- Composit cache now gets fully freed on a render. Each output socket of a
node stores the entire image... and while render that's a waste of memory
- Sky 'paper' render was using wrong texture coordinates
- Found missing test_break() in ztransp rendering.
- ZTransp render now also delivers Z values and Speed vectors in passes
Note that speed vectors accumulate within a pixel to store the minimum,
so rendering ztransp on top of a non-moving plane won't give speed...
Best results you get is by rendering it in a separate layer.
The Z value stored is the closest visible transparent face in the pixel.
Fixes:
- Render to 'spare page' has been enabled again. Because of the strict
separation of Render and UI, but especially because a 'render result' now
can consist of unlimited images, I've not made this a Render feature.
Instead, the render-window itself stores the 'spare' image... I also
had to change the convention for it a bit.
Now, instead of having two "render buffers" (which was a render feature),
the RenderWindow will store each previous frame on a re-render. This
storing will only start after you've pressed 'Jkey' once, but then always
will happen for as long the rendered image is same size as previously.
For clarity, I've also renamed the window title, to 'previous frame'.
- RenderWindow shows alpha again on Akey
- Display of the Zvalues in ImageWindow has been tweaked. White now denotes
closest, and the color range goes from camera clip-sta to clip-end.
- Bugfix: on splitting/merging/duplicating windows, the 3D Previewrender was
not always freed correctly, potentially causing crashes or memory leaks.
vertex locations, not global coordinates. This ensures consistant
autosmoothing for each frame. Also fixes missing vectorblur for parts.
Nice task for a dev: put autosmooth code in end of modifier stack... then
it also shows in 3D window
- BUG FIX! I noticed the last tile rendered quite slow, and even did not
update scanlines. Found out that the main tiles processor didn't go
to sleep when the last tile was rendered, because it detected a free
possible thread. This caused the main thread to go into a very tight
loop, eating up a lot of cpu and blocking the other thread.
vertices differed on previous/next frame, causing speedvector calculus
to be skipped.
Now that worked OK, where it not that non-existing speed vectors were not
initialized zero while rendering...
Also another issue showed up with autosmooth. When using exact smooth
angles (like 30 degrees) on a model that has been spinned with exactly
30 degree steps, the autosmooth gave different results on each frame...
and only when compiled in O2 (probably thats doing bad float rounding).
Solved this by just adding 0.1 to the user defined smooth angle.
vectors. It's actually shutter speed, but in this case works identical to
the old motionblur 'blur fac' button.
Note; the "Max Speed" button only clips speed, use this to prevent
extreme speed values. Max speed applied before the scaling happens.
After a couple of experiments with variable blur filters, I tried
a more interesting, and who knows... original approach. :)
First watch results here:
http://www.blender.org/bf/rt0001_0030.avihttp://www.blender.org/bf/hand0001_0060.avi
These are the steps in producing such results:
- In preprocess, the speed vectors to previous and next frame are
calculated. Speed vectors are screen-aligned and in pixel size.
- while rendering, these vectors get calculated per sample, and
accumulated in the vector buffer checking for "minimum speed".
(on start the vector buffer is initialized on max speed).
- After render:
- The entire image, all pixels, then is converted to quad polygons.
- Also the z value of the pixels is assigned to the polygons
- The vertices for the quads use averaged speed vectors (of the 4
corner faces), using a 'minimum but non-zero' speed rule.
This minimal speed trick works very well to prevent 'tearing' apart
when multiple faces move in different directions in a pixel, or to
be able to separate moving pixels clearly from non-moving ones
- So, now we have a sort of 'mask' of quad polygons. The previous steps
guaranteed that this mask doesn't have antialias color info, and has
speed vectors that ensure individual parts to move nicely without
tearing effects. The Z allows multiple layers of moving masks.
- Then, in temporal buffer, faces get tagged if they move or not
- These tags then go to an anti-alias routine, which assigns alpha
values to edge faces, based on the method we used in past to antialias
bitmaps (still in our code, check the antialias.c in imbuf!)
- finally, the tag buffer is used to tag which z values of the original
image have to be included (to allow blur go behind stuff).
- OK, now we're ready for accumulating! In a loop, all faces then get
drawn (with zbuffer) with increasing influence of their speed vectors.
The resulting image then is accumulated on top of the original with a
decreasing weighting value.
