in kernel. This will enable much
easier use of movies in Blender
PreviewRender:
- Using new render API, previewrender (in buttons) now uses regular render
code to generate images.
- new datafile 'preview.blend.c' has the preview scenes in it
- previews get rendered in exact displayed size (1 pixel = 1 pixel)
3D Preview render
- new; press Pkey in 3d window, for a panel that continuously renders
(pkey is for games, i know... but we dont do that in orange now!)
- this render works nearly identical to buttons-preview render, so it stops
rendering on any event (mouse, keyboard, etc)
- on moving/scaling the panel, the render code doesn't recreate all geometry
- same for shifting/panning view
- all other operations (now) regenerate the full render database still.
- this is WIP... but big fun, especially for simple scenes!
Compositor
- Using same node system as now in use for shaders, you can composit images
- works pretty straightforward... needs much more options/tools and integration
with rendering still
- is not threaded yet, nor is so smart to only recalculate changes... will be
done soon!
- the "Render Result" node will get all layers/passes as output sockets
- The "Output" node renders to a builtin image, which you can view in the Image
window. (yes, output nodes to render-result, and to files, is on the list!)
The Bad News
- "Unified Render" is removed. It might come back in some stage, but this
system should be built from scratch. I can't really understand this code...
I expect it is not much needed, especially with advanced layer/passes
control
- Panorama render, Field render, Motion blur, is not coded yet... (I had to
recode every single feature in render, so...!)
- Lens Flare is also not back... needs total revision, might become composit
effect though (using zbuffer for visibility)
- Part render is gone! (well, thats obvious, its default now).
- The render window is only restored with limited functionality... I am going
to check first the option to render to a Image window, so Blender can become
a true single-window application. :)
For example, the 'Spare render buffer' (jkey) doesnt work.
- Render with border, now default creates a smaller image
- No zbuffers are written yet... on the todo!
- Scons files and MSVC will need work to get compiling again
OK... thats what I can quickly recall. Now go compiling!
This first implementation only supports it for Meshes with UV maps, and
only tangents in V direction.
Tangent diffuse:
http://www.blender.org/bf/0001_0080.avi
Tangent spec, diffuse, and bump:
http://www.blender.org/bf/20001_0080.avi
NOTE: since UV coordinates are still very badly subsurfed, this won't work
well for subsurf meshes... on the todo.
On the todo;
- generate tangents for meshes without UV (with some options)
- use tangents from Curve/Surface
- add the Ashkimin shader from tracker
-----
Important bugfix; curves didn't render anymore since yesterday. :)
(As usual movies disappears after while)
Face example showing stress values on a blend. White is stretch, black
is squeeze
http://www.blender.org/bf/0001_0014.avi
Quick test with softbody stretch
http://www.blender.org/bf/0001_0100.avi
Based on the difference of the "Orco" (original undeformed coordinate)
and the actual render coordinate, a stress value is computed to make
textures react to stretching or wrinking skin.
The texture coordinate is neutral (0) on relaxed state. -1 is squeezed
to zero, +1 is stretched to infinity.
Note that scaling (object itself or parent) also will result in
stress values.
The reason for the huge commit is a cleanup in allocating memory for
the vertices. These were growing too large with new options, so now it
allocates the optional coordinates dynamically.
Saves about 20 MB memory per 1M vertices already. But best of all is that
I now can add much more fun... so tangents, here we come!
- cancelled previous commit to add RE_findTFAce, instead just added
a MemArena to render struct... free'd at end of render, can be used
to store other data as well
- switch rendering to using DerivedMesh API... this is slightly more
inefficient now because it is doing some unnecessary copying. Can
be fixed by defining a DerivedMesh function to convert the object
into a render object (on todo list)
are owned by mesh (or displistmesh)... this causes problems for
adapting to systems that build tfaces on the fly. Added RE_findTFace
function to allow allocating tfaces inside renderer itself.
The dynamical allocated arrays (rwenzlaff, april 03) for render vertices/
faces/halos were freed in a way that requires the last element of array to
be NULL.
