integrating a mini-webserver (around 300 lines of code) into blender.
Using the VFAPI-plugin in contrib/windows it enables blender to
directly feed its output into TMPGEnc, a commercial high quality MPEG-Encoder.
Since it is a mini-webserver, you can probably easily use it for other
interfacing purposes.
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... :/
seemed to do the trick for me, however a game engine error has prevented me
from compiling to test. Anyone who has time to test compiling it would be
appreciated.
To enable it you will need to download OpenEXR and install it.
For the Makefiles you will need to set WITH_OPENEXR=true
and set NAN_OPENEXR to point to where OpenEXR is installed.
For scons you'll need to remove config.opts to get the new options
so you can enable OpenEXR, I was not able to get blender to link
with scons so the scons stuff may need to be tweaked a little but
I think it should work.
For other platform managers The OpenEXR stuff is similar to QUICKTIME
you need to define WITH_OPENEXR and setup the library stuff and
as you'll notice in this commit there are two extra files.
Kent
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.
