This merge-commit brings in a number of new features and workflow/UI improvements for
working with Grease Pencil. While these were originally targetted at improving
the workflow for creating 3D storyboards in Blender using the Grease Pencil,
many of these changes should also prove useful in other workflows too.
The main highlights here are:
1) It is now possible to edit Grease Pencil strokes
- Use D Tab, or toggle the "Enable Editing" toggles in the Toolbar/Properties regions
to enter "Stroke Edit Mode". In this mode, many common editing tools will
operate on Grease Pencil stroke points instead.
- Tools implemented include Select, Select All/Border/Circle/Linked/More/Less,
Grab, Rotate, Scale, Bend, Shear, To Sphere, Mirror, Duplicate, Delete.
- Proportional Editing works when using the transform tools
2) Grease Pencil stroke settings can now be animated
NOTE: Currently drivers don't work, but if time allows, this may still be
added before the release.
3) Strokes can be drawn with "filled" interiors, using a separate set of
colour/opacity settings to the ones used for the lines themselves.
This makes use of OpenGL filled polys, which has the limitation of only
being able to fill convex shapes. Some artifacts may be visible on concave
shapes (e.g. pacman's mouth will be overdrawn)
4) "Volumetric Strokes" - An alternative drawing technique for stroke drawing
has been added which draws strokes as a series of screen-aligned discs.
While this was originally a partial experimental technique at getting better
quality 3D lines, the effects possible using this technique were interesting
enough to warrant making this a dedicated feature. Best results when partial
opacity and large stroke widths are used.
5) Improved Onion Skinning Support
- Different colours can be selected for the before/after ghosts. To do so,
enable the "colour wheel" toggle beside the Onion Skinning toggle, and set
the colours accordingly.
- Different numbers of ghosts can be shown before/after the current frame
6) Grease Pencil datablocks are now attached to the scene by default instead of
the active object.
- For a long time, the object-attachment has proved to be quite problematic
for users to keep track of. Now that this is done at scene level, it is
easier for most users to use.
- An exception for old files (and for any addons which may benefit from object
attachment instead), is that if the active object has a Grease Pencil datablock,
that will be used instead.
- It is not currently possible to choose object-attachment from the UI, but
it is simple to do this from the console instead, by doing:
context.active_object.grease_pencil = bpy.data.grease_pencil["blah"]
7) Various UI Cleanups
- The layers UI has been cleaned up to use a list instead of the nested-panels
design. Apart from saving space, this is also much nicer to look at now.
- The UI code is now all defined in Python. To support this, it has been necessary
to add some new context properties to make it easier to access these settings.
e.g. "gpencil_data" for the datablock
"active_gpencil_layer" and "active_gpencil_frame" for active data,
"editable_gpencil_strokes" for the strokes that can be edited
- The "stroke placement/alignment" settings (previously "Drawing Settings" at the
bottom of the Grease Pencil panel in the Properties Region) is now located in
the toolbar. These were more toolsettings than properties for how GPencil got drawn.
- "Use Sketching Sessions" has been renamed "Continuous Drawing", as per a
suggestion for an earlier discussion on developer.blender.org
- By default, the painting operator will wait for a mouse button to be pressed
before it starts creating the stroke. This is to make it easier to include
this operator in various toolbars/menus/etc. To get it immediately starting
(as when you hold down DKEy to draw), set "wait_for_input" to False.
- GPencil Layers can be rearranged in the "Grease Pencil" mode of the Action Editor
- Toolbar panels have been added to all the other editors which support these.
8) Pie menus for quick-access to tools
A set of experimental pie menus has been included for quick access to many
tools and settings. It is not necessary to use these to get things done,
but they have been designed to help make certain common tasks easier.
- Ctrl-D = The main pie menu. Reveals tools in a context sensitive and
spatially stable manner.
- D Q = "Quick Settings" pie. This allows quick access to the active
layer's settings. Notably, colours, thickness, and turning
onion skinning on/off.
This makes it easier for finding the active or first selected channel
(where actual data channels need to be favoured over expanders - which come
first), as previously, long switch statements were needed everytime.
This commit lays some of the groundwork needed to port the last of the NLA Editor
channel types that's still defined using custom code. By moving this code over
to the newer standardised framework, this will enable widgets to have tooltips
to make it easier for users to find out what various buttons do.
Currently this isn't hooked up to anything though.
