Freestyle's pipeline is now fully controllable at the layer level. It can be used:
- in any render layer
- with as many style modules per layer
DETAILS:
Freestyle usage has not changed:
- all the configuration happens in the "Freestyle" render panel, after it is enabled in the "Output" panel with the 'Freestyle' toggle.
- each render layer can choose to render Freestyle strokes by togglingo on 'FrSt' (in the "Render Layers" panel)
- it is fully compatible with compositor nodes
In the "Freestyle" panel, a render layer is selected via the menu list next to the "Render Layer:" label. The options displayed below are those of the currently selected render layer (and are not global to all render layers, as was previously the case).
Style modules are added by pressing the lower button "Add style module". Once added, the following operations are possible:
- deletion (cross)
- reordering (up/down arrows)
- toggling of display (check)
The order of the style modules follows Freestyle's original convention: the modules in the list from top to bottom are respectively the first to the last composited in the render layer. For example, if the module list is "contour" followed by "cartoon", the "cartoon" strokes are rendered on top of the "contour" strokes.
The "Freestyle" panel is constantly synchronized with the "Render Layers" panel: if render layers are added, deleted or toggled off display, Freestyle will take note of the changes.
The current pipeline works as follows:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
for every scene that is being rendered
if Freestyle is enabled globally
Freestyle is initialized
camera and view settings are transferred from Blender to Freestyle
for every render layer
if: - layer is enabled
- layer enabled Freestyle
- the number of displayed style modules is non-zero
canvas is cleared
geometry is transferred from Blender to Freestyle
settings are fixed for current iteration
view map is calculated
strokes are computed in the canvas (based on view map and style modules)
strokes are rendered in separate Blender scene
scene is composited in current layer
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A number of changes were made on the codebase:
- the rendering interface between Freestyle and Blender was simplified. The following naming convention was used: functions that are called from within Blender pipeline are prefixed with 'FRS_', while the variables are prefixed with 'freestyle_'
- Freestyle data structures that were put in Blender's render pipeline were removed
- Freestyle cleans up its data structures on Blender exit and shouldn't leak memory
- to ease the configuration in the "Freestyle" panel, a centralized configuration data structure was used and can be easily extended
LIMITATIONS
Even though the current commit is stable and achieves the intended result, it is not as efficient as it could be:
- the canvas and the style modules are at cleared at each layer-level render
- geometry is reloaded at each frame and is duplicated across render layers
This revision clarifies my understanding of the future role of the view map in the compositor. Unfortunately, contrary to what the original proposal said, it is impossible to provide the view map as a render pass because render passes are defined (RE_pipeline.h) as raw floating-point rects. We will have to determine whether or not to extend the notion of render pass to fully integrate the view map in the compositor.
The render generated from Freestyle's data is currently stored in the original scene's render structure ( as 'freestyle_render'): when the render database is generated, the scene's geometrical data is first imported into Freestyle and strokes are calculated. The generated strokes are used to create a Blender scene, rendered independently. The render result is used in the rendering loop.
The final rendering is performed the same way edge rendering is, in a function ('freestyle_enhance_add') operating on each individual render part. Freestyle strokes are only included if the toggle button "Freestyle" (in the 'Output' panel) is active and if the "Freestyle" render layer is also selected. Freestyle's panel appears when the toggle button 'Freestyle' is active.
IMPORTANT: as of now, rendering ONLY works when OSA is disabled and when Xparts = Yparts = 1. If these settings are not set, a bogus image will be created.
To make the render happen, many modifications had to be made:
- the Canvas::Draw and Operators::create methods no longer render strokes. They only generate shading and locational information.
- a BlenderStrokeRenderer class was added to turn Freestyle's strokes into a Blender scene. Basically, the scene consists of strokes in their projected image 2D coordinates and an orthographic camera centered in the middle of the corresponding canvas. The scene is rendered using vertex colors, in shadeless mode (therefore, no lamp is needed). BlenderStrokeRenderer uses the old GLTextureManager to load textures (as required by the StrokeRenderer class), even though stroke textures are probably not supported (not tested). After the scene is rendered, it is safely and automatically discarded.
