The existing Volume export, which already supports VDB file sequences
and static volumes created inside Blender, is now extended to handle
dynamically created and modified volumes. This allows scenarios where a
Volume Displace modifier is placed over-top an existing VDB sequence or
when Geometry Nodes is used to create animated volumes procedurally.
Detection of what counts as animation is simplistic and mimics what has
been used for Meshes. Essentially if there are any modifiers on the
volume we assume that the volume is "varying" in some way. This can lead
to situations where new volume files are written unnecessarily.
Volume import was also adjusted to correctly set the sequence "offset"
value. This is required to properly handle the case when a VDB sequence
begins animating at a different frame than what's implied by the file
name. For example, a VDB file sequence with file names containing 14-19
but the user wants to animate on frames 8-13 instead.
Tests are added which cover:
- Animated VDB file sequences
- Animated Mesh To Volume where the mesh has been animated
- Animated Volume Displacement where displacement settings are animated
- Animated Volumes created with a Geometry Nodes simulation
----
New test data has been checked in: `tests/data/usd/usd_volumes.blend` and files inside `tests/data/usd/volume-data/`
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/128907
This PR fixes a latent issue arising from invalid use of `accept_any_intersection(true)` when performing SSS ray-stepping with MetalRT. The comment incorrectly states that "we can optimize and accept the first hit", but to guarantee correct behaviour in future we need to request the closest hit.
This commit takes the 'Slotted Actions' out of the experimental phase.
As a result:
- All newly created Actions will be slotted Actions.
- Legacy Actions loaded from disk will be versioned to slotted Actions.
- The new Python API for slots, layers, strips, and channel bags is
available.
- The legacy Python API for accessing F-Curves and Action Groups is
still available, and will operate on the F-Curves/Groups for the first
slot only.
- Creating an Action by keying (via the UI, operators, or the
`rna_struct.keyframe_insert` function) will try and share Actions
between related data-blocks. See !126655 for more info about this.
- Assigning an Action to a data-block will auto-assign a suitable Action
Slot. The logic for this is described below. However, There are cases
where this does _not_ automatically assign a slot, and thus the Action
will effectively _not_ animate the data-block. Effort has been spent
to make Action selection work both reliably for Blender users as well
as keep the behaviour the same for Python scripts. Where these two
goals did not converge, reliability and understandability for users
was prioritised.
Auto-selection of the Action Slot upon assigning the Action works as
follows. The first rule to find a slot wins.
1. The data-block remembers the slot name that was last assigned. If the
newly assigned Action has a slot with that name, it is chosen.
2. If the Action has a slot with the same name as the data-block, it is
chosen.
3. If the Action has only one slot, and it has never been assigned to
anything, it is chosen.
4. If the Action is assigned to an NLA strip or an Action constraint,
and the Action has a single slot, and that slot has a suitable ID
type, it is chosen.
This last step is what I was referring to with "Where these two goals
did not converge, reliability and understandability for users was
prioritised." For regular Action assignments (like via the Action
selectors in the Properties editor) this rule doesn't apply, even though
with legacy Actions the final state ("it is animated by this Action")
differs from the final state with slotted Actions ("it has no slot so is
not animated"). This is done to support the following workflow:
- Create an Action by animating Cube.
- In order to animate Suzanne with that same Action, assign the Action
to Suzanne.
- Start keying Suzanne. This auto-creates and auto-assigns a new slot
for Suzanne.
If rule 4. above would apply in this case, the 2nd step would
automatically select the Cube slot for Suzanne as well, which would
immediately overwrite Suzanne's properties with the Cube animation.
Technically, this commit:
- removes the `WITH_ANIM_BAKLAVA` build flag,
- removes the `use_animation_baklava` experimental flag in preferences,
- updates the code to properly deal with the fact that empty Actions are
now always considered slotted/layered Actions (instead of that relying
on the user preference).
Note that 'slotted Actions' and 'layered Actions' are the exact same
thing, just focusing on different aspects (slot & layers) of the new
data model.
The "Baklava phase 1" assumptions are still asserted. This means that:
- an Action can have zero or one layer,
- that layer can have zero or one strip,
- that strip must be of type 'keyframe' and be infinite with zero
offset.
The code to handle legacy Actions is NOT removed in this commit. It will
be removed later. For now it's likely better to keep it around as
reference to the old behaviour in order to aid in some inevitable
bugfixing.
Ref: #120406
Like with NLA strips, Action assignment on Action Constraints needs to
have an extra step (compared to regular assignment to animated
data-blocks).
For the Action Constraint, the auto slot selection gets one more
fallback option (compared to the generic code). This is to support the
following scenario, which used to be necessary as a workaround for a bug
in Blender (#127976):
- Python script creates an Action,
- assigns it to the animated object,
- unassigns it from that object,
- and assigns it to the object's Action Constraint.
The generic code doesn't work for this. The first assignment would see
the slot `XXSlot`, and because it has never been used, just use it. This
would change its name to `OBSlot`. The assignment to the Action
Constraint would not see a 'virgin' slot, and thus not auto-select
`OBSlot`. This behaviour makes sense when assigning Actions in the
Action editor (it shouldn't automatically pick the first slot of
matching ID type), but for the Action Constraint I (Sybren) feel that it
could be a bit more 'enthousiastic' in auto-picking a slot.
