This PR adds tunings for the [newly announced](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctkW3V0Mh-k) M3 family of chips. In particular, MetalRT will be enabled as the automatic default for intersection testing on M3 and beyond to take advantage of hardware raytracing. This will result in significant path-tracing speedups, as well as faster BVH builds.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/114296
Adjust clamping of inputs in the Principled BSDF to avoid errors and
inconsistencies between render engines, while trying to leave as many
inputs as possible unclamped for artisitc purposes.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/112895
The last good commit was 8474716abb.
After this commits from main were pushed to blender-v4.0-release. These are
being reverted.
Commits a4880576dc from to b26f176d1a that happend afterwards were meant for
4.0, and their contents is preserved.
_(NOTE: This is a clone of [PR 114067](https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/114067), but targeting `blender-v4.0-release` as originally intended)_
This PR removes the "experimental" disclaimer from the MetalRT control now that the unit tests all render correctly with it enabled. As well as "Off" and "On", this adds a third "Auto" setting - a new default which can be used to pick the best option.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/114232
This fixes an issue where animation frames occasionally get corrupted (e.g. when rendering "Pokedstudio" Blender 2.77 splash screen). This happens when the KernelData is refreshed but the MD5 isn't immediately regenerated which can cause the wrong PSO to be selected.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/114153
This PR adds `@autoreleasepool` blocks around functions that have been observed to create hidden temporary NSObjects, and eventually cause command buffer failures. A couple of allocations needed to be tweaked in order to maintain correct retain/release behaviour. This PR also fixes the command buffer error text to show more useful information.
This PR removes the "experimental" disclaimer from the MetalRT control now that the unit tests all render correctly with it enabled. As well as "Off" and "On", this adds a third "Auto" setting - a new default which can be used to pick the best option.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/114067
Design task: #93551
This PR replaces the auto smooth option with a geometry nodes modifier
that sets the sharp edge attribute. This solves a fair number of long-
standing problems related to auto smooth, simplifies the process of
normal computation, and allows Blender to automatically choose between
face, vertex, and face corner normals based on the sharp edge and face
attributes.
Versioning adds a geometry node group to objects with meshes that had
auto-smooth enabled. The modifier can be applied, which also improves
performance.
Auto smooth is now unnecessary to get a combination of sharp and smooth
edges. In general workflows are changed a bit. Separate procedural and
destructive workflows are available. Custom normals can be used
immediately without turning on the removed auto smooth option.
**Procedural**
The node group asset "Smooth by Angle" is the main way to set sharp
normals based on the edge angle. It can be accessed directly in the add
modifier menu. Of course the modifier can be reordered, muted, or
applied like any other, or changed internally like any geometry nodes
modifier.
**Destructive**
Often the sharp edges don't need to be dynamic. This can give better
performance since edge angles don't need to be recalculated. In edit
mode the two operators "Select Sharp Edges" and "Mark Sharp" can be
used. In other modes, the "Shade Smooth by Angle" controls the edge
sharpness directly.
### Breaking API Changes
- `use_auto_smooth` is removed. Face corner normals are now used
automatically if there are mixed smooth vs. not smooth tags. Meshes
now always use custom normals if they exist.
- In Cycles, the lack of the separate auto smooth state makes normals look
triangulated when all faces are shaded smooth.
- `auto_smooth_angle` is removed. Replaced by a modifier (or operator)
controlling the sharp edge attribute. This means the mesh itself
(without an object) doesn't know anything about automatically smoothing
by angle anymore.
- `create_normals_split`, `calc_normals_split`, and `free_normals_split`
are removed, and are replaced by the simpler `Mesh.corner_normals`
collection property. Since it gives access to the normals cache, it
is automatically updated when relevant data changes.
Addons are updated here: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender-addons/pulls/104609
### Tests
- `geo_node_curves_test_deform_curves_on_surface` has slightly different
results because face corner normals are used instead of interpolated
vertex normals.
- `bf_wavefront_obj_tests` has different export results for one file
which mixed sharp and smooth faces without turning on auto smooth.
- `cycles_mesh_cpu` has one object which is completely flat shaded.
Previously every edge was split before rendering, now it looks triangulated.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/108014
The previous formula for adjusting Coat Tint intensity resulted
in strong tints and sudden colour changes when using a low coat weight.
This commit fixes these issues by mixing between a white tint (no tint)
and the chosen tint based on the Coat Weight.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/113468
The increased amount of BSDF code from Principled BSDF v2 and the
microfacet BSDF led to a big performance regression on Metal and AMD.
We have not been able to find a good workaround for all scenes.
This change disables the Principled Hair BSDF code when it is not used
in the scene. This makes common benchmark scenes faster, but
performance is still bad in scenes that do use it.
Ref #112596
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/113904
This was a regression after the sphere light changes, where the normal
now is the normal along the geometry of the light and no longer suitable
for the IES texture direction.
This not only fixes point lights with non-zero radius, but makes the IES
texture direction work consistently across light types and meshes,
always rotated by the object transform.
Update the OSL script for the "Geometry" node to follow the correct
Tangent code path when working with point clouds.
There should be no functional change for the end user since the correct
code path was already taken by accident.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/113472
Cycles implements the "Taming the Shadow Terminator" paper by Matt Jen-Yuan
Chiang to solve shadow terminator issues when a bump map is applied, as well
as similar approach for the glossy reflection to ensure ray does not get
reflected to inside of the object.
This correction term is applied unconditionally, which makes it harder to have
full control over shading via normals for stylistic reasons.
This change exposes this corrective term as an option called "Bump Map
Correction" which is available in the shader settings next to the
"Transparent Shadows".
The reason to make it per-shader rather than per-object is to allow flexibility
of a control: it is possible that an object has multiple shaders attached to it,
and only some of them used for bump mapping. Another, and possibly stronger
reason to have it per-shader is ease of assets control: shader brings settings
which are needed for its proper behavior. So if material at some point
decides to take over normals, artists would not need to update settings on
every asset which uses that material.
The option is enabled by default, so there is no changes for existing setups.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/113480
CYCLES_ONEAPI_SPIR64_GEN_DEVICES -> CYCLES_ONEAPI_INTEL_BINARIES_ARCH
so it's more aligned with the name for the other backends, such as
CYCLES_CUDA_BINARIES_ARCH.
The first public Windows driver version with a higher number is
101.4824, so we bump the min-required driver version on Windows to this
one to ensure compatibility.
