PyNodes opens up the node system in Blender to scripters and adds a number of UI-level improvements.
=== Dynamic node type registration ===
Node types can now be added at runtime, using the RNA registration mechanism from python. This enables addons such as render engines to create a complete user interface with nodes.
Examples of how such nodes can be defined can be found in my personal wiki docs atm [1] and as a script template in release/scripts/templates_py/custom_nodes.py [2].
=== Node group improvements ===
Each node editor now has a tree history of edited node groups, which allows opening and editing nested node groups. The node editor also supports pinning now, so that different spaces can be used to edit different node groups simultaneously. For more ramblings and rationale see (really old) blog post on code.blender.org [3].
The interface of node groups has been overhauled. Sockets of a node group are no longer displayed in columns on either side, but instead special input/output nodes are used to mirror group sockets inside a node tree. This solves the problem of long node lines in groups and allows more adaptable node layout. Internal sockets can be exposed from a group by either connecting to the extension sockets in input/output nodes (shown as empty circle) or by adding sockets from the node property bar in the "Interface" panel. Further details such as the socket name can also be changed there.
[1] http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Phonybone/Python_Nodes
[2] http://projects.blender.org/scm/viewvc.php/trunk/blender/release/scripts/templates_py/custom_nodes.py?view=markup&root=bf-blender
[3] http://code.blender.org/index.php/2012/01/improving-node-group-interface-editing/
Note about long lines: I did not touch to two pieces of code (because I don’t see any way to keep a nicely formated, compact code, with shorter lines):
* The node types definitions into rna_nodetree_types.h
* The vgroup name functions into rna_particle.c
Reviewed by Tom Musgrove and myself.
From the patch description:
ValterVB on #blendercoders submitted a long list of missing tooltips in Blender, and I went through the list and added all I knew. After that I crowdsourced the rest by putting a spreadsheet on Google docs and having people fill in the missing ones that I didn't know. So if there's some weird tooltip in there that doesn't make sense, that's why.
Thanks to Wolter, spacetug and others on BlenderArtists for contributing tooltips.
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.
- move: material.add_texture(tex, coords, mapto) --> material.texture_slots.add()
- added material.texture_slots.create(index), material.texture_slots.clear(index)
- texture slot functions also work for lamp and world now.
Other minor changes
- allow rna functions to set FUNC_NO_SELF and FUNC_USE_SELF_ID at once.
- [#23317] Changed some operators' RNA to accept lengths, a modification I made to this patch made it not work as intended, removed this edit so unit buttons appier in the UI for certain operators.
- Sphinx doc gen, 2 columns rather then 3, didnt quite fit in some cases.
Ambient occlusion: multiplied with direct lighting by default, add
is also still available and more blending methods might be added if
they are useful. This is fundamentally a non physical effect.
Environment lighting: always added as you would expect (though you can
subtract by specifying negative energy). This can be just white or take
colors or textures from the world.
Indirect lighting: only supported for AAO at the moment (and is still
too approximate), and also is always added. A factor is available to
specify how much is added, though value 1.0 is correct.
Also:
* Material ambient value now defaults to 1.0.
* Added Environment, Indirect and Emit pass.
* "Both" blending method is no longer available.
* Attenuation, sampling parameters are still shared, some could be split
up, though if they are different this would affect performance.
* Property update functions no longer get context, instead they get only
Main and Scene. The RNA api was intended to be as context-less as
possible, since it doesn't really matter who is changing the property,
everything that uses the property should be updated.
* There's still one exception case that use it now, screen operations
still depend on context too much. It also revealed a few places using
context where they shouldn't.
* Ideally Scene shouldn't be passed, but much of Blender still depends on
it, should be dropped when we try to support multiple scene editing.
Change was planned for a while, but need this now to be able to call
update without a context pointer.
Don't use passes anymore for indirect lighting, people were using this
probably thinking it would do bounces, but that's not the intention of
this feature, it is to reduce problems with light bleeding. I want to
remove this option for AO as well, but will leave it in for now until
there is a better alternative.
Added bounces option for indirect, could be implemented much better,
but perhaps useful for testing now. Existing files need to set this to
1 to get the same results again.
This brings back the single bounce indirect diffuse lighting for AAO,
it's not integrated well but that will be tackled later as part of
shading system refactor and subdivision changes. The caveats are the
same as AAO, with one extra thing, the diffuse lighting is sampled once
per face, so it will not be accurate unless faces are subdivided.
I'm committing this now so we can start testing it for Durian, and
since changes need to make it work properly are planned.
