User level notes are in Wiki here;
http://wiki.blender.org/bin/view.pl/Blenderdev/Softbodies
And will be added in blender3d.org CMS later.
Tech level notes are still pending, but here's the most relevant ones;
- made ob->soft struct SoftBody to hold all settings, and read/save in
files
- added (temporal!) conversion for the old settings. So: read old files
with softbody experiments now, and save over!
- cleaned API calls for softbody, which are only 5 of them now:
sbNew()
sbFree()
sbObjectStep() (animation steps)
sbObjectToSoftbody() (full re-initialize data)
sbObjectReset() (only reset motion)
- API calls accepts time in frames now, within softbody.c it converts
Further, internally code was cleaned some (missing tabs etc). Also tried
to keep a well defined structure with hints how to add support for more
objects. Can write notes about that...
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)
Much wanted feature, to have paths with children having fixed distance
offsets from each other, for example to animate a train with wagons.
Solved it with Path option (Editing buttons curve) "PathDist Offs" which
interprets time-offsets of children as blender-unit offsets. The entire
animation system still works, but offsets are calculated based on distance,
even with a CurvePath without motion (speed curve horizontal).
http://download.blender.org/demo/test/pathdist.blend
Thanks to Bassam for kicking my ass!
It used to be a simple hack, scaling lens with 100, and moving the camera
to the back with an equivalent amount.
Because of the hack, making it 100% compatible with older files I could not
achieve (yet?). To help reminding users, I've added a print when reading
old files with Ortho cameras.
Full description of how it works can be found here;
http://www.blender3d.com/cms/Render_changes.515.0.html
Object "time" ipo was evaluated before it applied offset for field and
motion blur. Should be after! (ancient one)
in buttons_editing.c: removed sound include file
- Dupli-Frames objects didn't render correct with Motion Blur (they moved!)
- VertexKey on Bezier paths didn't animate the 'twist' rotation. This did
work for Nurbs paths.
Plus; removed Nabla slider from Stucci, it doesn't work for that texture.
channels to link texture to.
The amount of code changes seems large, but is mostly getting rind of
hardcoded values (6 and 8) for channels, replacing it with MAX_MTEX.
Further did some fixes;
- Ipo for Lamp showed too many mapping channels
- Texture MapTo buttons for lamp missed the slider to blend texture color
- Lamp texture mapping "View" only worked for Spot, now it uses lamp-
view vector for all types. (Nice for projections!)
- bug #1307; copy full scene didn't update links in constraints
(was an oldie bug!)
- also fixed same for Hooks, which even't didn't duplicate yet
- HOME in outliner (show hierarchy) now only does current scene
As a means to indicate items in the Outliner to do operations on, you can
select with RMB items. Works like FileSelect here. Since selection in
Outliner is only on outliner level, no further UI updates happen. That is
reserved for LMB actions.
Implemented right now are only few operations... they can be called up with
the WKEY (the famous spare key :)
- if objects selected, a menu appears with choices
- if materials or textures selected, a meny appears to unlink them
If you make mixed or confusing selections you get a warning message.
TODO: add selection color in theme, and of course more operations.
from within mesh_modifiers (kernel deform.c). It copies vertices to a
temporal particle system (struct SoftBody with BodyPoint structs) to do
physics tricks with it.
For each frame change the delta movements (based on standard ipo anim or
even other deforms (later) are applied to the physics system. How to apply
and calculate satisfying results is not my thing... so here I'll commu-
nicate with others for.
Since it's in the modifier stack, the SoftBody code can run entirely on
original data (no displists!).
Right now I've implemented 2 things;
- "Goal" which is a per vertex value for how much the current position
should take into account (goal=1 is without physics). This is a powerful
method for artists to get control over what moves and not. Right now i
read the vertex color for it.
- And some spring stuff, which now only works based on force moving it to
the originial location. This doesnt work with 'goal'... erhm.
- You can re-use physics vars from engine, used right now is (in Object)
- damping
- springf (spring factor)
- softflag (to set types, or activate softbody for it
- The SoftBody pointer in struct Object is only runtime, nothing saved in
file
To prevent all users going to complain it doesn't work, I've hidden the
functionality. :)
The buttons to set softbody 'on' only show now (psst psst) when the object has
name "soft" as first 4 characters. You can find the buttons in the F7 Particle
Interaction Panel (which should be renamed 'physics properties' later or so.
Demo file:
http://www.blender.org/bf/softbody.blend
1) Curve deform
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Curve_Deform.392.0.html
Works simple as expected, but keep track of the rotation axis
in F7 buttons (Track X Y Z)
Only Mesh deform supported now.
Code changes:
- centralized deformation calls in curve_modifiers() mesh_modifiers()
etcetera. Here also other effects can be added like wave. Now the
evaluation order is fixed, but should become optional. It also doesnt
use the Displist anymore as deform-input. That latter part is unfinished
yet.