This wasn't coded however, causing memory errors in exceptional cases;
like when amount of faces/vertices is exact between 261888 and 262144. :)
- removed ugly pointerhack from OSA render (negative indices denoted
pointers). this should solve memory errors when using >1.5 gig mem
- cleaned up usage of zbuffer values. These are signed in Blender, and
treated as unsigned all over, giving confusing code
- fixed incorrect gamma-adding for halos (caused in after xmas commit)
And bugfix #2101; wire render didn't give correct rendering for mist.
This caused by fact wires are 2D pixel lines, and not correctly filled
in faces. Retrieving the 3d coordinate while render cannot use a face-
equation then. Solved by retrieving 3D coordinate based on zbuffer value.
Still todo here: calculating correct texture coordinates for wire-edges
that are no faces.
Render:
- New; support for dual CPU render (SDL thread)
Currently only works with alternating scanlines, but gives excellent
performance. For both normal render as unified implemented.
Note the "mutex" locks on z-transp buffer render and imbuf loads.
- This has been made possible by major cleanups in render code, especially
getting rid of globals (example Tin Tr Tg Tb Ta for textures) or struct
OSA or using Materials or Texture data to write to.
- Made normal render fully 4x32 floats too, and removed all old optimizes
with chars or shorts.
- Made normal render and unified render use same code for sky and halo
render, giving equal (and better) results for halo render. Old render
now also uses PostProcess options (brightness, mul, gamma)
- Added option ("FBuf") in F10 Output Panel, this keeps a 4x32 bits buffer
after render. Using PostProcess menu you will note an immediate re-
display of image too (32 bits RGBA)
- Added "Hue" and "Saturation" sliders to PostProcess options
- Render module is still not having a "nice" API, but amount of dependencies
went down a lot. Next todo: remove abusive "previewrender" code.
The last main global in Render (struct Render) now can be re-used for fully
controlling a render, to allow multiple "instances" of render to open.
- Renderwindow now displays a smal bar on top with the stats, and keeps the
stats after render too. Including "spare" page support.
Not only easier visible that way, but also to remove the awkward code that
was drawing stats in the Info header (extreme slow on some ATIs too)
- Cleaned up blendef.h and BKE_utildefines.h, these two had overlapping
defines.
- I might have forgotten stuff... and will write a nice doc on the architecture!
Main target was to make the inner rendering loop using no globals anymore.
This is essential for proper usage while raytracing, it caused a lot of
hacks in the raycode as well, which even didn't work correctly for all
situations (textures especially).
Done this by creating a new local struct RenderInput, which replaces usage
of the global struct Render R. The latter now only is used to denote
image size, viewmatrix, and the like.
Making the inner render loops using no globals caused 1000s of vars to
be changed... but the result definitely is much nicer code, which enables
making 'real' shaders in a next stage.
It also enabled me to remove the hacks from ray.c
Then i went to the task of removing redundant code. Especially the calculus
of texture coords took place (identical) in three locations.
Most obvious is the change in the unified render part, which is much less
code now; it uses the same rendering routines as normal render now.
(Note; not for halos yet!)
I also removed 6 files called 'shadowbuffer' something. This was experimen-
tal stuff from NaN days. And again saved a lot of double used code.
Finally I went over the blenkernel and blender/src calls to render stuff.
Here the same local data is used now, resulting in less dependency.
I also moved render-texture to the render module, this was still in Kernel.
(new file: texture.c)
So! After this commit I will check on the autofiles, to try to fix that.
MSVC people have to do it themselves.
This commit will need quite some testing help, but I'm around!
User Info:
Hard coded limits on the total number of face, verts, halos, and lamps
is gone. Blender now allocates the tables for these on an as needed
basis. As long as your system can come up with the memory, you won't
run out. As a bonus, it also uses slightly less memory on smaller scenes.
Coder info:
This has been in tuhopuu for a while, but I don't know how hard it
has been tested. Since it now allocates only an initial 1024 tables
(of 256 verts/faces/halos each), it seems like it has been put through
it's paces. Lamps are allocated one at a time, and I start with 256.
I rendered 2.5M Faces/Verts/Halos. 4444 lamps. None the less, I left
a few printf's in the realocation to hunt bugs. I'll take them out
just before the release freeze.
Also, be on the lookout for other "sanity checks" that assume
a limited number of the above items. I think I got them all, but
you never know.
