Each value is now out of the global namespace, so they can be shorter
and easier to read. Most of this commit just adds the necessary casting
and namespace specification. `enum class` can be forward declared since
it has a specified size. We will make use of that in the next commit.
Use the standard "elements_num" naming, and use the "corner" name rather
than the old "loop" name: `verts_num`, `edges_num`, and `corners_num`.
This matches the existing `faces_num` field which was already renamed.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/116350
Make the naming consistent with the recent change from "loop" to
"corner". Avoid the need for a special type for these triangles by
conveying the semantics in the naming instead.
- `looptris` -> `corner_tris`
- `lt` -> `tri` (or `corner_tri` when there is less context)
- `looptri_index` -> `tri_index` (or `corner_tri_index`)
- `lt->tri[0]` -> `tri[0]`
- `Span<MLoopTri>` -> `Span<int3>`
- `looptri_faces` -> `tri_faces` (or `corner_tri_faces`)
If we followed the naming pattern of "corner_verts" and "edge_verts"
exactly, we'd probably use "tri_corners" instead. But that sounds much
worse and less intuitive to me.
I've found that by using standard vector types for this sort of data,
the commonalities with other areas become much clearer, and code ends
up being naturally more data oriented. Besides that, the consistency
is nice, and we get to mostly remove use of `DNA_meshdata_types.h`.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/116238
The term `looptri` was used ambiguously for both single & arrays.
The term `tri` was also used, causing `tri->tri`.
Use terms:
- `looptris` for an array or when dealing with multiple items.
- `looptri` is used when dealing with a single item.
- `lt` for a single MLoopTri variables & arguments.
This was already a convention but not followed closely.
"mesh" reads much better than "me" since "me" is a different word.
There's no reason to avoid using two more characters here. Replacing
all of these at once is better than encountering it repeatedly and
doing the same change bit by bit.
Also rename the functions and move a sculpt function that depended on
the mesh functions to a more proper place. And also use references and
nicer variable names for meshes.
The `EdgeHash` and `EdgeSet` data structures are designed specifically
as a hash of an order agnostic pair of integers. This specialization can
be achieved much more easily with the templated C++ data structures,
which gives improved performance, readability, and type safety.
This PR removes the older data structures and replaces their use with
`Map`, `Set`, or `VectorSet` depending on the situation. The changes
are mostly straightforward, but there are a few places where the old
API made the goals of the code confusing.
The last time these removed data structures were significantly changed,
they were already moving closer to the implementation of the newer
C++ data structures (aa63a87d37).
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/111391
Using ClangBuildAnalyzer on the whole Blender build, it was pointing
out that BLI_math.h is the heaviest "header hub" (i.e. non tiny file
that is included a lot).
However, there's very little (actually zero) source files in Blender
that need "all the math" (base, colors, vectors, matrices,
quaternions, intersection, interpolation, statistics, solvers and
time). A common use case is source files needing just vectors, or
just vectors & matrices, or just colors etc. Actually, 181 files
were including the whole math thing without needing it at all.
This change removes BLI_math.h completely, and instead in all the
places that need it, includes BLI_math_vector.h or BLI_math_color.h
and so on.
Change from that:
- BLI_math_color.h was included 1399 times -> now 408 (took 114.0sec
to parse -> now 36.3sec)
- BLI_simd.h 1403 -> 418 (109.7sec -> 34.9sec).
Full rebuild of Blender (Apple M1, Xcode, RelWithDebInfo) is not
affected much (342sec -> 334sec). Most of benefit would be when
someone's changing BLI_simd.h or BLI_math_color.h or similar files,
that now there's 3x fewer files result in a recompile.
Pull Request #110944
Replace `BKE_mesh_face_flip_ex()` with `bke::mesh_flip_faces()`.
This gives better performance since it avoids custom data name
lookups for every face index, and processes data in a more cache
friendly way. Also remove the `CustomData_swap` API function
as mentioned in 09b6eac5c4.
Flipping 16 million faces, I observed a 3.25x speedup, from 760 to 230 ms.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/110702
Each of the four algorithms is different, and not all of them will
parallelize linearly, but for large meshes these "flushing" operations
begin to become noticeable compared to other multithreaded code.
For example, flushing visibility to vertices and edges after a change
to faces became 3.75x faster, from 90 to 24 ms.
Also avoid duplicating selection interpolation logic, use the attribute
API instead.
The issue was that `CustomData_swap` modifies all layers, but does not ensure
that the layers are actually mutable. This resulted in it modifying shared layers.
Now it ensures that the layers are mutable first (which copies the layers if they
are shared).
