A full detailed description of this will be done later... is several days
of work. Here's a summary:
Render:
- Full cleanup of render code, removing *all* globals and bad level calls
all over blender. Render module is now not called abusive anymore
- API-fied calls to rendering
- Full recode of internal render pipeline. Is now rendering tiles by
default, prepared for much smarter 'bucket' render later.
- Each thread now can render a full part
- Renders were tested with 4 threads, goes fine, apart from some lookup
tables in softshadow and AO still
- Rendering is prepared to do multiple layers and passes
- No single 32 bits trick in render code anymore, all 100% floats now.
Writing images/movies
- moved writing images to blender kernel (bye bye 'schrijfplaatje'!)
- made a new Movie handle system, also in kernel. This will enable much
easier use of movies in Blender
PreviewRender:
- Using new render API, previewrender (in buttons) now uses regular render
code to generate images.
- new datafile 'preview.blend.c' has the preview scenes in it
- previews get rendered in exact displayed size (1 pixel = 1 pixel)
3D Preview render
- new; press Pkey in 3d window, for a panel that continuously renders
(pkey is for games, i know... but we dont do that in orange now!)
- this render works nearly identical to buttons-preview render, so it stops
rendering on any event (mouse, keyboard, etc)
- on moving/scaling the panel, the render code doesn't recreate all geometry
- same for shifting/panning view
- all other operations (now) regenerate the full render database still.
- this is WIP... but big fun, especially for simple scenes!
Compositor
- Using same node system as now in use for shaders, you can composit images
- works pretty straightforward... needs much more options/tools and integration
with rendering still
- is not threaded yet, nor is so smart to only recalculate changes... will be
done soon!
- the "Render Result" node will get all layers/passes as output sockets
- The "Output" node renders to a builtin image, which you can view in the Image
window. (yes, output nodes to render-result, and to files, is on the list!)
The Bad News
- "Unified Render" is removed. It might come back in some stage, but this
system should be built from scratch. I can't really understand this code...
I expect it is not much needed, especially with advanced layer/passes
control
- Panorama render, Field render, Motion blur, is not coded yet... (I had to
recode every single feature in render, so...!)
- Lens Flare is also not back... needs total revision, might become composit
effect though (using zbuffer for visibility)
- Part render is gone! (well, thats obvious, its default now).
- The render window is only restored with limited functionality... I am going
to check first the option to render to a Image window, so Blender can become
a true single-window application. :)
For example, the 'Spare render buffer' (jkey) doesnt work.
- Render with border, now default creates a smaller image
- No zbuffers are written yet... on the todo!
- Scons files and MSVC will need work to get compiling again
OK... thats what I can quickly recall. Now go compiling!
Credits go to Gernot Ziegler, who originally coded EXR support, and to
Austin Benesh for bringing it further. Kent Mein provided a lot of code
for integrating float buffers in Blender imbuf and ImBuf API cleanup,
and provided Make and Scons and static linking.
At this moment; the EXR libraries are a *dependency*, so you cannot get
the Orange branch compiled without having OpenEXR installed. Get the
(precompiled or sources) stuff from www.openexr.com. Current default is
that the headers and lib resides in /user/local/
Several changes/additions/fixes were added:
- EXR code only supported 'half' format (16 bits per channel). I've added
float writing, but for reading it I need tomorrow. :)
- Quite some clumsy copying of data happened in EXR code.
- cleaned up the api calls already a bit, preparing for more advanced
support
- Zbuffers were saved 16 bits, now 32 bits
- automatic adding of .exr extensions went wrong
Imbuf:
- added proper imbuf->flags and imbuf->mall support for float buffers, it
was created for *each* imbuf. :)
- found bugs for float buffers in scaling and flipping. Code there will
need more checks still
- imbuf also needs to be verified to behave properly when no 32 bits
rect exists (for saving for example)
TODO:
- support internal float images for textures, backbuf, AO probes, and
display in Image window
Hope this commit won't screwup syncing with bf-blender... :/
NOTE: BLI_winstuff.h was meant to be a wrapper around windows.h to handle
undefining various crap that windows.h defines. Platform specific headers
should only have to be included in a few places. This reduces the number
of inclusions of BLI_winstuff.h to 16 which is a much more reasonable
number (than the 144 or whatever it used to be)