For derived mesh triangulation information, currently the three face
corner indices are stored in the same struct as index of the mesh
polygon the triangle is part of. While those pieces of information are
often used together, they often aren't, and combining them prevents
the indices from being used with generic utilities. It also means that
1/3 more memory has to be written when recalculating the triangulation
after deforming the mesh, and that the entire triangle data has to be
read when only the polygon indices are needed.
This commit splits the polygon index into a separate cache on `Mesh`.
The triangulation data isn't saved to files, so this doesn't affect
.blend files at all.
In a simple test deforming a mesh with geometry nodes, the time used
to recalculate the triangulation reduced from 2.0 ms to 1.6 ms,
increasing overall FPS from 14.6 to 15.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/106774
Similar to the cache of loose edges added in 1ea169d90e,
cache the number of loose vertices and which are loose in a bit map.
This can save significant time when drawing large meshes in the
viewport, because recalculations can be avoided when the data doesn't
change, and because many geometry nodes set the loose geometry
caches eagerly when the meshes contain no loose elements.
There are two types of loose vertices:
1. Vertices not used by any edges or faces
`Mesh.loose_verts()`
2. Vertices not used by any faces (may be used by loose edges)
`Mesh.verts_no_face()`
Because both are used by Blender in various places, because the cost
is only a bit per vertex (or constant at best) and for design consistency,
we cache both types of loose elements. The bit maps will only be
allocated when they're actually used, but they are already accessed
in a few important places:
- Attribute domain interpolation
- Subdivision surface modifier
- Viewport drawing
Just skipping viewport drawing calculation after certain geometry
nodes setups can have a large impact. Here is the time taken by
viewport loose geometry extraction before and after the change:
- 4 million vertex grid node: 28 ms to 0 ms
- Large molecular nodes setup (curve to mesh node): 104 ms to 0 ms
- Realize instances with 1 million cubes: 131 ms to 0 ms
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/105567
The comment didn't really make sense, since the removed code did the
same thing as the CustomData function anyway, and that's already done
in `mesh_init_data`.
Implicit sharing means attribute ownership is shared between geometry
data-blocks, and the sharing happens automatically. So it's unnecessary
to choose whether to enable it when copying a mesh.
The typical order is vertex, edge, face(polygon), corner(loop), but in
these three functions polys and loops were reversed. Also use more
typical "num" variable names rather than "len"
Add the ability to retrieve implicit sharing info directly from the
C++ attribute API, which simplifies memory usage and performance
optimizations making use of it. This commit uses the additions to
the API to avoid copies in a few places:
- The "rest_position" attribute in the mesh modifier stack
- Instance on Points node
- Instances to points node
- Mesh to points node
- Points to vertices node
Many files are affected because in order to include the new information
in the API's returned data, I had to switch a bunch of types from
`VArray` to `AttributeReader`. This generally makes sense anyway, since
it allows retrieving the domain, which wasn't possible before in some
cases. I overloaded the `*` deference operator for some syntactic sugar
to avoid the (very ugly) `.varray` that would be necessary otherwise.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/107059
Implements #95966, as the final step of #95965.
This commit changes the storage of mesh edge vertex indices from the
`MEdge` type to the generic `int2` attribute type. This follows the
general design for geometry and the attribute system, where the data
storage type and the usage semantics are separated.
The main benefit of the change is reduced memory usage-- the
requirements of storing mesh edges is reduced by 1/3. For example,
this saves 8MB on a 1 million vertex grid. This also gives performance
benefits to any memory-bound mesh processing algorithm that uses edges.
Another benefit is that all of the edge's vertex indices are
contiguous. In a few cases, it's helpful to process all of them as
`Span<int>` rather than `Span<int2>`. Similarly, the type is more
likely to match a generic format used by a library, or code that
shouldn't know about specific Blender `Mesh` types.
Various Notes:
- The `.edge_verts` name is used to reflect a mapping between domains,
similar to `.corner_verts`, etc. The period means that it the data
shouldn't change arbitrarily by the user or procedural operations.
- `edge[0]` is now used instead of `edge.v1`
- Signed integers are used instead of unsigned to reduce the mixing
of signed-ness, which can be error prone.
- All of the previously used core mesh data types (`MVert`, `MEdge`,
`MLoop`, `MPoly` are now deprecated. Only generic types are used).
