After just over a week of coding, I've finished doing a major refactor/cleanup of the constraints code. In the process, quite a few old kludges and ugly hacks have been removed. Also, some new features which will greatly benefit riggers have been implemented.
=== What's New ===
* The long-awaited ``ChildOf Constraint'':
This allows you to animate parent influences, and choose which transformation channels the parent affects the child on (i.e. no translation/rotation/scaling). It should be noted that disabling some combinations may not totally work as expected. Also, the 'Set Inverse' and 'Clear Inverse' buttons at the bottom of this constraint's panel set/clear the inverse correction for the parent's effects. Use these to make the owner not stick/be glued to the parent.
* Constraint/Target Evaluation Spaces:
In some constraints, there are now 1-2 combo boxes at the bottom of their panel, which allows you to pick which `co-ordinate space' they are evaluated in. This is much more flexible than the old 'local' options for bones only were.
* Action Constraint - Loc/Rot/Size Inputs
The Action Constraint can finally use the target's location/rotation/scaling transforms as input, to control the owner of the constraint. This should work much more reliably than it used to. The target evaluation should now also be more accurate due to the new space conversion stuff.
* Transform - No longer in Crazy Space (TM)
Transforming objects/bones with constraints applied should no longer occur in Crazy Space. They are now correctly inverse-corrected. This also applies to old-style object tracking.
=== General Code Changes ===
* solve_constraints is now in constraints.c. I've removed the old `blend consecutive constraints of same type' junk, which made the code more complex than it needed to be.
* evaluate_constraint is now only passed the constraint, and two matrices. A few unused variables have been removed from here.
* A tempolary struct, bConstraintOb, is now passed to solve_constraints instead of relying on an ugly, static workobject in some cases. This works much better.
* Made the formatting of constraint code consistent
* There's a version patch for older files so that constraint settings are correctly converted to the new system. This is currently done for MajorVersion <= 244, and SubVersion < 3. I've bumped up the subversion to 3 for this purpose. However, with the imminent 2.45 release, this may need to be adjusted accordingly.
* LocEulSizeToMat4 and LocQuatSizeToMat4 now work in the order Size, Rot, Location. I've also added a few other math functions.
* Mat4BlendMat4 is now in arithb. I've modified it's method slightly, to use other arithb functions, instead of its crazy blending scheme.
* Moved some of the RigidBodyJoint constraint's code out of blenkernel, and into src. It shouldn't be setting its target in its data initialisation function based + accessing scene stuff where it was doing so.
=== Future Work ===
* Geometry to act as targets for constraints. A space has been reserved for this already.
* Tidy up UI buttons of constraints
ID Properties weren't being duplicated (by shift-D or any of the other
duplication functions). So now ID properties are duplicated in the
main copy_libblock function, which (as far as I can check) covers all
ID-contained ID properties.
I also updated the constraint system to copy pyconstraint ID properties
on shift-D.
This would probably be a good thing to add to the stable branch, btw.
It is now possible to temporarily 'mute' and IPO-block or IPO-curve. This functionality has been requested by the Plumiferos team, and is based off Patch #6866 by Juho Vepsäläinen (bebraw).
Usage:
* In the IPO Editor header, there is a toggle button (open/closed eye used for Outliner Visibility restriction) beside the IPO-blocktype menu, when there is an active IPO-block in the IPO Editor.
* In the Action Editor, beside the 'lock' icon for channel protection on Action/Constraint channels, there is the open/closed 'eye' that can be toggled to set the mute status of said channel's IPO-block.
* Also in the Action Editor, you can mute individual IPO-curve channels in a similar manner.
Now when editing the curve that a Bone with a Clamp To Constraint uses as its target, the Bones's position will be updated in realtime to match to changes in the curve.
This should also work for the FollowPath constraint now too.
Now when editing the curve that an Object with a Clamp To Constraint uses as its target, the Object's position will be updated in realtime to match to changes in the curve.
I was going to have this working for bones too, but I haven't got that quite working yet.