It sounds all quite complex... but the speed is still encouraging. Above
images have 64 mblur steps, which takes about 1-3 seconds per frame.
Usage notes:
- Make sure the render-layer has passes 'Vector' and 'Z' on.
- add in Compositor the VectorBlur node, and connect the image, Z and
speed to the inputs.
- The node allows to set amount of steps (10 steps = 10 forward, 10 back).
and to set a maximum speed in pixels... to prevent extreme moving things
to blur too wide.
* This commit is all of the rewrite work done on the SCons system. For
documentation see doc/blender-scons.txt and doc/blender-scons-dev.txt.
Also http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/SconsRefactoring
contains valuable information, along with what still needs to be done.
- linux, os x and windows compile now.
- files are compiled to BF_INSTALLDIR (see config/(platform)-config.py)
- NOTE: Jean-Luc P will commit sometime during the weekend proper
appit() for OS X. For now, copy the resulting binary to an
existing .app bundle.
- features:
- cleaner structure for better maintenance
- cleaner output during compile
- better handling of build options
- general overall speed increase
- see the wiki for more info
Cygwin, FreeBSD and Solaris systems still need work. For these systems:
1) copy a config/(platform)-config.py to ie. config/cygwin-config.py
2) set the proper defaults for your platform
3) mail me at jesterking at letwory dot net with you configuration. if
you need any modifications to the system, do send a patch, too.
I'll be giving first-aid today and tomorrow, after that it'll be all
regular development work :)
/Nathan
- Scene support in RenderLayers
You now can indicate in Compositor to use RenderLayer(s) from other scenes.
Use the new dropdown menu in the "Render Result" node. It will change the
title of the node to indicate that.
The other Scenes are rendered fully separate, creating own databases (and
octrees) after the current scene was finished. They use their own render
settings, with as exception the render output size (and optional border).
This makes the option an interesting memory saver and speedup.
Also note that the render-results of other scenes are kept in memory while
you work. So, after a render, you can tweak all composit effects.
- Render Stats
Added an 'info string' to stats, printed in renderwindow header. It gives
info now on steps "creating database", "shadow buffers", and "octree".
- Bug fixes
Added redraw event for Image window, when using compositor render.
Text objects were not rendered using background render (probably a bug
since depsgraph was added)
Dropdown buttons in Node editor were not refreshed after usage
Sometimes render window did not open, this due to wrong check for 'esc'.
Removed option that renders view-layers on F12, with mouse in 3d window.
Not only was it confusing, it's now more efficient with the Preview Panel,
which does this nicely.
optionally save a jpg next to it, with compression as set in buttons.
This allows quick previews or download from farms.
Button: next to the 'half' and 'zbuf' options for exr.
http://www.blender.org/bf/filters/
I found out current blur actually doesn't do gauss, but more did regular
quadratic. Now you can choose common filter types, but more specifically;
- set gamma on, to emphasize bright parts in blur more than darker parts
- use the bokeh option for (current circlular only) blur based on true
area filters (meaning, for each pixel it samples the entire surrounding).
This enables more effects, but is also much slower. Have to check on
optimization for this still... use with care!
- RenderLayers with 'view layers' set, now also take visible lights into
account. Works just like for scene layer settings.
- On ESC from render, compositing (if set) is being skipped too
- While rendering with multiple RenderLayers it will end with a display
of the current RenderLayer (as in Scene buttons)
- Enabled Groups to execute in Compositor. They were ignored still.
Note; inside of groups nothing is cached, so a change of a group input
will recalculate it fully. This is needed because groups are linked
data (instances use same internal nodes).
- Made Composit node "Viewer" display correctly input for images with
1/2/3/4 channels.
- Added pass rendering, tested now with only regular Materials. For
Material nodes this is quite more complex... since they cannot be
easily separated in passes (each Material does a full shade)
In this commit all pass render is disabled though, will continue work on
that later.
Sneak preview: http://www.blender.org/bf/rt.jpg (temporal image)
- What did remain is the 'Normal' pass output. Normal works very nice for
relighting effects. Use the "Normal Node" to define where more or less
light should be. (Use "Value Map" node to tweak influence of the
Normal node 'dot' output.)
- EVIL bug fix: I've spend almost a day finding it... when combining AO and
mirror render, the event queue was totally screwing up... two things not
related at all!
