Changing a node tree item property (such as the default value) was using a very
broad and generic "tag" function which invalidates the runtime items cache.
This also invalidates any python iterators due to the API using the runtime
cache. Changing node tree items in a loop will then crash.
It's not necessary to invalidate the runtime items cache when the actual item
pointers have not changed. Most RNA updates only change superficial properties,
or at most require a recursive node tree update due to change of identifiers or
types.
This PR introduces a simpler "tag" function to only tag for tree updates by not
rebuild the entire runtime items cache. It also renames existing functions and
docstrings to better explain what each of them does and should be used for.
The `NodeTreeInterfaceChangedFlag` is removed completely because it is only ever
used as a simple boolean indicator of "item changes" that require a cache
rebuild. It is replaced with an atomic bool like flags used for runtime caches.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/143932
The behavior of the field inferencing changed slightly. So instead of checking
if the link connects a socket that has a field to one that does not, check the
source is a field and the target does not support one. Note the difference
between "having a field" and "supporting a field".
This was probably broken in 7b7c630018.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/143975
This removes the "Geometry" part from their name because we want to use them in
other node tree types too (see #141936).
Usually, we don't change idnames because they are the primary identifier of
nodes and is expected to stay the same. Since they are generally not shown to
users (just Python developers), it's also not urgent to change them. However, in
this specific case we have the opportunity to update the idname before the node
becomes an official feature, so it's not as bad to change it.
This patch has full backward compatibility, but no forward compatibility (for
files that used the experimental feature).
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/143823
This moves most of the code to deal with syncable nodes (such as
Combine/Separate Bundle) to the nodes module. Over time it might be possible to
decentralize it more.
This also changes the caching mechanism from storing a flag on the node to
storing a map on the node editor runtime data. This simplifies the code quite
significantly and also removes the need to store any of this data in DNA.
The node tree update code now always clears this cache because before it was
missing many cases, e.g. when creating links that would connect a Combine to a
Separate Bundle node.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/143661
This includes a new list structure type and socket shape, a node
to create lists, a node to retrieve values from lists, and a node to
retrieve the length of lists. It also implements multi-function support
so that function nodes work on lists.
There are three nodes included in this PR.
- **List** Creates a list of elements with a given size. The values
are computed with a field that can use the index as an input.
- **Get List Item** A field node that retrieves an element from a
a list at a given index. The index input is dynamic, so if the input
is a list, the output will be a list too.
- **List Length** Just gives the length of a list.
When a function node is used with multiple list inputs, the shorter
lists are repeated to extend it to the length of the longest.
The list nodes and structure type are hidden behind an experimental
feature until we can be sure they're useful for an actual use case.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/140679
The main goal of the patch is to make the socket tooltips more useful. This is
achieved in two ways:
* Use better text formatting in the tooltip to make it easier to parse and to
better separate the current actual value from more general information about
the socket.
* Add some more information like implicit field inputs when the node is not used
currently or more details about a color.
This patch basically rewrites the entire tooltip generation, because it's quite
different from before (where we just created a single string for the entire
tooltip).
I'm using monospace for the actual current socket value and type, while the
normal font is used for general information about the socket like it's name,
description, allowed geometry types etc.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/140540
So far, only node group were able to have menu input sockets. Built-in nodes did
not support them. Currently, all menus of built-in nodes are stored on the node
instead of on the sockets. This limits their flexibility because it's not
possible to expose these inputs.
This patch adds initial support for having menu inputs in built-in nodes. For
testing purposes, it also changes a couple built-in nodes to use an input socket
instead of a node property: Points to Volume, Transform Geometry, Triangulate,
Volume to Mesh and Match String.
### Compatibility
Forward and backward compatibility is maintained where possible (it's not
possible when the menu input is linked in 5.0). The overall compatibility
approach is the same as what was done for the compositor with two differences:
there are no wrapper RNA properties (not necessary for 5.0, those were removed
for the compositor already too), no need to version animation (animation on the
menu properties was already disabled).
This also makes menu sockets not animatable in general which is kind of brittle
(e.g. doesn't properly update when the menu definition changes). To animate a
menu it's better to animate an integer and to drive an index switch with it.
### Which nodes to update?
Many existing menu properties can become sockets, but it's currently not the
intention to convert all of them. In some cases, converting them might restrict
future improvements too much. This mainly affects Math nodes.
Other existing nodes should be updated but are a bit more tricky to update for
different reasons:
* We don't support dynamic output visibility yet. This is something I'll need to
look into at some point.
* They are shared with shader/compositor nodes, which may be more limited in
what can become a socket.
* There may be performance implications unless extra special cases are
implemented, especially for multi-function nodes.
* Some nodes use socket renaming instead of dynamic socket visibility which
isn't something we support more generally yet.
