besides performance in some cases.
* DAG_scene_sort is now removed and replaced by DAG_relations_tag_update in
most cases. This will clear the dependency graph, and only rebuild it right
before it's needed again when the scene is re-evaluated.
This is done because DAG_scene_sort is slow when called many times from
python operators. Further the scene argument is not needed because most
operations can potentially affect more than the current scene.
* DAG_scene_relations_update will now rebuild the dependency graph if it's not
there yet, and DAG_scene_relations_rebuild will force a rebuild for the rare
cases that need it.
* Remove various places where ob->recalc was set manually. This should go
through DAG_id_tag_update() in nearly all cases instead since this is now
a fast operation. Also removed DAG_ids_flush_update that goes along with
such manual tagging of ob->recalc.
added some missing functions too - which are not used yep but should be there for api completeness.
* CDDM_set_mloop
* CDDM_set_mpoly
* BLI_mempool_count
* Adds two new python handlers: scene_update_pre() and scene_update_post()
These run before and after Blender does a scene update on making modifications
to the scene.
* Datablocks now have an is_updated property. This will be set to true in the
above callbacks if the datablock was tagged to be updated. This works for the
most common datablocks used for rendering: object, material, world, lamsp,
texture, mesh, curve.
* Datablock collections also have an is_updated property. If this is set, it
means one datablock of this type was added, removed or modified. It's also
useful as a quick check to avoid looping over all datablocks.
* RenderEngine.view_update() can also check these properties, for interactive
viewport rendering.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.6/Source/Render/UpdateAPI
restore, would not get their dependencies updated when they became visible.
It happend with a shrinkwrap modifier in these reports, but could happen with
other modifiers too.
Now we keep track of which layers have ever been updated since load, and tag
objects on them to be recalculated when they become visible.
Surprising this wasnt noticed in a much more obvious case:
- Key Location, Move, Rotate, Undo-Rotate >> Resets to keyed location as well.
This was happening because DAG_on_load_update() was called on read_undosave(), flagging 'ob->adt->recalc |= ADT_RECALC_ANIM;'
Fix by adding an option to DAG_on_load_update(), not to recalculate time flags.
only tags the ID and does the actual flush/update delayed, before the next
redraw. For objects the update was already delayed, just flushing wasn't
yet.
This should help performance in python and animation editors, by making
calls to RNA property update quicker. Still need to add calls in a few
places where this was previously avoided due to bad performance.
properly on file loading. Some things get preserved on file save/load,
like object matrices and armature poses, but other things need to be remade
like derivedmeshes and displists. The latter were not tagged for recalc on
load causing them to be made on countall or redraw typically, so not in the
right order and dependencies on hidden layer were not done at all.
Now these get tagged for recalc and flags flushed on load. There shouldn't
be much if any slowdown on opening existing files, if there is it should be
fixable.
Editors Modules
* render/ module added in editors, moved the preview render code there and
also shading related operators.
* physics/ module made more consistent with other modules. renaming files,
making a single physics_ops.c for operators and keymaps. Also move all
particle related operators here now.
* space_buttons/ now should have only operators relevant to the buttons
specificially.
Updates & Notifiers
* Material/Texture/World/Lamp can now be passed to DAG_id_flush_update,
which will go back to a callback in editors. Eventually these should
be in the depsgraph itself, but for now this gives a unified call for
doing updates.
* GLSL materials are now refreshed on changes. There's still various
cases missing,
* Preview icons now hook into this system, solving various update cases
that were missed before.
* Also fixes issue in my last commit, where some preview would not render,
problem is avoided in the new system.
Icon Rendering
* On systems with support for non-power of two textures, an OpenGL texture
is now used instead of glDrawPixels. This avoids problems with icons get
clipped on region borders. On my Linux desktop, this gives an 1.1x speedup,
and on my Mac laptop a 2.3x speedup overall in redrawing the full window,
with the default setup. The glDrawPixels implementation on Mac seems to
have a lot of overhread.
* Preview icons are now drawn using proper premul alpha, and never faded so
you can see them clearly.
* Also tried to fix issue with texture node preview rendering, globals can't
be used with threads reliably.
* Move function to compute visible screen layers to BKE.
* Use this now in the depsgraph, was still using this all layers
to flush. Still missing a way to get the current scene in
background mode..
* Also two more function to not require a scene pointer anymore:
* DAG_object_update_flags is now DAG_id_update_flags.
* DAG_ids_flush_update is now available next to DAG_scene_flush_update.
Notifiers
---------
Various fixes for wrong use of notifiers, and some new notifiers
to make things a bit more clear and consistent, with two notable
changes:
* Geometry changes are now done with NC_GEOM, rather than
NC_OBJECT|ND_GEOM_, so an object does need to be available.
* Space data now use NC_SPACE|ND_SPACE_*, instead of data
notifiers or even NC_WINDOW in some cases. Note that NC_SPACE
should only be used for notifying about changes in space data,
we don't want to go back to allqueue(REDRAW..).
