Shape Action are now supported in the BGE. A new type of actuator "Shape Action" is available on mesh objects. It can be combined with Action actuator on parent armature. Only relative keys are supported. All the usual action options are available: type, blending, priority, Python API. Only actions with shape channels should be specified of course, otherwise the actuator has no effect. Shape action will still work after a mesh replacement provided that the new mesh has compatible shape keys.
* NLA scaling was being incorrectly handled with fractional values. This was caused by clamping to integers instead of floats when making sure the scale value was positive.
* Added checks to help prevent some weird cases that may sometimes occur and cause problems
This appears to be a long-standing bug, and it only affected the Follow-Path constraint as it was the only one which was dependant on time-based changes. An oversight in the depsgraph code meant that Follow-Path constraints on armature bones were not evaluated, unless there was an Action or some NLA-Strips for that armature.
I've added a new flag to pose->flag (POSE_CONSTRAINTS_TIMEDEPEND) which only gets set/cleared by update_pose_constraint_flags. This flag indicates that the depsgraph needs to do an update for such cases, and will require going in/out of EditMode to set this for old files.
It's been implemented as such to avoid having costly searches when trying to run animations realtime (as is done for modifiers).
Bone Groups are now always copied from the source armature. This does mean that it isn't possible to have 'local' bone groups as for constraints, but it is better than losing bone groups from the original.
I'm committing some work-in-progress code for "bone groups" now, as I there have been are some major bugs caused by the timeoffset stuff (some of my test files were not loading, and other files were showing all sorts of weird problems).
Anyway, in this commit, the following things for "bone groups" have been done:
* Bone groups are stored per armature (internally, this is per bPose block)
* Added controls for editing bone-groups per armature - "add", "remove", "rename". These can be found in the "Links and Materials" panel in PoseMode, beside the settings for PoseLib.
* Reorganised buttons for editing selected bones in PoseMode. I've replaced the "dist" and "weight" buttons (they existed in EditMode anyway) with a menu to choose the bone-group and the custom-shape-ob field. In the place of the old custom-shape-ob field, I've restored the "Hide" button. This might break muscle-memory a bit, but there isn't a lot of space to play with there.
Some stuff I'd been originally planning to do before committing:
* When adding keyframes for bones, an action-group with the same name as the bone's group will be added to the action, and the action-channel will be made a member of that.
* New action/bone groups have unique names (renaming/adding new should check if name exists before assigning it)
* There's a setting under Bone-Groups stuff which sets which custom-colour set is used to colour that group's bones. Currently, this is non-functional, as the necessary drawing code for armatures is not in place yet.
Now, you can assign Action Channels to named (folder-like) groups, which help to organise the channels (important for more complex rigs). These are collapsible, can be "protected", and show a "summary" of the keyframes in the channels the Group contains. They are drawn as bright-green (active) or a darker shade of green (not active) channels.
* Each Action has its own set of Groups.
* An Action-Channel can only occur in one Group at a time. It can also not occur in any group.
* Action-Channels can be moved between Groups
* Groups + grouped-channels always occur BEFORE un-grouped channels
Important Hotkeys:
* Shift-G : Adds the selected Action-Channels to the Active Group. This will create a new group if need be
* Ctrl-Shift-G : Always adds a new group, and adds the selected Action-Channels to it
* Alt-G : Removes selected Action-Channels from their groups
* Ctrl-Shift-Alt-G : (Note: this will be removed soon) This is a simple debugging-hotkey I added, which just prints a list of the groups, channels, and their addresses...
* NKey / Ctrl-LMB: While hovering over the name of a group, this shows a popup like for other channels, which allows the editing of the channel's name, etc.
Assorted Notes:
* Some tools may not work yet with this (Ctrl Numpad+/- for example)
* Fixed some bugs in various places in Action Editor code
* Added theme colours for group channels
* The nomenclature of these tools may change in future when a better alternative is found
* The ability to auto-assign action-channels to groups when they are keyframed will be coming up shortly
Newly added strip->scale was never initialized 1.0f on adding, causing
divide by zero in NLA/Action UI.
Bug since september or so... is nobody using NLA? :)
- first work on getting area/screen handling back
- added structure for where to put stuff, is still under
review, wait a bit for docs?
