- ALT+U undo menu shows history for global undo as well
- Added undo pushes for buttons window more consistantly
- Added it & tested for ipowindow too
- Added it in outliner
- And quite some missing occasions for 3d window editing
The changelog is very long... it's on the web too:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Mesh_editing_rewrite.425.0.html
EditMesh refactor notes (user)
**** New selection modes
When entering Edit Mode for a Mesh, you now have the choice for three selection modes. These are shown as icons in the 3D header (hotkey is being searched for!).
- Vertex Select
Select vertices as usual, fully compatible with how previous version work
- Edge Select
Vertices are not drawn anymore, and selections happen by default on the edges. It is a true edge select, meaning that you can select three out of four edges in a face, without automatic having the 4th edge selected.
- Face Select
Instead of vertices, now selection 'points' are drawn in the face centers. Selected faces also get a colored outline, like for edges. This also is true face select, for each face individual regardless selection status of its vertices or edges.
While holding SHIFT, and press a selection mode, you can also combine the above choices. Now selection becomes mixed, and will behave as expected.
For example; in Edge+Face select mode, selecting the 4 edges of a face will select the face too.
The selection modes and optional drawing modes (like transparant faces, normals, or solid drawing) all work together. All of Blender's mesh editing tools now react to the correct selection mode as well.
Most noticeable it's in:
**** Extrude
Extruding in Edge or Face Select mode allows much more precise control over what's extruded and what should be excluded. Try for example a checker pattern selection, and extrude it.
New is the fixed translation when faces are extruded. This always follows the (averaged) face normal(s) of the old face(s), enabling much easier working in 3D views . A single 'G' (Grab) or 'R' (Rotate) or 'S' (Scale) will change transform modus as usual.
**** Other things to note
- Hiding edges/faces will also behave different based on Select Mode.
- while editing, normals of faces are updated always now
- Border select (BKEY) has 2 different rules for edges; when one edge is fully inside of the border, it will only select edges that are fully inside. Otherwise it selects each edge intersecting with the border.
- in face mode, adding vertices, edges or a circle is invisible...
- "Add monkey" now works as a normal primitive (rotated and on 3d cursor)
- Mesh undo was fully recoded, hopefully solving issues now with Vertex Keys and Groups
- Going in and out of editmode was fully recoded. Especially on larger models you'll notice substantial speed gain.
**** Todo
Add 'FaceSelect mode' functionality in EditMode, including zbuffered selection, display and editing of UV texture.
EditMesh refactor notes (coder)
**** Usage of flags in general
The "->f" flags are reserved for the editmesh.c and editmesh_lib.c core functions. Actually only selection status is there now.
The "->f1" and "->f2" flags are free to use. They're available in vertex/edge/face structs. Since they're free, check carefully when calling other functions that use these flags... for example extrude() or subdivide() use them.
**** Selection flags
EditVert: eve->f & SELECT
EditEdge: eed->f & SELECT
EditFace: efa->f & SELECT
- Selection is only possible when not-hidden!
- Selection flags are always up-to-date, BUT:
if selection mode >= SELECT_EDGE vertex selection flags can be incorrect
if selection mode == SELECT_FACE vertex/edge selection flags can be incorrect
This because of shared vertices or edges.
- use for selecting vertices:
eve->f &= SELECT
- use for selecting edges always:
void EM_select_edge(eed, 1) // 1 = select, 0 = deselect
- use for selecting faces always:
void EM_select_face(efa, 1) // 1 = select, 0 = deselect
- To set the 'f' flags in all of the data:
void EM_set_flag_all(int flag);
void EM_clear_flag_all(int flag);
- the old faceselectedOR() and faceselectedAND() are still there, but only
to be used for evaluating its vertices
**** Code hints for handling selection
If the selectmode is 'face'; vertex or edge selections need to be flushed upward. Same is true for 'edge' selection mode. This means that you'll have to keep track of all selections while coding... selecting the four vertices in a face doesn't automatically select the face anymore.
However, by using the above calls, at least selections flush downward (to vertex level). You then can call:
void EM_selectmode_flush(void);
Which flushes selections back upward, based on the selectmode setting. This function does the following:
- if selectmode 'vertex': select edges/faces based on its selected vertices
- if selectmode 'edge': select faces based its selected edges
This works fine in nice controlled situations.
However, only changing the vertex selections then still doesn't select a face in face mode! If you really can't avoid only working with vertex selections, you can use this call:
void EM_select_flush(void);
Now selection is flushed upward regardless current selectmode. That can be destructive for special cases however, like checkerboard selected faces. So use this only when you know everything else was deselected (or deselect it). Example: adding primitives.
**** Hide flags
EditVert: eve->h
EditEdge: eed->h
EditFace: efa->h
- all hide flags are always up-to-date
- hidden vertices/edges/faces are always deselected. so when you operate on selection only, there's no need to check for hide flag.
**** Unified undo for editmode
New file: editmode_undo.h
A pretty nice function pointer handler style undo. Just code three functions, and your undo will fly! The c file has a good reference.
Also note that the old undo system has been replaced. It currently uses minimal dependencies on Meshes themselves (no abuse of going in/out editmode), and is restricted nicely to editmode functions.