Note that this is the same behaviour as for NLA strips, albeit for a
slightly different reason. Because of that it's not sharing code with
the NLA.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/128892
When creating a new NLA strip for an action, as well as when setting
`strip.action` via RNA, use the generic action-assignment code. This
ensures that the slot selection follows the same logic as other Action
assignments.
If the generic slot selection doesn't find a suitable slot, and there is
a single slot on that Action of a suitable ID type, always assign it.
This is to support the following scenario:
- Python script creates an Action and adds F-Curves via the legacy API.
- This creates a slot 'XXSlot'.
- The script creates multiple NLA strips for that Action.
- The desired result is that these strips get the same Slot assigned as
well.
The generic code doesn't work for this, because:
- The first strip assignment would see the slot `XXSlot` (`XX`
indicating "not bound to any ID type yet"). Because that slot has
never been used, it will be assigned (which is good). This assignment
would change its name to, for example, `OBSlot`.
- The second strip assignment would not see a 'virgin' slot, and thus
not auto-select `OBSlot`. This behaviour makes sense when assigning
Actions in the Action editor (assigning an Action that already
animates 'Cube' to 'Suzanne' should not assign the 'OBCube' slot to
Suzanne), but for the NLA I feel that it could be a bit more
'enthousiastic' in auto-picking a slot to support the above case.
This is preparation for the removal of the 'Slotted Actions'
experimental flag, and getting the new code to run as compatibly as
possible with the legacy code.
The return value of `animrig::nla::assign_action()` has changed a bit.
It used to indicate whether a slot was auto-selected; it now indicates
whether the Action assignment was successful. Whether a slot was
assigned or not can be seen at `strip.action_slot`.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/128892
Cycle-aware keying on slotted Actions now works the same as on legacy
Actions. In the future this will be improved, but for now it's good enough
to have the same behaviour as before.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/128892
A new parameter, topology influence, is added that causes the
join_triangles operator to prioritize edge joins that create quads with
sensible geometry relative to existing quads, instead of selecting the
'flattest' and 'squarest' next pair and then leaving leftover triangles
with no partners to merge with.
This produces its best results with the face and shape thresholds set to
180 degrees (no hard limits as a restriction against merging) and
topology influence somewhere between 100-130%, depending on the mesh.
Too low and many parallelograms and triangles are left, too high and the
algorithm tries too hard and starts making errors.
Note that both quads already present in the selection, as well as the
quads that are generated during the operator, will influence the
topology around them. This allows the modeler to manually merge a few
quads in key areas of the mesh, as a hint to the algorithm, indicating
what result they way they want to see, and the algorithm will then take
those quads into account and try to build around them according to the
modeler's guidance.
A new checkbox to leave only the remaining triangles selected has also
been added. This helps users visualize what remains to be fixed.
Ref !128610
EXR DWAA and DWAB are conceptually similar to lossy JPG compression,
with a tunable file size vs image quality parameter. However, previously
Blender always used the fixed default setting, which is kinda similar
to very high quality (like 97) for JPG.
Internally EXR DWA/DWB quality parameter is inverted scale, i.e. 0 is
best/lossless quality, and increased setting value means decreased
quality. However the rest of Blender UI uses 1-100 JPG-like quality
scale, where values above 90 are "visually lossless", 100 is lossless,
and going below something like 50 would be visually quite lossy. So map
that to internal DWA setting:
- blender 100 -> DWA 0
- blender 97 -> DWA 45
The rest is linear relation based on those two points.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/128790
Instead of running the ComplianceChecker during just one test, run it
for every export test. A common `export_and_validate` local function is
used in all relevant locations now.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/128513
This adds feature parity with Cycles regarding light and shadow liking.
Technically, this extends the GBuffer header to 32 bits, and uses
the top bits to store the object's light set membership index.
The same index is also added to `ObjectInfo` in place of padding bytes.
For shadow linking, the shadow blocker sets bitmask is stored per
tilemap. It is then used during the GPU culling phase to cull objects
that do not belong to the shadow's sets.
Co-authored-by: Clément Foucault <foucault.clem@gmail.com>
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/127514
When using the `create_collection` parameter during import, the newly
created Collection would be assigned a fake user which isn't necessary
and caused the user count to be 2 instead of the more natural 1 here.
Remove the fake user and add test coverage for the scenario in general.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/128348
Avoid running a Python unit test for layered Actions in non-experimental
builds.
Due to a misunderstanding, enabling the user preference for the 'Slotted
Actions' experimental feature is still possible on release builds, which
caused this test to fail on non-experimental builds (because it's
intentionally missing a chunk of experimental code).
No functional changes to Blender itself.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/128483
This does the following changes:
* Show info "warnings" in modifier too. Previously those were skipped. The
different behavior of info/warning/error messages causes confusion.
* Add a new `Warnings` panel that only shows when there are warnings. In its
title, it shows how many warnings there are.
* In the panel, warnings are sorted by severity and alphabetically.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/128395
Add support for `rna_struct.keyframe_insert(…, group="name")` parameter,
when inserting keys into a layered Action.
This simply was never implemented, and the default channel group name
was always used.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/128383