Campbell is working on removing every bad level include from
sources, so we can safely rebuild the src/ directory.
Based on feedback from Ton, I've recoded the way "PoseLibs" are implemented/exposed. Therefore, quite a bit of code has been changed to fit this in better.
Now, ANY ACTION can be a "PoseLib". A set of Markers which belong to the Action (it's taken a year, but they're finally back), are used to tag "poses" in the Action. These markers are shown using diamond-shaped blue icons (designed by Matt Ebb) in three shades - unselected/normal, selected, active.
Notes:
* Each Armature Object has an Action which acts as a PoseLib.
* Improved UI presented in buttons panel for this
-- added proper buttons for action assigning
-- renamed "Validate PoseLib" to "Auto-Sync PoseLib" (this option auto-tags poses based on keyframes found)
Like in the 3d-view, use the hotkeys:
* Shift-L to add a local marker
* Ctrl-Shift-L to rename a local marker
* Alt-L to delete selected local markers
Note: transforms, etc. are not currently available with these markers
== PoseLib Preview ==
Added a few features here:
* Left/Right-Arrow keys now change the poses too (previous and next respectively)
* Up/Down-Arrow keys also change the poses, but "jump" to a pose 5 steps away in their respective directions
"A slightly late Christmas present for the Animators out there :-)"
This tool allows animators to store frequently used poses in an action, and be able to label those poses to help them retrieve them later. In a way, it acts as a glorified clipboard for poses.
One of the cool features with this is the ability to select which stored pose to use interactively in the 3d-view. Once a few poses have been stored in the PoseLib, simply use the "Ctrl L" hotkey to start previewing. Use the Mousewheel or the Page Up/Down keys to change poses, and confirm/cancel the preview in the same way as you do for transforms.
Usage Notes:
* Each Armature may get its own PoseLib. PoseLibs are simply actions with extra data, so they can get relinked.
* Manually editing actions used as PoseLibs is not a good idea, as some data may not be able to be found. Tools to automagically find poses in an action could be investigated...
* PoseLib will only apply/retrieve poses to/from selected bones
* A basic UI for this can be found in the "Links and Materials" panel. Most of the PoseLib tools are presented there.
Useful Hotkeys (also found in Pose->PoseLib menu):
* Ctrl L - interactively preview poses
* Shift L - add a new pose or replace an existing pose in the PoseLib with the current pose
* Ctrl Shift L - rename an existing pose in the PoseLib
* Alt L - remove a pose from the poselib.c
* Old files now get initialised with the correct scale. The wrong calculation was being used
* Added a new tool to Alt-S menu: "Apply Scale"
This tool causes all the keyframes in the active strip to be moved to their NLA-scaled times, the scale to be set to 1.0, and the frame ranges recalculated accordingly (to remove any nasty weird errors)
* Scale field now draws red when the action-range is < 1, and the tooltip in this case instructs the user how to fix this (by using "Apply Scale").
NLA-Strips now have a new setting: Scale.
It determines how much the action-range is scaled for each repeat, instead of the scaling being implicitly determined based on repeats + strip-length.
One of the instant benefits of this, is that when increasing the number of repeats, the strip length increases by the right amount. Thus, increasing the number of repeats retains a constant speed.
Hopefully we can prevent weirdly scaled actions this way. (i.e. 0.00001 frames long action * 10000 or so)
Todo:
- Transform code needs to be able to set the scale setting (it doesn't yet)
- Add a new option to "apply scaling", to fix up problems with old files that have really bad scaling. Situations when this is needed could get indicated in the interface too... (red background for "Scale" field?)
NLA Window, Strip blending mode "Add" didn't work at all.
It was using very bad quaternion addition. Replaced with proper code.
