The Image texture repeat options, now allow a "Checker" repeat. With
odd and even tiles set separately, and a size button to set a
'Mortar' inbetween tiles.
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Render_engine_features.215.0.html
Also fixed bug: using 'CalcAlpha' option for image textures didn't give
antialised edges for image.
bytes for RGB.
This to allow very bright contrasted images to be used for AO as well. As
a first start also the Texture->Colors panel now allows contrast setting
up to 5.0 (was 2.0).
- AO energy slider to control amount
- option "Use sky color" for colored AO. The horizon color will define
bottom diffuse color, the zenith works on top
- option "Use sky texture" will do a full sky render to define AO color
Please note that AO energy and color only is found when a ray does not
intersect. So for interior scenes make sure 'Dist' value is sufficient
low.
New also is:
- World "Map input" allows "Ang Map" (Angular mapping) which can be used
for 360 degree spherical maps, aka as Light Probes. Check samples here:
http://www.debevec.org/Probes/
Note that Blender doesn't support HDRI images yet, but option "Use sky tex"
already gives intersting results with such images
- World sky rendering with Image Textures now correctly filters and uses
antialiasing. Also noticable for raytrace mirror reflections
- World preview render for sky type "Real" now gives correct view as
defined by current used camera.
I tried to speed up AO tracing with coherence systems, none of it really
worked yet... time to tackle octree itself i guess!
When choosing 'International fonts' this variable was not reset
when loading .B.blend again with CTRL+X.
Move the check for this to read_homefile() instead of init() call.
- New lamp type added "Area". This uses the radiosity formula (Stoke) to
calculate the amount of energy which is received from a plane. Result
is very nice local light, which nicely spreads out.
- Area lamps have a 'gamma' option to control the light spread
- Area lamp builtin sizes: square, rect, cube & box. Only first 2 are
implemented. Set a type, and define area size
- Button area size won't affect the amount of energy. But scaling the lamp
in 3d window will do. This is to cover the case when you scale an entire
scene, the light then will remain identical
If you just want to change area lamp size, use buttons when you dont want
to make the scene too bright or too dark
- Since area lights realistically are sensitive for distance (quadratic), the
effect it has is quickly too much, or too less. For this the "Dist" value
in Lamp can be used. Set it at Dist=10 to have reasonable light on distance
10 Blender units (assumed you didnt scale lamp object).
- I tried square sized specularity, but this looked totally weird. Not
committed
- Plan is to extend area light with 3d dimensions, boxes and cubes.
- Note that area light is one-sided, towards negative Z. I need to design
a nice drawing method for it.
Area Shadow
- Since there are a lot of variables associated with soft shadow, they now
only are available for Area lights. Allowing spot & normal lamp to have
soft shadow is possible though, but will require a reorganisation of the
Lamp buttons. Is a point of research & feedback still.
- Apart from area size, you now can individually set amount of samples in
X and Y direction (for area lamp type 'Rect'). For box type area lamp,
this will become 3 dimensions
- Area shadows have four options:
"Clip circle" : only uses a circular shape of samples, gives smoother
results
"Dither" : use a 2x2 dither mask
"Jitter" : applys a pseudo-random offset to samples
"Umbra" : extra emphasis on area that's fully in shadow.
Raytrace speedup
- improved filling in faces in Octree. Large faces occupied too many nodes
- added a coherence check; rays fired sequentially that begin and end in
same octree nodes, and that don't intersect, are quickly rejected
- rendering shadow scenes benefits from this 20-40%. My statue test monkey
file now renders in 19 seconds (was 30).
Plus:
- adjusted specular max to 511, and made sure Blinn spec has again this
incredible small spec size
- for UI rounded theme: the color "button" displayed RGB color too dark
- fixed countall() function, to also include Subsurf totals
- removed setting the 'near' clipping for pressing dot-key numpad
- when you press the buttons-window icon for 'Shading Context' the context
automaticilly switches as with F5 hotkey
Please be warned that this is not a release... settings in files might not
work as it did, nor guaranteed to work when we do a release. :)
Based on feedback (thnx phase!) I found a big disadvantage of the 'real'
fresnel formula. It doesnt degrade to 0.0, causing 2-3 times too many
rays being fired compared to the previous one. So; a lot slower.
Now committed is a hybrid which allows (close to) real, and nice artistic
freedom, *and* it really goes to 0.0 and 1.0, assisting nicely in optimal
render times.
A real doc how it works (with pics) will be made before real release.
- Fixed bug in raytrace: the first renderpass didn't use fresnel for mirror.
- Fixed bug in previewrender, now it closer matches how fresnel renders
At last irc meeting, eeshlo pointed to an error in the code. It didn't
use the IOR value correctly. This has been solved. So how it works now:
- the IOR button value influences (very subtle) the fresnel effect.
Only for realism diehards.
- the Fresnel value (slider) now denotes the power in the function
rf + (1-rf) * (1-c)^5
where rf= rf = ((ior-1)/(ior+1))^2
and c the dot-product ray/normal.
- so, set the slider at '5' and you have real fresnel. Lower values
for interesting artistic effects.
- put back the forgotten code for gaussian corrected sampling during
antialising render. Normally, each sub-pixel sample in Blender counts
equally, and together make up the pixel color.
With 'Gauss' option set (F10 menu) each sub-pixel sample creates a small
weighted mask with variable size, which (can) affect neighbouring pixels
as well. The result is smoother edges, less sensitive for gamma, and
well suited to reduce motion-aliasing (when things move extreme slow).
This is result of *long* period of research in NeoGeo days, and based on
every scientific sampling/reconstructing theory we could find. Plus a
little bit of our selves. :)
- I should write once how blender constructs Jitter tables for sub-sampling.
this is a very nice method, and superior to normal block filter or random
jittering... time!