- The `vec2i` DNA type is used in the few C files where necessary.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/106638
Similar to 7eee378ecc, this change decreases memory usage and
improves performance when copying curves and meshes without changing
their topology. The same change used for custom data layers is applied
to face and curve offset indices, which aren't stored as a custom data
layer.
The implicit sharing info for the offsets is stored in the mesh and
curve runtime structs, since it doesn't need to be written to files
directly. When changing the offsets pointer directly, the sharing info
must be updated accordingly. To make that easier, a few utility
functions take care of common operations like making an array mutable,
resizing an array, and creating sharing info for allocated data.
This commit also clarifies the intention to not allocate the offsets
at all when there are no curves/faces. That slightly complicates some
of the logic, but there's no reason for the single `0` integer to be
allocated.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/106907
This type will be used to store mesh edges in #106638, but it could
be used for anything else too. This commit adds support for:
- The new type in the Python API
- Editing the type in the edit mode "Attribute Set" operator
- Rendering the type in EEVEE and Cycles for all geometry types
- Geometry nodes attribute interpolation and mixing
- Viewing the type in the spreadsheet and using row filters
The attribute uses the `blender::int2` type in most code, and
the `vec2i` DNA type in C code when necessary. The enum names
are based on `INT32_2D` for consistency with `INT8` and `INT32`.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/106677
This integrates the new implicit-sharing system (from fbcddfcd68)
with `CustomData`. Now the potentially long arrays referenced by custom
data layers can be shared between different systems but most importantly
between different geometries. This makes e.g. copying a mesh much cheaper
because none of the attributes has to be copied. Only when an attribute
is modified does it have to be copied.
Also see the original design task: #95845.
This reduces memory and improves performance by avoiding unnecessary
data copies. For example, the used memory after loading a highly
subdivided mesh is reduced from 2.4GB to 1.79GB. This is about 25%
less which is the expected amount because in `main` there are 4 copies
of the data:
1. The original data which is allocated when the file is loaded.
2. The copy for the depsgraph allocated during depsgraph evaluation.
3. The copy for the undo system allocated when the first undo step is
created right after loading the file.
4. GPU buffers allocated for drawing.
This patch only gets rid of copy number 2 for the depsgraph. In theory
the other copies can be removed as part of follow up PRs as well though.
-----
The patch has three main components:
* Slightly modified `CustomData` API to make it work better with implicit
sharing:
* `CD_REFERENCE` and `CD_DUPLICATE` have been removed because they are
meaningless when implicit-sharing is used.
* `CD_ASSIGN` has been removed as well because it's not an allocation
type anyway. The functionality of using existing arrays as custom
data layers has not been removed though.
* This can still be done with `CustomData_add_layer_with_data` which
also has a new argument that allows passing in information about
whether the array is shared.
* `CD_FLAG_NOFREE` has been removed because it's no longer necessary. It
only existed because of `CD_REFERENCE`.
* `CustomData_copy` and `CustomData_merge` have been split up into a
functions that do copy the actual attribute values and those that do
not. The latter functions now have the `_layout` suffix
(e.g. `CustomData_copy_layout`).
* Changes in `customdata.cc` to make it actually use implicit-sharing.
* Changes in various other files to adapt to the changes in `BKE_customdata.h`.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/106228
This data should be initialized when building the mesh. If the arrays
aren't already initialized, there is already a bug. Theoretically this
could improve performance, since we can use `malloc` instead of
`calloc`. In practice I observed less than a 1% difference though.
The existing utility cleared vertex group names and active attribute
names, which doesn't always make sense when the geometry is
replaced but the custom data layout remains mainly unchanged.
The new poly offsets were needed to interpolate attribute to a different
domain, but they were cleared when the legacy MPoly array was built.
Instead just clear the offsets a bit later after the other conversions.
Implements #95967.
Currently the `MPoly` struct is 12 bytes, and stores the index of a
face's first corner and the number of corners/verts/edges. Polygons
and corners are always created in order by Blender, meaning each
face's corners will be after the previous face's corners. We can take
advantage of this fact and eliminate the redundancy in mesh face
storage by only storing a single integer corner offset for each face.
The size of the face is then encoded by the offset of the next face.
The size of a single integer is 4 bytes, so this reduces memory
usage by 3 times.
The same method is used for `CurvesGeometry`, so Blender already has
an abstraction to simplify using these offsets called `OffsetIndices`.