**** Going in/out editmode
As speedup now all vertices/faces/edges are allocated in three big chunks. In vertices/faces/edges now tags are set to denote such data cannot be freed.
ALso the hashtable (lookup) for edges uses no mallocs at all anymore, but is part of the EditEdge itself.
- Made unified API for undo calls, to be found in space.c
BIF_undo_push(char *str)
BIF_undo(void)
BIF_redo(void)
These calls will do all undo levels, including editmode and vpaint.
The transition is work in progress, because mesh undo needs recode.
- New global hotkey CTR+Z for undo
Note: 'shaded draw mode' still is SHIFT+Z, the old CTRL+Z was to recalc
the lighting in shaded mode, which already became much more interactive,
like during/after any transform().
Recalc hotkey now is SHIFT+ALT+Z
CTRL+<any modifier>+Z is redo.
- For OSX users; the Apple-key ("Command") now maps to CTRL as well. This
disables the one-mouse-button hack for rightmouse btw, will be fixed in
next commit. At least we can use Apple-Z :)
- Old Ukey for undo is still there, as a training period... my preference is
to restore Ukey to "reload original data" as in past, and only use new
CTRL+Z for undo.
- Added undo_push() for all of editobject.c and editview.c. Meaning we can
start using/testing global undo in the 3d window. Please dont comment on
missing parts for now, first I want someone to volunteer to tackle all of
that.
- Since the global undo has a full 'file' in memory, it can save extremely
fast on exit to <temp dir>/quit.blend. That's default now when global undo
is enabled. It prints "Saved session recovery to ..." in console then.
- In file menu, a new option is added "Recover Last Session". Note that this
reads the undo-save, which is without UI.
- With such nice new features we then can also kill the disputed
Cancel/Confirm menu on Q-KEY.
- Added fix which initializes seam/normal theme color on saved themes.
They showed black now.... (Note: that's in usiblender.c!)
- 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.
- 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.
- hotkeys, obdatacopier and renameobjectbyblock, all from Jean-Michel Soler (jms);
- bevel_center by Loic Berthe, suggested for inclusion by jms;
- doc_browser, by Daniel Dunbar (Zr)
Thanks to them for the new contributions!
(I included doc_browser at 'Misc' because only users interested in script writing would actually use it, but it could also be under 'Help'. Opinions?)
BPython related:
- Added scriptlink methods to object, lamp, camera and world.
- Object: added object.makeTrack and object.clearTrack (old track method).
- sys: made sys.exists(path) return 0 for not found; 1 for file, 2 for dir and -1 for neither.
- doc updates and fixes.
- made ONLOAD event work. G.f's SCENESCRIPT bit was being zeroed in set_app_data.
- Blender: updated functions Load and Save to support the builtin importers and exporters besides .blend (dxf, videoscape, vrml 1.0, stl, ...)
- Draw: added mouse wheel events.
- Scene: added scene.play to play back animations (like ALT+A and SHIFT+ALT+A). Makes a good counter, too, when the 'win' attribute is set to a space that doesn't "animate".
The scene.play() addition and the fix to ONLOAD scriptlinks is part of the work for a Blender demo mode. It already works, but I'll still add support for Radiosity calculations and fix a thing in main(): it executes onload scripts too early (BIF_Init), giving funny results in alt+a animations and renderings when firing up Blender. Loading after the program is up has no such problems. When I finish I'll post examples of demo mode scripts.
- G.f's G_DEBUG flag was being erased in blenkernel/intern/blender.c's
setup_app_data:
G.f= bfd->globalf
// added a line above it to fix this:
if (G.f & G_DEBUG) bfd->globalf |=G_DEBUG;
G.f= bfd->globalf;
BPython:
- debug info now only shown if Blender is started with '-d' option
- added ~/.blender/scripts to modules sys.path
- added two new functions to Blender.sys: basename and splitext
- added doc for Blender.sys, updated other docs
reason: mixbuffer size was not correctly initialized in .blend. Doing this
for struct UserData has some extra quirks, so better not do it with
checking for version (if version<2.27 etc) but always (if U.mix==0 etc).
I mail this to committers list as well.
standard starts with 0.5 sec. Turn the threshold value up to effectively
disable it when you dislike it. But give it a try!
- added 'Home' after splitting window for buttonswindow
- menu auto open now is user preset, including 2 thresholds you can set
- hilites of pulldown menus were not cleared, fixed
- changed F4 key to logic. F5 will show lamp buttons, when lamp active
- in 'shader context' buttons, clicking camera will show world
- Converted lamp buttons and world buttons, they're pretty!
- menu auto open now is user preset, including 2 thresholds you can set
- hilites of pulldown menus were not cleared, fixed
- changed F4 key to logic. F5 will show lamp buttons, when lamp active
- in 'shader context' buttons, clicking camera will show world
- the plane has a material
- material has texture
- scene has a world
- default set 'draw faces' and 'draw edges'
that last one for the noobies, to prevent them complaining!
- added a note in interface.c about the new api doc
- forgot to commit blender.c, for setting the G.f from the file
(this will save faceselect and vertexpaint mode too)