For devs; new is the function QuatMulFac(quat, factor) which allows to
multiply a rotation with a value (make it rotate more or less)
Patch by: Roland Hess (harkyman)
For example, a constraint can be sub-targeted at the 50% (or 31.2% or 85% etc.) point of its target bone, giving you enormous rigging flexibility and removing the need for complex contraptions to do such things as:
- A bone whose base slides only between to points on a rig (CopyLoc with a variable, animated subtarget point)
- Bones that attach to multiple points along another bone (CopyLocs, each with a different head/tail percentage)
- Bones that need to stretch to a point midway between specific spots on two other bones (old way: too crazy to mention; new way: stretch bone between points on end bones, then another stretch to the midpoint of the first stretch)
It is only used for the constraint types for which it is relevant: CopyLoc, TrackTo, StretchTo and MinMax, TrackTo, and Floor.
Notes:
- This is accessed by the Head/Tail number-slider.
- This value can be animated per constraint
- The old "Copy Bone Tail" option for the CopyLoc constraint has been automatically converted to 1.0 Head/Bone values for the affected constraints
- In the code, this value is in the bConstraint struct, so it is available for all constraints, even though only a few implement it.
Object constraints with a driven influence ipo were not being evaluated
properly. The code for adding the depsgraph relation and updating without
time changes was simply missing.
This commit fixes several bugs related to animating armatures. I've also tidied up the formatting in a few files along the way, and also commented the flags for this pose->flag.
What's new/fixed:
* Undo will no longer destroy entire un-keyframed poses. Now it behaves as expected, and only reverses the most recent change.
* On some files, POSE_DO_UNLOCK somehow got set on files and never cleared. The symptom of this was a file in which you suddenly could no longer pose an armature at all without using auto-keyframing. A check to prevent this from happening again has been added (it will also fix old files too)
Notes:
- Now, all PoseChannels get tagged with BONE_UNKEYED after they have been transformed. This flag prevents IPO data being flushed over these new values, even after undo.
- These tags only get removed on frame-changes or inserting new keyframes.
Now it is possible to do Copy+Paste in the Action Editor, like in the IPO Editor. There are two new buttons in the Action Editor header for this, using the familiar icons.
* To copy...
Select the keyframes you wish to copy, and the channels that they occur in (except for ShapeKey mode, where it is not possible to select channels). Click copy button.
* To paste...
Place the current frame where you want the first of the keyframes from the buffer is to be pasted. Select all channels you wish the keyframes to be pasted into. Click paste button.
Currently, keyframes are only pasted into 'compatible' curves (i.e. LocX keyframes can only go to LocX, and so on). This may change after user feedback, if this is found to be too restrictive.
== Code Changes ==
I've made a few changes which allow this code to be nicer.
* renamed insert_vert_ipo to insert_vert_icu, as that represents its actual purpose better (and changed all occurrences I could find)
* created a new function, insert_bezt_icu, which does the actual inserting of provided BezTriple data to a given IpoCurve
* recoded insert_vert_icu to use this new function, and also the IPO-Editor keyframe pasting (i.e. pasting in Editmode)
NLA was calculating extensions of strips in the wrong order. This was not an issue in many cases, although it is highlighted in the following case:
[strip 1 - 'hold' is on] ----------------------------
[strip 2 ]
Logically, the end of strip 1 would hold on until the start of strip 2. However, the start of strip 2 was extended to the end of strip 1 instead.
bsystem_time was being called with an extra variable, which was useless. Most of the places that called it, were passing NULL for that variable anyway.
I've also cleaned up that function a bit, but the underlying problems with that part of the code still exist (EVIL GLOBALS that are exported for frame_to_float), for mblur and fields rendering features. That remains for another time.
After just over a week of coding, I've finished doing a major refactor/cleanup of the constraints code. In the process, quite a few old kludges and ugly hacks have been removed. Also, some new features which will greatly benefit riggers have been implemented.
=== What's New ===
* The long-awaited ``ChildOf Constraint'':
This allows you to animate parent influences, and choose which transformation channels the parent affects the child on (i.e. no translation/rotation/scaling). It should be noted that disabling some combinations may not totally work as expected. Also, the 'Set Inverse' and 'Clear Inverse' buttons at the bottom of this constraint's panel set/clear the inverse correction for the parent's effects. Use these to make the owner not stick/be glued to the parent.
* Constraint/Target Evaluation Spaces:
In some constraints, there are now 1-2 combo boxes at the bottom of their panel, which allows you to pick which `co-ordinate space' they are evaluated in. This is much more flexible than the old 'local' options for bones only were.