### Implementation
The core implementation is fairly straight forward. The heavy lifting is done by
the existing socket visibility inferencing. There is a new simple API that
allows individual nodes to implement custom input-usage-rules based on other
inputs in a decentralized way.
In most cases, the nodes to update just have a single menu, so there is a new
node-declaration utility that links a socket to a specific value of the menu
input. This internally handles the usage inferencing as well as making the
socket available when using link-drag-search.
In the modified nodes, I also had to explicitly set the "main input" now which
is used when inserting the node in a link. The automatic behavior doesn't work
currently when the first input is a menu. This is something we'll have to solve
more generally at some point but is out of scope for this patch.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/140705
This patch adds support for the experimental structure types currently
used bu Geometry Nodes. Pixel nodes were declared as function nodes,
which gives dynamic structures for all their sockets. Other nodes now
explicitly declared their inputs as dynamic if not single value, while
the compositor_expects_single_value marker was removed in favor of the
StructureType::Single type.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/140910
The goal here is to reduce our reliance on the existing field inferencing code
and use the new and more general structure inferencing code instead.
This patch changes patch refactors link drawing so that whether links are drawn
dashed does not depend on field inferencing anymore. Same for the invalid field
links.
I don't expect that this changes the drawing of any existing links. It just
makes it easier to fully remove the old field inferencing in the future.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/140869
This adds support for specifying structure types on closures. The main immediate
benefit is that this makes it possible to use fields with closures (without
having incorrect warnings in the UI).
A closure zone behaves very similar to a node group with respect to structure
type inferencing. The structure types can be inferenced fully automatically, or
the user can specify them manually on the closure inputs. On the evaluate
closure zone, the user has to specify the structure types of the inputs and
outputs explicitly (or leave them as dynamic).
Working on this, I was a bit surprised that `get_output_socket_shape` depended
on the field state. Is that a left-over? It feels like it shouldn't be necessary
since the socket shape shouldn't depend on field inferencing anymore. I removed
that now and couldn't see a difference yet.
The operator that creates a closure zone from an evaluate closure node copies
the input structure types already. Beyond that, there is no automatic syncing of
the structure types yet. The structure types only affect the UI and not what's
actually done during evaluation.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/139713
Implementation of #127106.
This is just a visual representation of the field/single/grid
status of sockets to make the workflow more intuitive. With
a visual representation for volume grid sockets, volume features
should be unblocked for further development. The structure type
will also be used to distinguish list sockets in the interface.
Group input nodes now have a "Structure Type" option instead of
the existing "Single Value Only". Usually the auto option should be
enough, but in some cases where the inferencing cannot (yet) make
a clear determination, it can be helpful to choose a specific type.
The new visualization and the group input structure type option
are hidden behind a new experimental option for now.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/134811
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
Previously, internal links of node are only shown when the link is muted AND
when the corresponding output is linked to something else. I can't think of any
reason for why it's important whether the output is linked or not. It seems
showing the internal link is always useful.
This patch makes it so that all internal links are always shown when a node is
muted, regardless of whether the corresponding output socket is linked or not.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/139086
Previously, it was not possible to switch a menu based on another menu. This
patch adds support for this.
Usually, menu sockets are drawn without the label in nodes currently. Now there
is one exception: the Menu Switch node when it switches another menu. If the
label is not shown, the UI is missing crucial information.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/138704
Previously, nodes which had their own special internal-links-behavior were
hardcoded in node tree update code. Now that is decentralized so that more nodes
can use this functionality without leaking special cases into general code.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/138712
Previously, we had shown link errors on the target node as part of the node
warning system. While better than not showing any information about invalid
links (as was the state before that), it's still not ideal because it's easy to
miss when just looking at the link.
This patch adds an error icon in the middle of the invalid link. When hovering
over it, it shows the error text. When the middle of the link is not in view but
part of the link is, then the error icon will also stay visible.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/138529
Previously, internal links used the same heuristics as most other nodes. However,
this is more problematic here, because I intend to use the same internal links
for the case when no closure is connected. The behavior in this case should not
change in the future if we decide to change the heuristic for internal links for
muted nodes.
The main issue of 'type-less' standard C allocations is that there is no check on
allocated type possible.
This is a serious source of annoyance (and crashes) when making some
low-level structs non-trivial, as tracking down all usages of these
structs in higher-level other structs and their allocation is... really
painful.
MEM_[cm]allocN<T> templates on the other hand do check that the
given type is trivial, at build time (static assert), which makes such issue...
trivial to catch.
NOTE: New code should strive to use MEM_new (i.e. allocation and
construction) as much as possible, even for trivial PoD types.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/136134
Adds the option to create a boolean socket that can be used as a panel toggle.
This allows creating simpler and more compact node group UIs when a panel
can be "disabled".
The toggle input is a normal input socket that is just drawn a bit differently in
the UI. Whether a boolean is a toggle input or not does not affect evaluation.