Simplified the code in two functions where checking for targets/subtargets could really have been done using Constraint API methods (constraint_has_target, get_constraint_target).
Copying Displace modifiers by themselves did not work correctly. The code was incorrectly just copying memory for source modifier to the new copy, causing problems due to the ModifierData struct at the start of the DisplaceModifierData struct (linked list pointers still referring to old stack).
At last! The ability to code constraints in Python. This opens up many interesting rigging possibilities, as well as making prototyping constraints easier.
* A PyConstraint script must begin with the line
#BPYCONSTRAINT
* It must also define a doConstraint function, which performs the core actions of the constraint.
* PyConstraints use IDProperties to store custom properties for each PyConstraint instance. The scripter can choose which of these ID-Properties to expose to a user to control the behaviour of the constraint. This must be done using the Draw.PupBlock method.
Credits to Joe Eager (joeedh) for coding the original patch on which this is based. I've made heavy revisions to large parts of the patch.
For more detailed information, and some demo scripts, see the following page:
http://aligorith.googlepages.com/pyconstraints2
This commit refactors curve selection system to use certain curve selections
functions that encapsulate setting of selection flags. New function to select
adjacent control points was introduced too. Refactoring made it possible to
simplify certain existing selection functions quite a bit.
New functionality was delivered as well. Select more/less works now with NURBS
as expected. Also two new curve selection functions were added: Select Every Nth
and Select Random.
See http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Curve_Selection_Tools for
further information.
removed loop and unused var, since this is a sensitive (and not my) area - I did some mesh comparisons and ran a comparison with the old function passing random values, so this should be ok.
In order to give import/export script authors the ability to add properties
to inidividual faces, vertices and edges in the same manner as they are able
to do with ID structures three new custom data types have been added to blender
for floats, integers and strings.
Things to note:
-Since property Layers are custom data, they are added to all verts, edges
or faces at once.
-Only one property layer for each unique property name may exist. In other
words, you cannot have a float layer as well as an integer layer
both with the same name.
-No user interface for this exists at the moment.
The following methods and attributes have been added to the Blender.Mesh
Python module and it's object types:
->MVert/Edge/FaceSeq:
addPropertyLayer(name, type)
removePropertyLayer(name)
renamePropertyLayer(original name, new name)
properties(readonly list.)
->MVert/Edge/Face
getProperty(name)
setProperty(name, value)
->Mesh module
PropertyTypes (readonly dictionary)
Particle system was messing up depsgraph tags, causing bad results
in commandline renders especially (or in rendering first frame of
animation).
Fixed with introducing a temp storage tag in Objects. The real fix
should be to make particle systems behave nice inside the depsgraph.
When adding a new Action Strip to an Object which didn't have any Action Strips previously, NLA-override mode is turned on by default for that object (the Action/NLA-icon beside the expand/collapse triangle).
* Moved the multires vertex data from struct MultiresLevel to struct Multires. There's no longer any reason to store data seperately for each level; it was just taking up extra memory.
* Incremented the subversion to 2 and adjusted do_versions to correctly load older files.
* Refactored the multires update process (which handles propagating changes to other levels)
* Geometry node: Front/back output
This is used as a mask for determining whether you're looking at the front side or back side of a mesh, useful for blending materials, my practical need was giving different materials to the pages of a magazine: http://mke3.net/blender/etc/frontback-h264.mov
Give 1.0 if it's the front side, and 0.0 if it's the back side.
* Extended material node
This is the same as the material node, but gives more available inputs and outputs, (basically just connecting up more of ShadeInput and ShadeResult to the node). I didn't want to add it to the normal simple Material node since you don't always need all that stuff, and it would make the node huge, but when you do need it, it's nice to have it.
== Comp nodes ==
* Invert node
Inverting is something that happens all the time in a node setup, and this makes it easier. It's been possible to invert previously by adding a mix node and subtracting the input from 1.0, but it's not the best way of doing it. This node:
- makes it a lot faster to set up, rather than all the clicking required with the mix node
- is a lot more usable amidst a complex comp setup, when you're looking at a node tree, it's very helpful to be able to see at a glance what's going on. Using subtract for inverting is easily mixed up with other nodes in which you are actually subtracting, not inverting, and looks very similar to all the other mix nodes that usually litter a comp tree.