This class is used to easily retrieve a range of corner indices for
each face. This also gives the opportunity for sharing some logic with
curves.
Another benefit of the change is that the offsets and sizes stored in
`MPoly` can no longer disagree with each other. Storing faces in the
order of their corners can simplify some code too.
Face/polygon variables now use the `IndexRange` type, which comes with
quite a few utilities that can simplify code.
Some:
- The offset integer array has to be one longer than the face count to
avoid a branch for every face, which means the data is no longer part
of the mesh's `CustomData`.
- We lose the ability to "reference" an original mesh's offset array
until more reusable CoW from #104478 is committed. That will be added
in a separate commit.
- Since they aren't part of `CustomData`, poly offsets often have to be
copied manually.
- To simplify using `OffsetIndices` in many places, some functions and
structs in headers were moved to only compile in C++.
- All meshes created by Blender use the same order for faces and face
corners, but just in case, meshes with mismatched order are fixed by
versioning code.
- `MeshPolygon.totloop` is no longer editable in RNA. This API break is
necessary here unfortunately. It should be worth it in 3.6, since
that's the best way to allow loading meshes from 4.0, which is
important for an LTS version.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/105938
Now that mesh primitive nodes calculate their bounds in constant time,
it's worth updating the bounds eagerly when translating a geometry
since doing so should be very cheap and might save a more significant
amount of time if they're needed later.
Also slightly unify the translation functions for the different types.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/106159
Standardize naming, use spans and references for input parameters,
and improve documentation. Now the functions expect the lookups to
succeed as well, they will fail and assert otherwise.
The functions are also simple enough that it likely makes sense to keep
them all inlined
Implements #102359.
Split the `MLoop` struct into two separate integer arrays called
`corner_verts` and `corner_edges`, referring to the vertex each corner
is attached to and the next edge around the face at each corner. These
arrays can be sliced to give access to the edges or vertices in a face.
Then they are often referred to as "poly_verts" or "poly_edges".
The main benefits are halving the necessary memory bandwidth when only
one array is used and simplifications from using regular integer indices
instead of a special-purpose struct.
The commit also starts a renaming from "loop" to "corner" in mesh code.
Like the other mesh struct of array refactors, forward compatibility is
kept by writing files with the older format. This will be done until 4.0
to ease the transition process.
Looking at a small portion of the patch should give a good impression
for the rest of the changes. I tried to make the changes as small as
possible so it's easy to tell the correctness from the diff. Though I
found Blender developers have been very inventive over the last decade
when finding different ways to loop over the corners in a face.
For performance, nearly every piece of code that deals with `Mesh` is
slightly impacted. Any algorithm that is memory bottle-necked should
see an improvement. For example, here is a comparison of interpolating
a vertex float attribute to face corners (Ryzen 3700x):
**Before** (Average: 3.7 ms, Min: 3.4 ms)
```
threading::parallel_for(loops.index_range(), 4096, [&](IndexRange range) {
for (const int64_t i : range) {
dst[i] = src[loops[i].v];
}
});
```
**After** (Average: 2.9 ms, Min: 2.6 ms)
```
array_utils::gather(src, corner_verts, dst);
```
That's an improvement of 28% to the average timings, and it's also a
simplification, since an index-based routine can be used instead.
For more examples using the new arrays, see the design task.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/104424
This simplifies the usage of the API and is preparation for #104478.
The `CustomData_add_layer` and `CustomData_add_layer_named` now have corresponding
`*_with_data` functions that should be used when creating the layer from existing data.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/105708
Refactoring mesh code, it has become clear that local cleanups and
simplifications are limited by the need to keep a C public API for
mesh functions. This change makes code more obvious and makes further
refactoring much easier.
- Add a new `BKE_mesh.hh` header for a C++ only mesh API
- Introduce a new `blender::bke::mesh` namespace, documented here:
https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Source/Objects/Mesh#Namespaces
- Move some functions to the new namespace, cleaning up their arguments
- Move code to `Array` and `float3` where necessary to use the new API
- Define existing inline mesh data access functions to the new header
- Keep some C API functions where necessary because of RNA
- Move all C++ files to use the new header, which includes the old one
In the future it may make sense to split up `BKE_mesh.hh` more, but for
now keeping the same name as the existing header keeps things simple.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/105416
For mesh primitives, the bounds can be calculated trivially in advance
with negligible cost. In case they are needed later on, setting them
eagerly can save the calculation later on. For large meshes, this can
save tens of milliseconds before drawing.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/105266
Currently the shade smooth status for mesh faces is stored as part of
`MPoly::flag`. As described in #95967, this moves that information
to a separate boolean attribute. It also flips its status, so the
attribute is now called `sharp_face`, which mirrors the existing
`sharp_edge` attribute. The attribute doesn't need to be allocated
when all faces are smooth. Forward compatibility is kept until
4.0 like the other mesh refactors.