Depsgraph
---------
The dependency graph now has a different flush call:
DAG_object_flush_update(scene, ob, flag)
is replaced by:
DAG_id_flush_update(id, flag)
It still works basically the same, one difference is that it now
also accepts object data (e.g. Mesh), again to avoid requiring an
Object to be available. Other ID types will simply do nothing at
the moment.
Docs
----
I made some guidelines for how/when to do which kinds of updates
and notifiers. I can't specify totally exact how to make these
decisions, but these are basically the guidelines I use. So, new
and updated docs are here:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Blender2.5/NotifiersUpdateshttp://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Blender2.5/DataNotifiers
* Optimized RNA property lookups and path resolving, still can be
much better, but now the 1000 IPO example on bf-taskforce25
runs at reasonable speed.
* Also an optimization in the depsgraph when dealing with many
objects, this was actually also a bottleneck here.
=======================
Caching and Baking:
- The point cache is now cleared on DAG_object_flush_update(), and not cleared for time dependency graph updates.
- There is now a Bake button instead of Protect. Also cache start and end frames were added to softbody and particles.
- The cloth autoprotect feature was removed.
- The Ctrl+B menu now also bakes cloth and particles next to softbody and fluids. Additionally there are now frree bake and free cache menu entries.
- The point cache api has been changed. There is now a PTCacheID struct for each point cache type that can be filled and then used to call the point cache functions.
- PointCache struct was added to DNA and is automatically allocated for each physics type.
- Soft body now supports Bake Editing just like cloth.
- Tried to make the systems deal consistently with time ipo's and offsets. Still not sure it all works correct, but too complicated to solve completely now.
Library Linking:
- Added some more warnings to prevent editing settings on library linked objects.
- Linked objects now read from the cache located next to the original library file, and never write to it. This restores old behavior for softbodies. For local simulation the mesh and not the object should be linked.
- Dupligroups and proxies can't create local point caches at the moment, how to implement that I'm not sure. We probably need a proxy point cache for that to work (ugh).
Physics UI:
- Renamed deflection panel to collision for consistency and reorganized the buttons. Also removed some softbody collision buttons from the softbody panel that were duplicated in this panel for cloth.
- Tweaked field panel buttons to not jump around when changing options.
- Tabbing e.g. Soft Body Collision into the Soft Body panel, it now only shows Collision to make the panel names readable.
- I tried to make enabled/disabling physics more consistent, since all three system did things different. Now the two modifier buttons to enable the modifier for the viewport and rendering are also duplicated in the physics panels. Toggling the Soft Body and Cloth buttons now both remove their modifiers.
- Fixed modifier error drawing glitch.
Particles:
- Particles are now recalculated more often than before. Previously it did partial updates based on the changes, but that doesn't work well with DAG_object_flush_update() ..
- Fixed memory leak loading keyed particle system. Now keys are not written to file anymore but always created after loading.
- Make particle threads work with autothreads.
Continue Physics:
- The timeline play now has a Continue Physics option in the playback menu, which keeps the simulations going without writing them to the cache.
- This doesn't always work that well, some changes are not immediately updated, but this can be improved later. Still it's fun to get a feel for the physics.
Todo:
- Point cache can get out of sync with and undo and changing a file without saving it.
- Change the point cache file format to store a version (so old point cache files can be either converted or at least ignored), and to do correct endian conversion.
- Menu item and/or buttons for Ctrl+B.
- A system("rm ..") was changed to remove() since the former is very slow for clearing point caches. These system() calls were already giving trouble in a bug in the tracker, but really most use of this system("") should be changed and tested.
- The Soft Body Collision and Clot Collision panel titles don't mention there's point cache settings there too, doing that makes them unreadable with the default panel setup.. but may need to make the names longer anyway.
-> Any Group Duplicate now can get local timing and local NLA override. This
enables to control the entire animation system of the Group.
Two methods for this have been implemented.
1) The quick way: just give the duplicator a "Startframe" offset.
2) Advanced: in the NLA Editor you can add ActionStrips to the duplicator
to override NLA/action of any Grouped Object.
For "Group NLA" to work, an ActionStrip needs to know which Object in a
group it controls. On adding a strip, the code checks if an Action was
already used by an Object in the Group, and assigns it automatic to that
Object.
You can also set this in the Nkey "Properties" panel for the strip.
Change in NLA: the SHIFT+A "Add strip" command now always adds strips to
the active Object. (It used to check where mouse was). This allows to add
NLA strips to Objects that didn't have actions/nla yet.
Important note: In Blender, duplicates are fully procedural and generated
on the fly for each redraw. This means that redraw speed equals to stepping
through frames, when using animated Duplicated Groups.
-> Recoded entire duplicator system
The old method was antique and clumsy, using globals and full temporal
copies of Object. The new system is nicer in control, faster, and since it
doesn't use temporal object copies anymore, it works better with Derived
Mesh and DisplayList and rendering.