- AppCanvas' code was greatly reduced to the bare minimum. The former AppCanvas would use an OpenGL-based back buffer and z buffer to determine the scene's color and depth information. In the future, this data will be determined from the corresponding render passes. Currently, the integration is not achieved so all style modules using depth/color information are sure to fail.
- before, Freestyle needed an OpenGL context to determine the camera's information and to compute the view map. As of now, the modelview and projection matrices are fully determined using data provided by Blender. This means both perspective and orthographic projections are supported. The AppGLWidget will very soon be removed completely.
Particle system crashed in convertblender, missing NULL check.
This fixes crash, render survives, but I doubt it was meant so...
Will leave it Janne to evaluate later.
regression files, it showed small dark outline errors on envmap.
This commit rewinds bugfix #8437, which actually had to be fixed on
another location in code, which was done a few weeks ago. :)
Index OB pass didn't support FSA for Ztransp.
Also made buttons to set black/white for non-RGBA images hide in Image Window,
the Curves color code only supports 4 channels atm.
proper results, should bake as if SSS was disabled.
- Fix for GLSL to handle failing shadow buffer creation better.
- Fix for sky/atmosphere version patch, was not doing files from 2.46
and newer.
due to jittering of the start position for antialiasing in a pixel.
Now it distributes the start position over the fixed osa sample
positions, instead of of random positions in space. The ugly bit is
that a custom ordering was defined for osa 8/11/16 to ensure that the
first 4 are distributed relatively fair for adaptive sampling to decide
if more samples need to be taken.
- the number of segments was always 1 too many on cyclic curves.
- [#17739] - normals were not being calculated when rendering curves.
Replaced macro DL_SURFINDEX with a function. it that assumes variable names and could break from the loop that called it.
SunSky didn't include skycolor in raytrace.
Note: there seems to be an error in sunsky when looking straight down,
so this option requires raytracing stuff not in outer space. :)
* subsurf code had a lot of unused variables, removed these where they are obviously not needed. commented if they could be useful later.
* some variables declorations hide existing variables (many of these left), but fixed some that could cause confusion.
* removed unused vars
* obscure python memory leak with colorband.
* make_sample_tables had a loop running wasnt used.
* if 0'd functions in arithb.c that are not used yet.
* made many functions static
- removed ugly clamping function (it was dividing XYZ based on max of
one of the values)
- added option to use Exposure, this only works for brightness (Y).
results look very pleasant, foggy and hazy results are possible.
with exposre==0, no exposure happens for HDR extreme range skies,
this is how yafray rendered it.
- added menu for choosing color spaces (CIE = modern lcds)
Please review! (and yes i know it's still not in World :)
Zbuffer error in render: when you render faces clipped by 'clip end' the
z values could wrap around, resulting in errors. Code not nicely clamps,
plus should be faster even!
- Added blending mode and factor option, so it's more clear and
controllable what happens with it. Also nice for crazy effects
of course!
- Preview render now shows preview for it too
On the todos:
- have this in World buttons (as well) for quicker sky setups
- review math of color clamping and scaling, this is definitely
not good... but a fix will make old files look very different.
- Changed order for applying atmosphere, it does it now before alpha-adding
sky, giving correct transparency
- Added correction for de-premulling and premulling scatter color
Commit patch #7788, allow to set the render step, so it's
possible make render every N frames only.
The step is change in Scene buttons (F10), below start and
end frame buttons.
Also add a command line options (-j), so it's possible to
overwrite the file step (useful for renderfarm).
[ Brecht, this work with OpenGL renders and simulated
the skipped frames, please double check ]
Finally, after a long time new render candy for the non-game peoples! :)
Good doc is here: (url splits in two)
http://www.harkyman.com/2008/08/06/controllable-shadow-intensity-
and-color/
Note the colorpicker for shadow is in "Shadow and Spot" panel. A bit
hidden, could get more attention. For later. :)
not give a smooth fallof. there's no correct fix possible due
to a lack of information, but this manually adds a smoother
falloff, overestimating the contribution of foregroud pixels
instead of becoming transparent.
halo material attach to the object instead of the mesh.
Also for bug #13489: avoid a crash rendering with invalid
active vcol layer, most likely caused by a bug that was
already fixed.
FSA didn't support "key alpha", fixed it.
Also noticed edge-enhance didnt work for FSA, added warning for that,
fixing it is too clumsy, this option belongs in compositor.