Found out error was in ray-mirror code, which was using partially
uninitialized 'ShadeInput' data to pass on to render code.
- Another fix; made sure that while thread render, the threads don't get
events, only the main program will do. Might fix issues reported by
people on linux/windows.
- Live scanline updates while rendering
Using a timer system, each second now the tiles that are being processed
are checked if they could use display.
To make this work pretty, I had to use the threaded 'tile processor' for
a single thread too, but that's now proven to be stable.
Also note that these updates draw per layer, including ztransp progress
separately from solid render.
- Recode of ztransp OSA
Until now (since blender 1.0) the ztransp part was fully rendered and
added on top of the solid part with alpha-over. This adding was done before
the solid part applied sub-pixel sample filtering, causing the ztransp
layer to be always too blurry.
Now the ztransp layer uses same sub=pixel filter, resulting in the same
AA level (and filter results) as the solid part. Quite noticable with hair
renders.
- Vector buffer support & preliminary vector-blur Node
Using the "Render Layer" panel "Vector" pass button, the motion vectors
per pixel are calculated and stored. Accessible via the Compositor.
The vector-blur node is horrible btw! It just uses the length of the
vector to apply a filter like with current (z)blur. I'm committing it anyway,
I'll experiment with it further, and who knows some surprise code shows up!
extern/bullet/BulletDynamics/ConstraintSolver/SimpleConstraintSolver.h
added newline at end of file.
intern/boolop/intern/BOP_Face2Face.cpp
fixed indentation and had nested declarations of a varible i used
for multiple for loops, changed it to just one declaration.
source/blender/blenkernel/bad_level_call_stubs/stubs.c
added prototypes and a couple other fixes.
source/blender/include/BDR_drawobject.h
source/blender/include/BSE_node.h
source/blender/include/butspace.h
source/blender/render/extern/include/RE_shader_ext.h
added struct definitions
source/blender/src/editmesh_mods.c
source/gameengine/Ketsji/KX_BlenderMaterial.cpp
source/gameengine/Ketsji/KX_ConvertPhysicsObjects.cpp
source/gameengine/Ketsji/KX_RaySensor.cpp
removed unused variables;
source/gameengine/GameLogic/Joystick/SCA_Joystick.cpp
changed format of case statements to avoid warnings in gcc.
Kent
Yesterdays commit slightly extended clipping area for window, to ensure
no empty borders get rendered. Unfortunately it reveiled a case in code
that was never handled; clipping code was throwing away good faces. Old
bug... but apparently never showed up?
for compositing code.
Officially malloc/calloc/free is threadsafe, but our secure malloc system
requires all memory blocks to be stored in a single list, so when two
threads write in this list you get conflicts.
- the sub-pixel masks for applying correct filters (gauss and friends)
accidentally were y-flipped, causing bad looking results.
- zbuffer was clipping extremely narrow, causing border pixels to miss
samples, and reveiling alpha that way (was in old render a prob too)
- Compositor now is threaded
Enable it with the Scene buttons "Threads". This will handle over nodes to
individual threads to be calculated. However, if nodes depend on others
they have to wait. The current system only threads per entire node, not for
calculating results in parts.
I've reshuffled the node execution code to evaluate 'changed' events, and
prepare the entire tree to become simply parsed for open jobs with a call
to node = getExecutableNode()
By default, even without 'thread' option active, all node execution is
done within a separate thread.
Also fixed issues in yesterdays commit for 'event based' calculations, it
didn't do animated images, or execute (on rendering) the correct nodes
when you don't have Render-Result nodes included.
- Added generic Thread support in blenlib/ module
The renderer and the node system now both use same code for controlling the
threads. This has been moved to a new C file in blenlib/intern/threads.c.
Check this c file for an extensive doc and example how to use it.
The current implementation for Compositing allows unlimited amount of
threads. For rendering it is still tied to two threads, although it is
pretty easy to extend to 4 already. People with giant amounts of cpus can
poke me once for tests. :)
- Bugfix in creating group nodes
Group node definitions demand a clear separation of 'internal sockets' and
'external sockets'. The first are sockets being linked internally, the latter
are sockets exposed as sockets for the group itself.
When sockets were linked both internal and external, Blender crashed. It is
solved now by removing the external link(s).
system tracking changes in nodes, making sure only these nodes and
the ones that depend, are executed.