This code also is used for Hooks and will be needed for softbody
- made convention stricter that displists are being checked on in
drawobject(), this to prevent routines to make new displists recursively
(like armature does). Now a freedisplist() is sufficient to signal that
a new displaylist should be made.
2) Object Hooks
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Object_Hooks.391.0.html
Support for Hooks is added to Mesh, Lattice, Curve and Surface objects.
For Armatures this would require some more work & research.
Main goal for this feature is to provide quick & simple access to the
underlying geometry in Objects on Object level, supporting hierarchies and
Ipos etc.
- file-to-memory save
- incremental difference steps (compression)
everthing has been tightly coded to use minimum of memcpy or allocs. In
fact this system works with a single full buffer (=file) in memory, and undosteps as differences from it.
Speed gain is factor 4-8 faster. I've added it in CTRL+ALT+T timer menu for
a test. Please note the gain is especially in the undo-storing, not in
retrieving undo.
Also new: file read option to skip UI read (file menu). This now also is
default for the undo system.
Next to the "BevOb" button you now have a "TaperOb" button to give a name
of a curve object which defines the width of extrusion of the 'BevObj'
along the curve. The TaperOb curve typically is horizontal, where the
height denotes the width.
Important rules;
- Only the firste curve in TaperObj is evaluated
- the first width is left, last width is right
- it scales the width of normal extrusions based on evaluating the taper
curve; which means sharp corners in taper curve won't be easily visible
(That latter feature could be improved by extrusing based on the points
in the taper curve; this is a *lot* more work)
Moved get_con_target from editconstraint to constraint kernel file and renamed to get_constraint_target
Make scene.c use constraint functions from kernel instead of doing the switch itself (regrouping specific constraint code in one file).
Add LockTrack as an option in the Make Track menu (Ctrl-T)
Adding fun for vortex forces in 3D window, the representation now match the orientation and direction of the force (this is code will need optimisation). I'll probably be slapped for mixing two things in one commit but some function calls needed to be fixed for the new spelling and since this is really isolated code I didn't feel like wasting time getting a fresh copy, doing the changes and then readded this after commiting.
Fixed some warning regarding implicit casts and constants (this last one is a MSVCism where you need to explicitely tell the compiler to use floats with an f. AFAIK, it doesn't affect/bother other compilers).
Removed a useless commented piece of code in readfile (there was an uncommented copy a couple of lines before)
New objects were not created with correct 'ipowin' value, to denote the
default ipo to show. That caused sometimes wrong display with weird empty
menu button in header.
- small additions and fixes to enable the demo mode;
- Added sleep() to Blender.sys and 17 new functions to Blender.Window module:
things to help demo script writing and as a bonus read / write access to Blender's input event queue;
- updates in docs, those interested please check Window.py in python/api2_2x/doc/ to read about the new Blender.Window functions.
----
Demo mode should be working well now for (I) playing rt animation -- aka ALT+A -- and (II) rendering pics and anims and playing anims. I'll still add access to radiosity data and functions.
PS: Joseph Gilbert made (II) possible with the Scene.Render module he added for 2.32. He's been coding great things for bpython, so I'd like to take the chance to point that and thank him here.
New is that objects can have a force field, and Meshes can even deflect
(collide) particles. This is in a new sub-menu in Object buttons F7
The full instructions where on the web, Leon mailed it me and I will put
it in CMS tomorrow. For those who like to play with it now, here are demo
files:
http://download.blender.org/demo/test/
Quite some changes where in the integration though... so previous created
particle deflectors will not work. Changes to mention now are:
- gravity is renamed to 'force field'
- force field and deflector options are in Object now, not in Mesh
- the options also have its own struct, doesnt add to Object by default
- force fields are possible for all object types, but only work on center.
So empty objects are typical for it.
Work to do:
- add draw method in 3d win to denote forcefield objects
- check on the UI (panel with different size?)
- add 'recalc' button in deflector panel
OpenGL draw.
(BTW: the previous commit also solves raytrace errors with negative scaled
objects...)
Further a cleanup of displaylist flags and object/base flags. The #define
ACTIVE is moved to filesel.c (only used here).
The GONNA_MOVE #define got a OB_ added in front.
The real bug is in the matrices blending function which doesn't handle non-uniform scaling correctly.
I've minimized the occurence of the bug by calling the blending function only when the influence is smaller than one (woah, optimisation AND bug fix!)
This should make the bug disappear approximatly 90% of the time since people don't use influence all that often (also, this only applies to constraint that are alone, not using influence IPOs to switch between two constraints).
I'd solve the blending function bug, but I haven't had much time to dig into it really.
Incidently, by reverting to the previous code, this solves bug #1069http://projects.blender.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1069&group_id=9&atid=125
- added mesh_set_smooth_flag, mesh_delete_material_index function
- isolated some globals
- got rid of reliance on meshdata in buttons_editing.c and material.c
(MVert,MFace,etc) off into DNA_meshdata_types.h, to isolate areas
of source that actually edit mesh *data* vs. areas that just edit
mesh object information.