Longer term, it would be good to remove `CustomData_swap` since it's not a
good API performance wise, but that is outside of the scope of this patch.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/110678
Implements the rest of #101689, after 5e9ea9243b.
- `vdata` -> `vert_data`
- `edata` -> `edge_data`
- `pdata` -> `face_data`
- `ldata` -> `loop_data`
A deeper rename of `loop` to `corner` will be proposed as a next
step, and renaming `totvert` and `totedge` can be done separately.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/110432
Implements part of #101689.
The "poly" name was chosen to distinguish the `MLoop` + `MPoly`
combination from the `MFace` struct it replaced. Those two structures
persisted together for a long time, but nowadays `MPoly` is gone, and
`MFace` is only used in some legacy code like the particle system.
To avoid unnecessarily using a different term, increase consistency
with the UI and with BMesh, and generally make code a bit easier to
read, this commit replaces the `poly` term with `poly`. Most variables
that use the term are renamed too. `Mesh.totface` and `Mesh.fdata` now
have a `_legacy` suffix to reduce confusion. In a next step, `pdata`
can be renamed to `face_data` as well.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/109819
More consistently return geometry bounds with the `Bounds` type that
holds the min and max in one variable. This simplifies some code and
reduces the need to initialize separate min and max variables first.
Meshes now use the same `bounds_min_max()` function as curves and
point clouds, though the wrapper mesh isn't affected yet.
The motivation is to make some of the changes for #96968 simpler.
A lot of files were missing copyright field in the header and
the Blender Foundation contributed to them in a sense of bug
fixing and general maintenance.
This change makes it explicit that those files are at least
partially copyrighted by the Blender Foundation.
Note that this does not make it so the Blender Foundation is
the only holder of the copyright in those files, and developers
who do not have a signed contract with the foundation still
hold the copyright as well.
Another aspect of this change is using SPDX format for the
header. We already used it for the license specification,
and now we state it for the copyright as well, following the
FAQ:
https://reuse.software/faq/
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
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
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
The function set bits in a bitmap for all the edge indices in a face.
With future changes to mesh topology storage though, this level
of abstraction won't be as helpful anyway.
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
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.
Using spans instead of raw pointers helps to differentiate ararys from
pointers to single elements, gives bounds checking in debug builds, and
conveniently stores the number of elements in the same variable.
Also make variable naming consistent. For example, use `loops` instead
of `mloop`. The plural helps to clarify that the variable is an array.
I didn't change positions because there is a type mismatch between
C and C++ code that is ugly to manage. All remaining code can be
converted to C++, then that change will be simpler.
Pull Request #105138
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
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
**Changes**
As described in T93602, this patch removes all use of the `MVert`
struct, replacing it with a generic named attribute with the name
`"position"`, consistent with other geometry types.
Variable names have been changed from `verts` to `positions`, to align
with the attribute name and the more generic design (positions are not
vertices, they are just an attribute stored on the point domain).
This change is made possible by previous commits that moved all other
data out of `MVert` to runtime data or other generic attributes. What
remains is mostly a simple type change. Though, the type still shows up
859 times, so the patch is quite large.
One compromise is that now `CD_MASK_BAREMESH` now contains
`CD_PROP_FLOAT3`. With the general move towards generic attributes
over custom data types, we are removing use of these type masks anyway.
**Benefits**
The most obvious benefit is reduced memory usage and the benefits
that brings in memory-bound situations. `float3` is only 3 bytes, in
comparison to `MVert` which was 4. When there are millions of vertices
this starts to matter more.
The other benefits come from using a more generic type. Instead of
writing algorithms specifically for `MVert`, code can just use arrays
of vectors. This will allow eliminating many temporary arrays or
wrappers used to extract positions.
Many possible improvements aren't implemented in this patch, though
I did switch simplify or remove the process of creating temporary
position arrays in a few places.
The design clarity that "positions are just another attribute" brings
allows removing explicit copying of vertices in some procedural
operations-- they are just processed like most other attributes.
**Performance**
This touches so many areas that it's hard to benchmark exhaustively,
but I observed some areas as examples.
* The mesh line node with 4 million count was 1.5x (8ms to 12ms) faster.
* The Spring splash screen went from ~4.3 to ~4.5 fps.
* The subdivision surface modifier/node was slightly faster
RNA access through Python may be slightly slower, since now we need
a name lookup instead of just a custom data type lookup for each index.