Also see #133936 for guides on how to add and remove panel toggles.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/133936
The enum items propagation mechanism for Menu sockets makes a local copy of item
pointers to propagate between node group inputs and interface definitions.
In case these items are not used (e.g. because they are already shared with the
socket) the local copy must still be released to avoid leaking the memory.
This only happens with more than 4 enum items, because of the internal default
buffer for `Vector`.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/135226
Restriction of the nodes api to clearly define never-null function arguments.
Side effects: some assertions and null-check (with early return) were removed.
On the caller side is ensured to never derefer null to pass argument (mainly in RNA).
In addition, one pointer argument now actually a return type.
By-reference return types instead of pointers going to be separate kind of
change since also imply of cleaning up variables created from reference.
Also good future improvement would be to mark a copy-constructor as
explicit for DNA node types.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/134627
Currently, tree, node and socket types are always freed immediately when the
Python code unregisters them. This is problematic, because there may still be
references to those type pointers in evaluated data owned by potentially various
depsgraphs. It's not possible to change data in these depsgraphs, because they
may be independent from the original data and might be worked on by a separate
thread. So when the type pointers are freed directly, there will be a lot of
dangling pointers in evaluated copies. Since those are used to free the nodes,
there will be a crash when the depsgraph updates. In practice, this does not
happen that often, because typically custom node tree addons are not disabled
while in use. They still used to crash often, but only when Blender exits and
unregisters all types.
The solution is to just keep the typeinfo pointers alive and free them all at
the very end. This obviously has the downside that the list of pointers we need
to keep track of can grow endlessly, however in practice that doesn't really
happen under any normal circumstances.
I'm still getting some other crashes when enabling/disabling Sverchok while
testing, but not entirely reliably and also without this patch (the crash there
happens in RNA code). So some additional work will probably be needed later to
make this work properly in all cases.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/134360
Currently UI code always has to use char pointers when interacting with
the translation system. This makes benefiting from the use C++ strings
and StringRef more difficult. That means we're leaving some type safety
and performance on the table. This PR adds StringRef overloads to the
translation API functions and removes the few calls to `.c_str()` that
are now unnecessary.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/133887
Changes to the compositor Normal node does not propagate and the
compositor result is not updated. That's because the node is a special
case since its output socket value is used as its input property, which
is not tracked by the node update code.
Apparently, a similar node exists in shader nodes, and a workaround is
implemented for that node in the node updater, so we just need to extend
that check to include the compositor node as well.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/133803
This patch automatically grays out input values which can't affect the output
currently. It works with inputs of group nodes, geometry nodes modifiers and
node tools.
To achieve this, it analyses the node tree and partially evaluates it to figure
out which group inputs are currently not linked to an output or are disabled by e.g.
some switch node.
Original proposal: https://devtalk.blender.org/t/dynamic-socket-visibility/31874
Related info in blog post:
https://code.blender.org/2023/11/geometry-nodes-workshop-november-2023/#dynamic-socket-visibility
Follow up task for designing a UI that allows hiding sockets: #132706
Limitations:
* The inferencing does not update correctly when a socket starts being
animated/driven. I haven't found a good way to invalidate the cache in a good
way reliably yet. It's only a very short term problem though. It fixes itself
after the next modification of the node tree and is only noticeable when
animating some specific sockets such as the switch node condition.
* Whether a socket is grayed out is not exposed in the Python API yet. That will
be done separately.
* Only a partial evaluation is done to determine if an input affects an output.
There should be no cases where a socket is found to be unused when it can actually
affect the output. However, there can be cases where a socket is inferenced to be used
even if it is not due to some complex condition. Depending on the exact circumstances,
this can either be improved or the condition in the node tree should be simplified.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/132219
Using the `BKE_id_owner_get` during the node tree update can avoid having to
iterate over lots of data-blocks in common cases. Previously, the code had to
iterate over all potential owners of node group to find the correct one.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/132903
Main goals of this refactor:
* Make it more obvious which update function should be used.
* Make it more obvious which parameters are required by using references instead
of pointers.
* Support passing in multiple modified trees instead of just a single one.
No functional changes are expected.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/132862
The `bNode.type_legacy` is still used in many places to check if a node is a
specific type. However, going forward it's better to rely more on the idname
than on this legacy integer type. Some more information is available in #132858.
The added utility method can be used like so:
`node->is_type("GeometryNodeMenuSwitch")`. Previously one would have written
`node->type_legacy == GEO_NODE_MENU_SWITCH`. The `is_type` method internally
checks that the passed in string is a valid node identifier to make it more
likely that we catch typos early.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/132863
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
Make the type structs non-trivial, use new and delete for allocation and
freeing, and use std::string for most strings they contain. Also use
StringRef instead of char pointers in a few places. Mainly this improves
ergonomics when working with the strings.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/132750