This will reduce memory bandwidth requirements for some operations,
since the array of booleans uses 12 times less memory than `MPoly`.
It also allows faces to be stored more efficiently in the future, since
the flag is now unused. It's also possible to use generic functions to
process the values. For example, finding whether there is a sharp face
is just `sharp_faces.contains(true)`.
The `shade_smooth` attribute is no longer accessible with geometry nodes.
Since there were dedicated accessor nodes for that data, that shouldn't
be a problem. That's difficult to version automatically since the named
attribute nodes could be used in arbitrary combinations.
**Implementation notes:**
- The attribute and array variables in the code use the `sharp_faces`
term, to be consistent with the user-facing "sharp faces" wording,
and to avoid requiring many renames when #101689 is implemented.
- Cycles now accesses smooth face status with the generic attribute,
to avoid overhead.
- Changing the zero-value from "smooth" to "flat" takes some care to
make sure defaults are the same.
- Versioning for the edge mode extrude node is particularly complex.
New nodes are added by versioning to propagate the attribute in its
old inverted state.
- A lot of access is still done through the `CustomData` API rather
than the attribute API because of a few functions. That can be
cleaned up easily in the future.
- In the future we would benefit from a way to store attributes as a
single value for when all faces are sharp.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/104422
With the goal of clearly differentiating between arrays and single
elements, improving consistency across Blender, and using wording
that's easier to read and say, change variable names for Mesh edges
and polygons/faces.
Common renames are the following, with some extra prefixes, etc.
- `mpoly` -> `polys`
- `mpoly`/`mp`/`p` -> `poly`
- `medge` -> `edges`
- `med`/`ed`/`e` -> `edge`
`MLoop` variables aren't affected because they will be replaced
when they're split up into to arrays in #104424.
As part of #95966, move the `ME_SEAM` flag on mesh edges
to a generic boolean attribute, called `.uv_seam`. This is the
last bit of extra information stored in mesh edges. After this
is committed we can switch to a different type for them and
have a 1/3 improvement in memory consumption.
It is also now possible to see that a mesh has no UV seams in
constant time, and like other similar refactors, interacting with
only the UV seams can be done with less memory.
The attribute name starts with a `.` to signify that the attribute,
like face sets, isn't meant to be used in arbitrary procedural
situations (with geometry nodes for example). That gives us more
freedom to change things in the future.
Pull Request #104728
Consistent with naming from 1af62cb3bf. Keep the "coord"
naming in the "vert_coords_alloc" set of functions since they should be
removed (see #103789).
Caused by 96abaae9ac. Just keep the old argument
in the `_ex` version of the function for now. It can be removed
when the explode modifier is removed in 4.0.
This reverts commit 19222627c6.
Something went wrong here, seems like this commit merged the main branch
into the release branch, which should never be done.
This reverts commit 68181c2560.
I merged 3.6 into 3.5 by mistake. Basically I had a PR against main,
then changed it in the last minute to be against 3.5 via the
web-interface unaware that I shouldn't do it without updating the
patch.
Original Pull Request: #104889
Note that the node group has its sockets names
translated, while the built-in nodes don't.
So we need to use data_ for the built-in nodes names,
and the sockets of the created node groups.
Pull Request #104889
As described in #95966, replace the `ME_EDGEDRAW` flag with a bit
vector in mesh runtime data. Currently the the flag is only ever set
to false for the "optimal display" feature of the subdivision surface
modifier. When creating an "original" mesh in the main data-base,
the flag is always supposed to be true.
The bit vector is now created by the modifier only as necessary, and
is cleared for topology-changing operations. This fixes incorrect
interpolation of the flag as noted in #104376. Generally it isn't
possible to interpolate it through topology-changing operations.