- has options to invert the RGB channels, the Alpha channel, or both. This saves adding lots of extra nodes (separate RGBA, subtract, set alpha) when you want to do something simple like invert an alpha channel. I'd like to add this option to other nodes too.
There's also a shader node version too.
* Also a few fixes that I committed ages ago, but seems to have been overwritten in Bob's node refactor:
- adding new compbufs to the set alpha and alphaover nodes when you have only one noodle connected to the lower input
- making the fac value on RGB curves still work when there's nothing connected to it
[ #6702 ] Image doesn't get saved after painting & packing
IMB_saveiff - (general saving function), does not write a file when the image is packed.
so write a file with writePackedFile for packed files.
The code for preserving ID properties was apparently not
working. Fixed that by adding a new function,
IDP_ReplaceInGroup, that automatically handles overriding a
property in a group while preserving the property order.
Its odd though that the previous fix I had wasn't
working :/
other preview renders at all.
Also added a flag to enable/disable SSS per scene. There is no
button for it yet, the Render panel has no space left .. will find
a place for it later.
The subversion number was also increased to enable the flag for
older .blends.
only deform modifiers in the stack. This was an old bug: a typo caused quad
face normals to be calculated using the same vertex twice, giving bad normals.
I have changed the vertex parenting code to use the derivedFinal mesh rather
than derivedDeform; this gives the result after all modifiers have been
applied, rather than the result up to the first non-deforming modifier as it
did before. Since the derivedFinal mesh can have more than one vertex
corresponding to a single vertex in the base mesh, the average of all such
vertices is used.
This means changing the active UV/VCol layers wont change what renders.
needed to adjust the minor version so old files will copy the active layer to the render-uv/vcol layer.
boxpack2d.py - redoen in C now, dont need python version.
- modifier.c: moved a check out of a loop, removed an unneeded var, made a couple cosmetic changes.
- DNA_modifier_types.h: added parentheses to cast and smooth modifier defines that used bit-shifting (like 1<<1, etc.).
Note: realized they were needed when I tried to use "flag &= ~MOD_CAST_Z" in modifier.c. Since MOD_CAST_Z is #defined as 1<<3, ~MOD_CAST_Z ended up as ~1<<3 while I wanted ~(1<<3). There are other places in that header file and others in Blender where it'd be safer to add the parentheses...
- Updated the epydoc documentation for the features added by Ben Batt to the cast modifier; fixed small typo in API_intro.py.
BTW, thanks Ben Batt (artificer) for checking, improving with a couple features and committing these modifiers :).
This patch adds an option to the wave modifier to displace along the normals
of the base mesh, rather than in the local Z direction.
Thanks to Michael Fox (mfoxdoggg) for the patch!
This patch adds vertex group functionality to the wave modifier, allowing the
user to specify a vertex group with which to modulate the wave deformation.
Thanks to Michael Fox (mfoxdoggg) for the patch!
This patch adds two modifiers: Cast and Smooth.
The Cast modifier deforms vertices into a sphere, cylinder or cuboid shape.
The location and orientation of the projection shape can be controlled by a
specified control object.
The Smooth modifier smooths the mesh in a similar way to the Edit mode "Smooth"
button.
Thanks to Willian Padovani Germano (ianwill) for the patch!
This patch makes the X, Y and Z axes of the mirror modifier individually
toggleable, so it is possible to mirror in more than one direction with a
single modifier.
Thanks to Juho Vepsäläinen (bebraw) for the patch!
NOTE: BLENDER_SUBVERSION has been incremented to support translation from old
to new axis specification.
using mface->flag for both.
Also found that the cdDM_drawMappedFaces and cdDM_drawFacesTex_common could get normals mixed up when rendering hidden faces. because hidden/invisible faces used continue without advancing to the next normal.