Further the 'time cursor' now counts down to indicate which node is being
done.
Also: you now can disable the "use nodes" button in the header, edit all
changes, and when you press that button again it nicely executes the
changes.
Still on the todo:
- make compositing threaded
- find a way to nicely exit compositing on input events... so the UI
keeps being responsive
- idea; a 'percentage' menu in header to enforce calculations on smaller
images temporally
threads didn't seem to free allocated memory... while rendering an long
sequence, the 'virtual memory' size grew with about 20 meg per frame.
This appeared to be not related to using malloc in threads (works
properly), but just because threads were not closed properly.
I assumed that the call to SDL_CreateThread() also closes the thread
when finished... but that seems to be not the case. By using a call to
SDL_WaitThread() after the thread was finished the memory heap is stable
again.
This is something I've seen not documented anywhere... the SDL man
pages are horrible sparse; Take for example the official page:
http://manuals.thexdershome.com/SDL-1.2.5/html/sdlcreatethread.html
-> Rendering in RenderLayers
It's important to distinguish a 'render layer' from a 'pass'. The first is
control over the main pipeline itself, to indicate what geometry is being
is rendered. The 'pass' (not in this commit!) is related to internal
shading code, like shadow/spec/AO/normals/etc.
Options for RenderLayers now are:
- Indicate which 3d 'view layers' have to be included (so you can render
front and back separately)
- "Solid", all solid faces, includes sky at the moment too
- "ZTransp", all transparent faces
- "Halo", the halos
- "Strand", the particle strands (not coded yet...)
Currently only 2 'passes' are exported for render, which is the "Combined"
buffer and the "Z. The latter now works, and can be turned on/off.
Note that all layers are still fully kept in memory now, saving the tiles
and layers to disk (in exr) is also todo.
-> New Blur options
The existing Blur Node (compositor) now has an optional input image. This
has to be a 'value buffer', which can be a Zbuffer, or any mask you can
think of. The input values have to be in the 0-1 range, so another new
node was added too "Map Value".
The value input can also be used to tweak blur size with the (todo)
Time Node.
Temporal screenies:
http://www.blender.org/bf/rt.jpghttp://www.blender.org/bf/rt1.jpghttp://www.blender.org/bf/rt2.jpg
BTW: The compositor is very slow still, it recalulates all nodes on each
change still. Persistant memory and dependency checks is coming!
data to renderdata. However, if a camera has a lens-ipo, this has to be
calculated correctly each time.
Actually, render system suffers like Blender itself from a weak time
system... which still is polluted by confusing globals. Should all work
now, but definitely needs attention later.
- New Node "Composite" is output node that puts composited result back
in render pipeline.
- This then also displays in the render window while editing
- But, only with Scene buttons option "Do Compositor" set
- Then, just press F12 or render anims to see the magic!
For clarity, the former 'Output" node is renamed to "Viewer".
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!
causing render to crash on cygwin with gcc 3.4.4. Changed
declaration of shadepixel() argument "int facenr" to volatile.
Can anybody recommend a more elegant solution?
Until now, the zbuffer was written straight from the internal zbuffer,
which has values that are inverse-proportional (like 1.0/z) which makes
it very hard to use it for postprocess, like zblur or other composit effects
that require Z.
Based on info from ILM, the values stored for Z in exr files is the
actual distance from a camera. I think that's about time to migrate to that
convention!
By default now, after render, the z values are converted to floats. This
saves in exr files now, but not in the Iris Z files. That latter was a
blender-only anyway, so might be not a real hassle to drop. :)
You can see the difference in the image window, but notice the range now
is linear mapped from camera clipstart to clipend.
Note; I just discover that ortho Z values need a different correction...
- Image textures use float colors now, when present. Works for mipmap too,
and for AO skycolor (probes)
- Backbuffer option uses float buffers too. Note that rendering OSA will
resample the backbuffer, filtering it... will need to be solved with the
new composit stage
- LMB sampling in image window now shows float color too
+ bugfix in imbuf, filtering for float buffers had an error.
Accidentally didn't disable the tests I did for 'translucent raytrace',
a cheapskate SSS method;
http://www.blender.org/bf/rt.jpghttp://www.blender.org/bf/rt1.jpg
It slowed down render too much, was default on... but invisible! It needed
the F10 buttons "rt" to be huge (600-1000)