**Future Improvements**
* Remove uses of "vert_coords" functions:
* `BKE_mesh_vert_coords_alloc`
* `BKE_mesh_vert_coords_get`
* `BKE_mesh_vert_coords_apply{_with_mat4}`
* Remove more hidden copying of positions
* General simplification now possible in many areas
* Convert more code to C++ to use `float3` instead of `float[3]`
* Currently `reinterpret_cast` is used for those C-API functions
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D15982
This is the conventional way of dealing with unused arguments in C++,
since it works on all compilers.
Regex find and replace: `UNUSED\((\w+)\)` -> `/*$1*/`
Using the attribute name semantics from T97452, this patch moves the
selection status of mesh elements from the `SELECT` of vertices, and
edges, and the `ME_FACE_SEL` of faces to generic boolean attribute
Storing this data as generic attributes can significantly simplify and
improve code, as described in T95965.
The attributes are called `.select_vert`, `.select_edge`, and
`.select_poly`. The `.` prefix means they are "UI attributes",so they
still contain original data edited by users, but they aren't meant to
be accessed procedurally by the user in arbitrary situations. They are
also be hidden in the spreadsheet and the attribute list.
Until 4.0, the attributes are still written to and read from the mesh
in the old way, so neither forward nor backward compatibility are
affected. This means memory requirements will be increased by one byte
per element when selection is used. When the flags are removed
completely, requirements will decrease.
Further notes:
* The `MVert` flag is empty at runtime now, so it can be ignored.
* `BMesh` is unchanged, otherwise the change would be much larger.
* Many tests have slightly different results, since the selection
attribute uses more generic propagation. Previously you couldn't
really rely on edit mode selections being propagated procedurally.
Now it mostly works as expected.
Similar to 2480b55f21
Ref T95965
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D15795
Replace `mesh_attributes`, `mesh_attributes_for_write` and the point
cloud versions with methods on the `Mesh` and `PointCloud` types.
This makes them friendlier to use and improves readability.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D15907
Use `verts` instead of `vertices` and `polys` instead of `polygons`
in the API added in 05952aa94d. This aligns better with
existing naming where the shorter names are much more common.
For copy-on-write, we want to share attribute arrays between meshes
where possible. Mutable pointers like `Mesh.mvert` make that difficult
by making ownership vague. They also make code more complex by adding
redundancy.
The simplest solution is just removing them and retrieving layers from
`CustomData` as needed. Similar changes have already been applied to
curves and point clouds (e9f82d3dc7, 410a6efb74). Removing use of
the pointers generally makes code more obvious and more reusable.
Mesh data is now accessed with a C++ API (`Mesh::edges()` or
`Mesh::edges_for_write()`), and a C API (`BKE_mesh_edges(mesh)`).
The CoW changes this commit makes possible are described in T95845
and T95842, and started in D14139 and D14140. The change also simplifies
the ongoing mesh struct-of-array refactors from T95965.
**RNA/Python Access Performance**
Theoretically, accessing mesh elements with the RNA API may become
slower, since the layer needs to be found on every random access.
However, overhead is already high enough that this doesn't make a
noticible differenc, and performance is actually improved in some
cases. Random access can be up to 10% faster, but other situations
might be a bit slower. Generally using `foreach_get/set` are the best
way to improve performance. See the differential revision for more
discussion about Python performance.
Cycles has been updated to use raw pointers and the internal Blender
mesh types, mostly because there is no sense in having this overhead
when it's already compiled with Blender. In my tests this roughly
halves the Cycles mesh creation time (0.19s to 0.10s for a 1 million
face grid).
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D15488
This commit moves the hide status of mesh vertices, edges, and faces
from the `ME_FLAG` to optional generic boolean attributes. Storing this
data as generic attributes can significantly simplify and improve code,
as described in T95965.
The attributes are called `.hide_vert`, `.hide_edge`, and `.hide_poly`,
using the attribute name semantics discussed in T97452. The `.` prefix
means they are "UI attributes", so they still contain original data
edited by users, but they aren't meant to be accessed procedurally by
the user in arbitrary situations. They are also be hidden in the
spreadsheet and the attribute list by default,
Until 4.0, the attributes are still written to and read from the mesh
in the old way, so neither forward nor backward compatibility are
affected. This means memory requirements will be increased by one byte
per element when the hide status is used. When the flags are removed
completely, requirements will decrease when hiding is unused.
Further notes:
* Some code can be further simplified to skip some processing when the
hide attributes don't exist.
* The data is still stored in flags for `BMesh`, necessitating some
complexity in the conversion to and from `Mesh`.
* Access to the "hide" property of mesh elements in RNA is slower.
The separate boolean arrays should be used where possible.
Ref T95965
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D14685