By centralizing the code for duplicating, more options can be easier added.
Features to note:
- Duplicates now draw selected/unselected based on its Duplicator setting.
- Same goes for the drawtype (wire, solid, selection outline, etc)
- Duplicated Groups can be normally selected too
Bonus goodie: SHIFT+A (Toolbox) now has entry "Add group" too, with a
listing of all groups, allowing to add Group instances immediate.
-> Library System
- SHIFT+F4 data browse now shows the entire path for linked data
- Outliner draws Library Icons to denote linked data
- Outliner operation added: "Make Local" for library data.
- Outliner now also draws Groups in regular view, allowing to unlink too.
-> Fixes
- depsgraph missed signal update for bone-parented Objects
- on reading file, the entire database was tagged to "recalc" fully,
causing unnecessary slowdown on reading.
Might have missed stuff... :)
In PoseMode, press Wkey or use the Pose pulldown menu. It calculates the
positions of all selected Bone end points, over the time as indicated with
the Scene start/end frame. This then is drawn as a path, with little black
dots on every frame, and a white dot on every 10 frames.
Paths are not saved in files, and not calculated automatic yet on changes.
To make this relative fast, but also reliable, I had to add a new method
in the Dependency graph system, to find exactly (and only) these parents
of an Object that influence its position. This is needed because the path
should show the actual global coordinates of the entire animation system.
When using 3d window "unlocked" (own layer and own camera possible), the
dependency updates didn't work, these were only using Scene layers.
Changed the dependency graph call DAG_scene_flush_update()
to accept an argument for all visible layers in a Screen.
Aim was to get a total refresh of the animation system. This
is needed because;
- we need to upgrade it with 21st century features
- current code is spaghetti/hack combo, and hides good design
- it should become lag-free with using dependency graphs
A full log, with complete code API/structure/design explanation
will follow, that's a load of work... so here below the list with
hot changes;
- The entire object update system (matrices, geometry) is now
centralized. Calls to where_is_object and makeDispList are
forbidden, instead we tag objects 'changed' and let the
depgraph code sort it out
- Removed all old "Ika" code
- Depgraph is aware of all relationships, including meta balls,
constraints, bevelcurve, and so on.
- Made depgraph aware of relation types and layers, to do smart
flushing of 'changed' events. Nothing gets calculated too often!
- Transform uses depgraph to detect changes
- On frame-advance, depgraph flushes animated changes
Armatures;
Almost all armature related code has been fully built from scratch.
It now reveils the original design much better, with a very clean
implementation, lag free without even calculating each Bone more than
once. Result is quite a speedup yes!
Important to note is;
1) Armature is data containing the 'rest position'
2) Pose is the changes of rest position, and always on object level.
That way more Objects can use same Pose. Also constraints are in Pose
3) Actions only contain the Ipos to change values in Poses.
- Bones draw unrotated now
- Drawing bones speedup enormously (10-20 times)
- Bone selecting in EditMode, selection state is saved for PoseMode,
and vice-versa
- Undo in editmode
- Bone renaming does vertexgroups, constraints, posechannels, actions,
for all users of Armature in entire file
- Added Bone renaming in NKey panel
- Nkey PoseMode shows eulers now
- EditMode and PoseMode now have 'active' bone too (last clicked)
- Parenting in EditMode' CTRL+P, ALT+P, with nice options!
- Pose is added in Outliner now, with showing that constraints are in
the Pose, not Armature
- Disconnected IK solving from constraints. It's a separate phase now,
on top of the full Pose calculations
- Pose itself has a dependency graph too, so evaluation order is lag free.
TODO NOW;
- Rotating in Posemode has incorrect inverse transform (Martin will fix)
- Python Bone/Armature/Pose API disabled... needs full recode too
(wait for my doc!)
- Game engine will need upgrade too
- Depgraph code needs revision, cleanup, can be much faster!
(But, compliments for Jean-Luc, it works like a charm!)
- IK changed, it now doesnt use previous position to advance to next
position anymore. That system looks nice (no flips) but is not well
suited for NLA and background render.
TODO LATER;
We now can do loadsa new nifty features as well; like:
- Kill PoseMode (can be option for armatures itself)
- Make B-Bones (Bezier, Bspline, like for spines)
- Move all silly button level edit to 3d window (like CTRL+I = add
IK)
- Much better & informative drawing
- Fix action/nla editors
- Put all ipos in Actions (object, mesh key, lamp color)
- Add hooks
- Null bones
- Much more advanced constraints...
Bugfixes;
- OGL render (view3d header) had wrong first frame on anim render
- Ipo 'recording' mode had wrong playback speed
- Vertex-key mode now sticks to show 'active key', until frame change
-Ton-
Works like a charm... well it now replaces the old base-sorting hack. :)
Next stage will be to define how to further integrate it. Plus some
minor code cleanups... static/internal functions versus external, etc.