- New lamp type added "Area". This uses the radiosity formula (Stoke) to
calculate the amount of energy which is received from a plane. Result
is very nice local light, which nicely spreads out.
- Area lamps have a 'gamma' option to control the light spread
- Area lamp builtin sizes: square, rect, cube & box. Only first 2 are
implemented. Set a type, and define area size
- Button area size won't affect the amount of energy. But scaling the lamp
in 3d window will do. This is to cover the case when you scale an entire
scene, the light then will remain identical
If you just want to change area lamp size, use buttons when you dont want
to make the scene too bright or too dark
- Since area lights realistically are sensitive for distance (quadratic), the
effect it has is quickly too much, or too less. For this the "Dist" value
in Lamp can be used. Set it at Dist=10 to have reasonable light on distance
10 Blender units (assumed you didnt scale lamp object).
- I tried square sized specularity, but this looked totally weird. Not
committed
- Plan is to extend area light with 3d dimensions, boxes and cubes.
- Note that area light is one-sided, towards negative Z. I need to design
a nice drawing method for it.
Area Shadow
- Since there are a lot of variables associated with soft shadow, they now
only are available for Area lights. Allowing spot & normal lamp to have
soft shadow is possible though, but will require a reorganisation of the
Lamp buttons. Is a point of research & feedback still.
- Apart from area size, you now can individually set amount of samples in
X and Y direction (for area lamp type 'Rect'). For box type area lamp,
this will become 3 dimensions
- Area shadows have four options:
"Clip circle" : only uses a circular shape of samples, gives smoother
results
"Dither" : use a 2x2 dither mask
"Jitter" : applys a pseudo-random offset to samples
"Umbra" : extra emphasis on area that's fully in shadow.
Raytrace speedup
- improved filling in faces in Octree. Large faces occupied too many nodes
- added a coherence check; rays fired sequentially that begin and end in
same octree nodes, and that don't intersect, are quickly rejected
- rendering shadow scenes benefits from this 20-40%. My statue test monkey
file now renders in 19 seconds (was 30).
Plus:
- adjusted specular max to 511, and made sure Blinn spec has again this
incredible small spec size
- for UI rounded theme: the color "button" displayed RGB color too dark
- fixed countall() function, to also include Subsurf totals
- removed setting the 'near' clipping for pressing dot-key numpad
- when you press the buttons-window icon for 'Shading Context' the context
automaticilly switches as with F5 hotkey
Please be warned that this is not a release... settings in files might not
work as it did, nor guaranteed to work when we do a release. :)
Main target was to make the inner rendering loop using no globals anymore.
This is essential for proper usage while raytracing, it caused a lot of
hacks in the raycode as well, which even didn't work correctly for all
situations (textures especially).
Done this by creating a new local struct RenderInput, which replaces usage
of the global struct Render R. The latter now only is used to denote
image size, viewmatrix, and the like.
Making the inner render loops using no globals caused 1000s of vars to
be changed... but the result definitely is much nicer code, which enables
making 'real' shaders in a next stage.
It also enabled me to remove the hacks from ray.c
Then i went to the task of removing redundant code. Especially the calculus
of texture coords took place (identical) in three locations.
Most obvious is the change in the unified render part, which is much less
code now; it uses the same rendering routines as normal render now.
(Note; not for halos yet!)
I also removed 6 files called 'shadowbuffer' something. This was experimen-
tal stuff from NaN days. And again saved a lot of double used code.
Finally I went over the blenkernel and blender/src calls to render stuff.
Here the same local data is used now, resulting in less dependency.
I also moved render-texture to the render module, this was still in Kernel.
(new file: texture.c)
So! After this commit I will check on the autofiles, to try to fix that.
MSVC people have to do it themselves.
This commit will need quite some testing help, but I'm around!
Updated the Make environment to point to the correct location. The include
paths were still pointing to source/blender/bpython/include while it should be
source/blender/python.
I did not encounter the build problems because I'm always working with the
autoconf build environment.
This is done by disabling the object position refresh call when calculating these constraints. From the tests I did, this doesn't cause any problem at all.
The main point of this is to create pistons and the like.
For coders:
the detect_constraint_loop function now takes an additional parameter that determines the constraint type of the object it's looping from.
First, check on the new files, which are listed below.
The new butspace.h is a local include, only to be used for the buttons
drawn in the buttonswindow.
- editbuts, animbuts, gamebuts, displaybuts, paintbuts, work now
- i quite completely reorganized it, it's now nicely telling you what
context it is in
- sorting error in panel align fixed (tabs were flipping)
- align works correctly automatic when you click around in Blender
- editsca.c renamed to buttons_logic.h
- button names are truncated from the right for allmost all buttons
(except text buttons and number buttons)
- while dragging panels, you cannot move them outside window anymore
And of course fixed loads of little bugs I encountered while testing
it all. This is a version I really need good test & feedback for.
Next step: restoring material/lamp/texture/world