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!
- implemented tracing of transparency for shadows. This is a material
option, in the new RayTrace panel.
it only traces color and alpha, not shading. So the results of some
transparant colored unlit faces can look odd. I will look onto that.
- changed fresnel formula (got hint from eeshlo!). this simplifies the UI,
now only one button needed. The fresnel value "should" be identical as
the refraction index, but that is booooring! So i added a special fresnel
refraction slider for both mirroring and transparency. By setting all 3
sliders equal, you get 'realism'.
- fresnel for transparancy works for Ztra rendering too. Same for transpa-
rent shadow. But then you need to set 'ray' on in F10 menu.
- uploaded new monkey_glass blend in download.blender.org/demo/test/
Next stage: killing the globals from render, and implement "translucency"
which is effectively allowing faces being lit from behind, as paper or
cloth.
Changelog:
- enable refraction with button "Ray Transp" in Material buttons.
- set "Angular Index" value for amount of refraction.
- use the "Alpha" value to define transparency.
- remember to set a higher "Depth" too... glass can bounce quite some
more than expected.
- for correct refraction, 3D models MUST have normals pointing in the
right direction (consistently pointing outside).
- refraction 'sees' the thickness of glass based on what you model. So
make for realistic glass both sides of a surface.
- I needed to do some rewriting for correct mirroring/refraction,
especially to prevent specularity being blended away.
Solved this with localizing shading results in the rendercore.c.
Now specularity correctly is added, and reduces the 'mirror' value.
- Localizing more parts of the render code is being planned. The old
render heavily relies on struct Render and struct Osa to store globals.
For scanline render no problem, but recursive raytracing dislikes that.
- done test with gamma-corrected summation of colors during tracing, is
commented out still. But this will give more balanced reflections. Now
dark reflections that are reflected in a bright surface seem incorrect.
- Introduced 'Fresnel' effect for Mirror and Transparency. This
influences the amount of mirror/transparency based at viewing angle.
Next to a new Fresnel slider, also a 'falloff' button has been added to
define the way it spreads.
- Fresnel also works for Ztransp rendering
- created new Panel for Raytrace options
I have to evaluate still where it all should be logically located.
- material preview shows fake reflection and fake refraction as well.
when removing header from buttons window, the previewrender didnt show
or crashes.
was caused by relying to an evil global pointer 'lockpoin' which was only
set in headerbuttons...
- removed draw rect from avi coded settings (should become label but)
- changing texture settings, now also updates lamp/material/world
preview when thats open
- faceselect mode works again
- selecting vertices for lattices, surfaces and curves works again
- in previewrender sometimes a square was drawn, which was texture-crop
- menu auto open now is user preset, including 2 thresholds you can set
- hilites of pulldown menus were not cleared, fixed
- changed F4 key to logic. F5 will show lamp buttons, when lamp active
- in 'shader context' buttons, clicking camera will show world
- Converted lamp buttons and world buttons, they're pretty!
- menu auto open now is user preset, including 2 thresholds you can set
- hilites of pulldown menus were not cleared, fixed
- changed F4 key to logic. F5 will show lamp buttons, when lamp active
- in 'shader context' buttons, clicking camera will show world
leftmost/top panel now always at same location, so switching button
'main contextes' works consistantly
- fixed some more events to make sure Panels update when editing
- preview render panel now is 320 wide, just for getting the space filled!
- error in preview render matrix, which caused unpredictable drawing errors
Bedtime!
-Ton-
EEEK! It doesn't look well yet! Hopefully it inspires others to come
with great solutions.
- the material buttons have 6 panels, three of them merged
- some drawing errors in preview render
- made settings for new Material that makes sense for Flares
First, check on the new files, which are listed below.
The new butspace.h is a local include, only to be used for the buttons
drawn in the buttonswindow.
- editbuts, animbuts, gamebuts, displaybuts, paintbuts, work now
- i quite completely reorganized it, it's now nicely telling you what
context it is in
- sorting error in panel align fixed (tabs were flipping)
- align works correctly automatic when you click around in Blender
- editsca.c renamed to buttons_logic.h
- button names are truncated from the right for allmost all buttons
(except text buttons and number buttons)
- while dragging panels, you cannot move them outside window anymore
And of course fixed loads of little bugs I encountered while testing
it all. This is a version I really need good test & feedback for.
Next step: restoring material/lamp/texture/world
- removed src/buttons.c and include/BIF_buttons.h
- added src/buttons.txt, which is the old buttons.c for review and adding
code to new panels structure
- changed internal events to match new buttonspace structure
- added tabs for new shading group of buttons
- removed loads of little warnings, -Wall now compiles src/ almost without
error (hint: setenv NAN_QUIET to see it all better)
Now I'm ready to do actual buttons -> panels conversion. I will do the raw
versions first, others then can cleanup
do a make clean in source/blender/ to be sure!
- Included the new shaders from Cessen... well, only the shader calls
themselves. To make sure the shaders work I nicely integrated it
- MaterialButtons: layout changed a bit, but still resembles the old
layout. The 'shader' options now are located together.
- Shaders are separated in 'diffuse' and 'specular'. You can combine them
freely.
- diffuse Lambert: old shader
diffuse Oren Nayar: new shader, gives sandy/silky/skinny material well
diffuse Toon: for cartoon render
- specular Phong: new spec, traditional 70ies spec
specular CookTorr: a reduced version of cook torrance shading, does
off specular peak well
specular Blinn: new spec, same features as CookTorr, but with extra
'refraction' setting
specular Toon: new spec for cartoon render
- default blender starts with settings that render compatible!
- works in shaded view and preview-render
- works in unified render
Further little changes:
- removed paranoia compile warnings from render/loader/blenlib
- and the warnings at files I worked at were removed.