Previously, whenever the zone detection algorithm could not find a result, zones
were just not drawn at all. This can be very confusing because it's not
necessarily obvious that something is wrong in this case.
Now, invalid zones and links that made them invalid have an error.
Note, we can't generally detect the "valid part" of zones when there are invalid
links, because it's ambiguous which links are valid. However, the solution here
is to remember the last valid zones, and to look at which links would invalidate
those. Since the zone-detection results in runtime-only data currently, the
error won't show when reopening the file for now.
Implementation wise, this works by keeping a potentially outdated version of the
last valid zones around, even when the zone detection failed. For that to work,
I had to change some node pointers to node identifiers in the zone structs, so
that it is safe to access them even if the nodes have been removed.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/139044
This implements bundles and closures which are described in more detail in this
blog post: https://code.blender.org/2024/11/geometry-nodes-workshop-october-2024/
tl;dr:
* Bundles are containers that allow storing multiple socket values in a single
value. Each value in the bundle is identified by a name. Bundles can be
nested.
* Closures are functions that are created with the Closure Zone and can be
evaluated with the Evaluate Closure node.
To use the patch, the `Bundle and Closure Nodes` experimental feature has to be
enabled. This is necessary, because these features are not fully done yet and
still need iterations to improve the workflow before they can be officially
released. These iterations are easier to do in `main` than in a separate branch
though. That's because this patch is quite large and somewhat prone to merge
conflicts. Also other work we want to do, depends on this.
This adds the following new nodes:
* Combine Bundle: can pack multiple values into one.
* Separate Bundle: extracts values from a bundle.
* Closure Zone: outputs a closure zone for use in the `Evaluate Closure` node.
* Evaluate Closure: evaluates the passed in closure.
Things that will be added soon after this lands:
* Fields in bundles and closures. The way this is done changes with #134811, so
I rather implement this once both are in `main`.
* UI features for keeping sockets in sync (right now there are warnings only).
One bigger issue is the limited support for lazyness. For example, all inputs of
a Combine Bundle node will be evaluated, even if they are not all needed. The
same is true for all captured values of a closure. This is a deeper limitation
that needs to be resolved at some point. This will likely be done after an
initial version of this patch is done.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/128340
The new description for `bNode.type_legacy`:
```
/**
* Legacy integer type for nodes. It does not uniquely identify a node type, only the `idname`
* does that. For example, all custom nodes use #NODE_CUSTOM but do have different idnames.
* This is mainly kept for compatibility reasons.
*
* Currently, this type is also used in many parts of Blender, but that should slowly be phased
* out by either relying on idnames, accessor methods like `node.is_reroute()`.
*
* A main benefit of this integer type over using idnames currently is that integer comparison is
* much cheaper than string comparison, especially if many idnames have the same prefix (e.g.
* "GeometryNode"). Eventually, we could introduce cheap-to-compare runtime identifier for node
* types. That could mean e.g. using `ustring` for idnames (where string comparison is just
* pointer comparison), or using a run-time generated integer that is automatically assigned when
* node types are registered.
*/
```
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/132858
The issue was that the propagation of referenced anonymous attributes treated
geometry outputs of the foreach zone as "normal". That means that every
anonymous attributes referenced by the input socket would also be referenced by
the output socket.
However, just like in the repeat zone, this so called "propagate relation" needs
some special behavior, because anonymous attributes references created inside a
zone have to remain inside that zone. Instead, the output node creates a new
anonymous attribute reference that is used outside of the zone.
Note, this is the same as #132560 but also implements the right-to-left pass,
whereas before only the left-to-right pass was implemented.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/132607
The issue was that the propagation of referenced anonymous attributes treated
geometry outputs of the foreach zone as "normal". That means that every
anonymous attributes referenced by the input socket would also be referenced by
the output socket.
However, just like in the repeat zone, this so called "propagate relation" needs
some special behavior, because anonymous attributes references created inside a
zone have to remain inside that zone. Instead, the output node creates a new
anonymous attribute reference that is used outside of the zone.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/132560
Instead of storing an optional in the runtime data of each node,
move the field status for the socket to an array in the node tree's
runtime data. This wasn't possible before because selecting nodes
reordered nodes which caused too much cache recomputation.
The benefit is having less geometry-nodes specific data in the
node socket runtime struct, and a slight move to a more data-
oriented storage format.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/131822
This refactors the lifetime analysis of anonymous attributes in geometry nodes.
The refactor has a couple of goals:
* Use a better and simpler abstraction that can be used when building the
lazy-function graph. We currently have a bunch of duplicate code to handle
"field source" and "caller propagation" attributes. This is now unified so
that one only has to worry about one kind of "reference sets".
* Make the abstraction compatible with handling bundles and closures in case we
want to support them in the future. Both types can contain geometries and
fields so they need to be taken into account when determining lifetimes.
* Make more parts independent of the concept of "anonymous attributes". In
theory, there could be more kinds of referenced data whose lifetimes need to
be managed. I don't have any concrete plans for adding any though.
At its core, deterministic anonymous attributes still work the same they have
been since they became deterministic [0]. Even the generated lazy-function graph
is still pretty much or even exactly the same as before.
The patch renames `AnonymousAttributeSet` to the more general
`GeometryNodesReferenceSet` which is more. This also makes more places
independent of the concept of anonymous attributes. Functionally, this still the
same though. It's only used in the internals of geometry nodes nowadays. Most
code just gets an `AttributeFilter` that is based on it.
[0]: https://archive.blender.org/developer/D16858
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/128667