- deduplicate timecode_simple_string from image.c
- replace V2D_UNIT_SECONDSSEQ with V2D_UNIT_SECONDS
- avoid possible buffer overflow bugs (sprintf -> BLI_snprintf)
- remove option not to use timecode and split into 2 functions
Patch D227 by Andrew Buttery with own refactoring.
Changes:
- acf.name_prop() and acf.has_setting() now return bools instead of shorts
- Renamed a few name_prop() callbacks whose names ended in "_nameprop"
instead of "_name_prop", which made it difficult to safely find all
such instances
Added two options to a header of FCurve editor:
- Normalize which makes it so every individual
curve is fit into -1..1 space.
- Auto-normalize, which probably is to be called
"Lock" which "locks" curve normalization scale.
This is useful to prevent curves from jumping
around when tweaking it.
It's debatable whether it need to be a button to
normalize curves n purpose only, and it's fully
depends on animator's workflow.
Here during Project Pampa we've got Francesco
who get used to auto-renormalization and Hjalti
who prefers locked behavior.
Docs are to be ready soon by Francesco.
Thanks Brecht for the review!
Remove usages of ANIM_unit_mapping_apply_fcurve in favor of
runtime scale factor apply.
There're still calls to ANIM_nla_mapping_apply_fcurve are
hanging around, they're the next t be cleaned up!
- pass string size to BLI_timestr() to avoid possible buffer overrun.
- quiet warning for mingw.
- include guards for windows utf conversion funcs.
- fix for mistage in edge-angle-selection check.
- some style cleanup.
Conflicts resolved:
source/blenderplayer/bad_level_call_stubs/SConscript
Partly reverted changes to intern/cycles/blender/addon/ui.py in revision 52899
to make it easier to merge trunk changes.
and RNA for it independent of the build flag for enabling Freestyle. Suggested
by Sergey Sharybin through a code review of the branch.
* Many #ifdef WITH_FREESTYLE blocks were removed to always have Freestyle-specific
DNA file specification and RNA for it built in Blender. This will allow Freestyle
setting survive even when a non-Freestyle build is used for loading and saving
files. It is noted that operations are still conditionally built through #ifdef
WITH_FREESTYLE blocks.
* To this end, new blenkernel files BKE_freestyle.h and intern/freestyle.c have
been added. All API functions in FRS_freestyle_config.h as well as some of those
in FRS_freestyle.h were moved to the new files. Now the relocated API functions
have BKE_ prefix instead of FRS_.
Resolved conflicts:
release/datafiles/startup.blend
source/blender/editors/space_nla/nla_buttons.c
Also updated source/blender/blenkernel/intern/linestyle.c as a follow-up of
recent changes for the use of bool.
Nice formatted version (pictures soon):
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.66/Usability
Short list of main changes:
- Transparent region option (over main region), added code to blend in/out such panels.
- Min size window now 640 x 480
- Fixed DPI for ui - lots of cleanup and changes everywhere. Icon image need correct size still, layer-in-use icon needs remake.
- Macbook retina support, use command line --no-native-pixels to disable it
- Timeline Marker label was drawing wrong
- Trackpad and magic mouse: supports zoom (hold ctrl)
- Fix for splash position: removed ghost function and made window size update after creation immediate
- Fast undo buffer save now adds UI as well. Could be checked for regular file save even...
Quit.blend and temp file saving use this now.
- Dixed filename in window on reading quit.blend or temp saves, and they now add a warning in window title: "(Recovered)"
- New Userpref option "Keep Session" - this always saves quit.blend, and loads on start.
This allows keeping UI and data without actual saves, until you actually save.
When you load startup.blend and quit, it recognises the quit.blend as a startup (no file name in header)
- Added 3D view copy/paste buffers (selected objects). Shortcuts ctrl-c, ctrl-v (OSX, cmd-c, cmd-v).
Coded partial file saving for it. Could be used for other purposes. Todo: use OS clipboards.
- User preferences (themes, keymaps, user settings) now can be saved as a separate file.
Old option is called "Save Startup File" the new one "Save User Settings".
To visualise this difference, the 'save startup file' button has been removed from user preferences window. That option is available as CTRL+U and in File menu still.
- OSX: fixed bug that stopped giving mouse events outside window.
This also fixes "Continuous Grab" for OSX. (error since 2009)
- spelling - turns out we had tessellation spelt wrong all over.
- use \directive for doxy (not @directive)
- remove BLI_sparsemap.h - was from bmesh merge IIRC but entire file commented and not used.