* Action Constraint - Loc/Rot/Size Inputs
The Action Constraint can finally use the target's location/rotation/scaling transforms as input, to control the owner of the constraint. This should work much more reliably than it used to. The target evaluation should now also be more accurate due to the new space conversion stuff.
* Transform - No longer in Crazy Space (TM)
Transforming objects/bones with constraints applied should no longer occur in Crazy Space. They are now correctly inverse-corrected. This also applies to old-style object tracking.
=== General Code Changes ===
* solve_constraints is now in constraints.c. I've removed the old `blend consecutive constraints of same type' junk, which made the code more complex than it needed to be.
* evaluate_constraint is now only passed the constraint, and two matrices. A few unused variables have been removed from here.
* A tempolary struct, bConstraintOb, is now passed to solve_constraints instead of relying on an ugly, static workobject in some cases. This works much better.
* Made the formatting of constraint code consistent
* There's a version patch for older files so that constraint settings are correctly converted to the new system. This is currently done for MajorVersion <= 244, and SubVersion < 3. I've bumped up the subversion to 3 for this purpose. However, with the imminent 2.45 release, this may need to be adjusted accordingly.
* LocEulSizeToMat4 and LocQuatSizeToMat4 now work in the order Size, Rot, Location. I've also added a few other math functions.
* Mat4BlendMat4 is now in arithb. I've modified it's method slightly, to use other arithb functions, instead of its crazy blending scheme.
* Moved some of the RigidBodyJoint constraint's code out of blenkernel, and into src. It shouldn't be setting its target in its data initialisation function based + accessing scene stuff where it was doing so.
=== Future Work ===
* Geometry to act as targets for constraints. A space has been reserved for this already.
* Tidy up UI buttons of constraints
Commit of patch #5385, to make forward cycling more
user-controllable. Previously it only worked on one axis,
which was auto-detected from movement. This allows forward
cycling to work in more situations, such as stair
stepping.
had new dependencies added internally (like constraints), changing the
evaluation order for pose channels. My optimized code didn't like it, so
now it falls back to a reliable slower method.
Bug showed as totally messed up characters for proxies...
Also: increased range for 3D Window properties clip-start/end, this is
still a bad construct though...
A Plumiferos wishlist item: Markers working in the Action Editor too.
* The user can choose between displaying the scene markers (i.e. the
markers shown in the timeline) or the markers specific to each action,
by using the next list box on the action editor header. This is specific
to each instance of the action editor.
* The display of the markers currently still needs improvement. At the
moment, the triangle icons + text are drawn below all the last row of
keyframes. As such, I've made it draw yellow vertical lines which
span the height of the action editor, to also indicate markers.
Comments on this and also help getting the triangle thingies to 'float'
above the bottom scroll bar are warmly appreciated.
* There are a few minor update issues with editing a marker in the
timeline and the markers in the action editor which will be fixed soon.
* There are also a few hotkeys to still add.
Enjoy!
THE OBJECT PROXY
Or simple said; local control of referenced data from libraries.
Having library files with references is a very common studio setup, and
Blender did do quite well in that area. Were it not that for character
setups it was impossible to use still.
This commit will enable a full rig+character to remain in the library,
and still have - under strict control - local access for animation edits.
Full log:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Proxy_Objects.824.0.html
Clear transform (ALT+G/R/S) in Pose sometimes didnt work, for example when
armature is being controlled by other armature. Caused by double depsgraph
flushing.
- FORWARD CYCLING & MATCHING
Up to no now, adding multiple actions in NLA with walkcycles required to
animate them standing still, as if walking on a conveyor belt. The stride
option then makes the object itself move forward, trying to keep the foot
stuck on the floor (with poor results!).
This option now allows to make walk cycles moving forward. By
indicating a reference Offset Bone, the NLA system will use that bone to
detect the correct offset for the Armature Pose to make it seamlessly going
forward.
Best of all, this option works as for cyclic Action Strips as well as for
individual Action Strips. Note that for individual strips, you have to set
the strip on "Hold". (Might become automatic detected later).