After this, only the seam status needs to be removed from edges before
we can replace them with the generic `int2` type (or something similar)
and reduce memory usage by 1/3.
Related:
- 10131a6f62
- 145839aa42
In the future `BM_ELEM_DRAW` could be removed as well. Currently it is
used and aliased by other defines in some non-obvious ways though.
Pull Request #104417
There were two errors with the function used to convert face sets
to the legacy mesh format for keeping forward compatibility:
- It was moved before `CustomData_blend_write_prepare` so it
operated on an empty span.
- It modified the mesh when it's only supposed to change the copy
of the layers written to the file.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D17210
Struct members loc/size were misleading as they read as if the object
data stored object level transform channels. Rename these to match RNA
with a `texspace_*` prefix to make it clear these struct members only
apply to texture-space transform.
Also rename ME_AUTOSPACE & ME_AUTOSPACE_EVALUATED to
ME_TEXSPACE_FLAG_AUTO & ME_TEXSPACE_FLAG_AUTO_EVALUATED.
Use a consistent style for declaring the names of struct members
in their declarations. Note that this convention was already used in
many places but not everywhere.
Remove spaces around the text (matching commented arguments) with
the advantage that the the spell checking utility skips these terms.
Making it possible to extract & validate these comments automatically.
Also use struct names for `bAnimChannelType` & `bConstraintTypeInfo`
which were using brief descriptions.
Currently you can retrieve a mutable array from a const CustomData.
That makes code unsafe since the compiler can't check for correctness
itself. Fix that by introducing a separate function to retrieve mutable
arrays from CustomData. The new functions have the `_for_write`
suffix that make the code's intention clearer.
Because it makes retrieving write access an explicit step, this change
also makes proper copy-on-write possible for attributes.
Notes:
- The previous "duplicate referenced layer" functions are redundant
with retrieving layers with write access
- The custom data functions that give a specific index only have
`for_write` to simplify the API
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D14140
Byte colors are generic attributes and are therefore included in
CD_MASK_PROP_ALL. Also clarify the use of vertex groups.
They always have to be propagated since they're displayed in
the spreadsheet, etc.
Move the `ME_SHARP` flag for mesh edges to a generic boolean
attribute. This will help allow changing mesh edges to just a pair
of integers, giving performance improvements. In the future it could
also give benefits for normal calculation, which could more easily
check if all or no edges are marked sharp, which is helpful considering
the plans in T93551.
The attribute is generally only allocated when it's necessary. When
leaving edit mode, it will only be created if an edge is marked sharp.
The data can be edited with geometry nodes just like a regular edge
domain boolean attribute.
The attribute is named `sharp_edge`, aiming to reflect the similar
`select_edge` naming and to allow a future `sharp_face` name in
a separate commit.
Ref T95966
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D16921
An apostrophe should not be used because it is not a mark of plural,
even for initialisms. This involves mostly comments, but a few UI
messages are affected as well.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D16749
Currently the `MLoopUV` struct stores UV coordinates and flags related
to editing UV maps in the UV editor. This patch changes the coordinates
to use the generic 2D vector type, and moves the flags into three
separate boolean attributes. This follows the design in T95965, with
the ultimate intention of simplifying code and improving performance.
Importantly, the change allows exporters and renderers to use UVs
"touched" by geometry nodes, which only creates generic attributes.
It also allows geometry nodes to create "proper" UV maps from scratch,
though only with the Store Named Attribute node for now.
The new design considers any 2D vector attribute on the corner domain
to be a UV map. In the future, they might be distinguished from regular
2D vectors with attribute metadata, which may be helpful because they
are often interpolated differently.
Most of the code changes deal with passing around UV BMesh custom data
offsets and tracking the boolean "sublayers". The boolean layers are
use the following prefixes for attribute names: vert selection: `.vs.`,
edge selection: `.es.`, pinning: `.pn.`. Currently these are short to
avoid using up the maximum length of attribute names. To accommodate
for these 4 extra characters, the name length limit is enlarged to 68
bytes, while the maximum user settable name length is still 64 bytes.
Unfortunately Python/RNA API access to the UV flag data becomes slower.
Accessing the boolean layers directly is be better for performance in
general.
Like the other mesh SoA refactors, backward and forward compatibility
aren't affected, and won't be changed until 4.0. We pay for that by
making mesh reading and writing more expensive with conversions.
Resolves T85962
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D14365