Here's an example edit image for NLA:
http://www.blender.org/bf/nla_match-cycle.jpg
And the animation for it:
http://download.blender.org/demo/test/2.43/0001_0150_match.avi
Blender file:
http://download.blender.org/demo/test/2.43/mancandy_matching.blend
Using this kind of cycling works pretty straightforward, and is a lot
easier to setup than Stride Bones.
To be further tested:
- Blending cycles
- matching rotation for the bones as well.
- ACTION MODIFIERS (motion deformors)
The above option was actually required for this feature. Typically walk
cycles are constructed with certain Bones to be the handles, controlling
for example the torso or feet.
An Action Modifier allows you to use a Curve Path to deform the motion of
these controlling bones. This uses the existing Curve Deformation option.
Modifiers can be added per Action Strip, each controlling a channel (bone)
by choice, and even allows to layer multiple modifiers on top of each other
(several paths deforming motion). This option is using the dependency graph,
so editing the Curve will give realtime changes in the Armature.
The previous walkcycle, controlled by two curves:
http://download.blender.org/demo/test/2.43/0001_0150_deform.avi
Blender file:
http://download.blender.org/demo/test/2.43/mancandy_actiondeform.blend
Action Modifiers can be added in the NLA Properties Panel. Per Modifier you
have to indicate the channel and a Curve Object. You can copy modifiers from
one strip to another using CTRL+C (only copies to active Object strips).
Setting up a correct Curve Path has to be carefully done:
- Use SHIFT+A "Curve Path" in top view, or ensure the path is not rotated.
- make sure the center point of the Curve Object is at the center of the
Armature (or above)
- move the first point of the curve to the center point as well.
- check if the path starts from this first point, you can change it using
(in Curve EditMode) the option Wkey -> "Switch Direction"
- Make sure alignment uses the correct axis; if the Armature walks into
the negative Y direction, you have to set in Object Buttons, "Anim settings"
Panel, the correct Track option. (Note; option will probably move to the
Modifier later).
This is a good reason to make such paths automatic (on a command). Is on the
todo list.
Also note this:
- the Curve Path extends in beginning and ending, that's (for now) the default,
and allows to use multiple paths. Make sure paths begin and end horizontal.
- Moving the Curve in Object Mode will change the "mapping" (as if the landscape
a character walks over moves). Moving the Curve in Edit Mode will change the
actual position of the deformation.
- Speed (Ipos) on paths is not supported yet, will be done.
- The Curve "Stretch" deform option doesn't work.
- Modifiers are executed *after* all actions in NLA are evaluated, there's no
support yet for blending multiple strips with Modifiers.
- This doesn't work yet for time-mapping...
This commit is mostly for review by character animators... some details or
working methods might change.
This feature can also be used for other modifiers, such as noise (Perlin) or
the mythical "Oomph" (frequency control) and of course Python.
Special thanks to Bassam & Matt for research & design help. Have fun!
Object Layer Ipos didn't work when the Ipo was moved an Object Action.
Can't get this to work though... this option has been added with a lot
of exception handling already, and for action/nla it's very nasty to
blend/mix/add layer bit values. So; better not support that.
As feedback for users, I've added a notice popup when you try to move
layer-ipos to an action.
This commit brings back:
- Field Render
- MBlur Render (old style)
- Border render with or without cropping
Note: Field Render is not supported in Compositor yet. Blurring or filter
will destroy field information.
Both MotionBlur as Field render are done before Compositing happens.
Fixes:
- The "Save Buffers" option only worked on single frame renders, not for
Anim render.
- Found an un-initalized variable in Render initialize... this might have
caused the unknown random crashes with render.
Code restructure:
Cleaned up names and calls throughout the pipeline, more clearly telling
what goes on in functions.
This is visible in the updated first image of the Wiki doc:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/RenderPipeline
Added simplified fix as proposed by Stephan Kassemeyer to allow scaled
Armatures to still have a working 'stride bone'. Only works for uniform
scaled armatures though.
In general, for properly working armatures, I'd recommend to never scale
it at all, and certainly not non-uniform scaling. It will give issues with
constraints, IK and drivers all over...
Using stride-bone in an NLA, on a path without speed Ipo, didn't correct
the case when an action starts on a non-zero value.
Patch provided by Roland Hess. Thanks!
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!
