For realtime use cases, storing the geometry's state in memory at every
frame can be prohibitively expensive. This commit adds an option to
disable the caching, stored per object and accessible in the baking
panel. The default is still to enable caching.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/107767
Avoid storing redundant and unnecessary data in temporary arrays during
face corner normal calculation with custom normals. Previously we used
96 bytes per normal space (`MLoopNorSpace` (64), `MLoopNorSpace *` (8),
`LinkData` (24)), now we use 36 (`CornerNormalSpace` (32), `int` (4)).
This is achieved with a few changes:
- Avoid sharing the data storage with the BMesh implementation
- Use indices to refer to normal fan spaces rather than pointers
- Only calculate indices of all corners in each fan when necessary
- Don't duplicate automatic normal in space storage
- Avoid storing redundant flags in space struct
Reducing memory usage gives a significant performance improvement in
my test files, which is consistent with findings from previous commits
(see 9fcfba4aae). In my test, the time used to calculate
normals for a character model with 196 thousand faces reduced from
20.2 ms to 14.0 ms, a 44% improvement.
Edit mode isn't affected by this change.
A note about the `reverse_index_array` function added here: this is the
same as the mesh mapping functions (for example for mapping from
vertices to face corners). I'm planning on working this area and hoping
to generalize/reuse the implementation in the near future.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/107592
The main goal here is to reduce the number of times thread-local data has
to be looked up using e.g. `EnumerableThreadSpecific.local()`. While this
isn't a bottleneck in many cases, it is when the action performed on the local
data is very short and that happens very often (e.g. logging used sockets
during geometry nodes evaluation).
The solution is to simply pass the thread-local data as parameter to many
functions that use it, instead of looking it up in those functions which
generally is more costly.
The lazy-function graph executor now only looks up the local data if
it knows that it might be on a new thread, otherwise it uses the local data
retrieved earlier.
Alongside with `UserData` there is `LocalUserData` now. This allows users
of the lazy-function evaluation (such as geometry nodes) to have custom
thread-local data that is passed to all the lazy-functions automatically.
This is used for logging now.
The maximum delta time is still capped to one frame even if multiple
frames are skipped. Passing in a too large delta time is mostly unexpected
and can reduce the stability of the simulation. Also it can be very slow
when the simulation uses the delta time to determine e.g. how many particles
should be added.
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
The simulation cache is allocated lazily during evaluation when the
depsgraph is active. However, during rendering, the depsgraph is not
active, so it's not created.
This adds support for building simulations with geometry nodes. A new
`Simulation Input` and `Simulation Output` node allow maintaining a
simulation state across multiple frames. Together these two nodes form
a `simulation zone` which contains all the nodes that update the simulation
state from one frame to the next.
A new simulation zone can be added via the menu
(`Simulation > Simulation Zone`) or with the node add search.
The simulation state contains a geometry by default. However, it is possible
to add multiple geometry sockets as well as other socket types. Currently,
field inputs are evaluated and stored for the preceding geometry socket in
the order that the sockets are shown. Simulation state items can be added
by linking one of the empty sockets to something else. In the sidebar, there
is a new panel that allows adding, removing and reordering these sockets.
The simulation nodes behave as follows:
* On the first frame, the inputs of the `Simulation Input` node are evaluated
to initialize the simulation state. In later frames these sockets are not
evaluated anymore. The `Delta Time` at the first frame is zero, but the
simulation zone is still evaluated.
* On every next frame, the `Simulation Input` node outputs the simulation
state of the previous frame. Nodes in the simulation zone can edit that
data in arbitrary ways, also taking into account the `Delta Time`. The new
simulation state has to be passed to the `Simulation Output` node where it
is cached and forwarded.
* On a frame that is already cached or baked, the nodes in the simulation
zone are not evaluated, because the `Simulation Output` node can return
the previously cached data directly.
It is not allowed to connect sockets from inside the simulation zone to the
outside without going through the `Simulation Output` node. This is a necessary
restriction to make caching and sub-frame interpolation work. Links can go into
the simulation zone without problems though.
Anonymous attributes are not propagated by the simulation nodes unless they
are explicitly stored in the simulation state. This is unfortunate, but
currently there is no practical and reliable alternative. The core problem
is detecting which anonymous attributes will be required for the simulation
and afterwards. While we can detect this for the current evaluation, we can't
look into the future in time to see what data will be necessary. We intend to
make it easier to explicitly pass data through a simulation in the future,
even if the simulation is in a nested node group.
There is a new `Simulation Nodes` panel in the physics tab in the properties
editor. It allows baking all simulation zones on the selected objects. The
baking options are intentially kept at a minimum for this MVP. More features
for simulation baking as well as baking in general can be expected to be added
separately.
All baked data is stored on disk in a folder next to the .blend file. #106937
describes how baking is implemented in more detail. Volumes can not be baked
yet and materials are lost during baking for now. Packing the baked data into
the .blend file is not yet supported.
The timeline indicates which frames are currently cached, baked or cached but
invalidated by user-changes.
Simulation input and output nodes are internally linked together by their
`bNode.identifier` which stays the same even if the node name changes. They
are generally added and removed together. However, there are still cases where
"dangling" simulation nodes can be created currently. Those generally don't
cause harm, but would be nice to avoid this in more cases in the future.
Co-authored-by: Hans Goudey <h.goudey@me.com>
Co-authored-by: Lukas Tönne <lukas@blender.org>
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/104924
The length passed to IDP_NewString included the nil terminator
unlike IDP_AssignString. Callers to IDP_AssignString from MOD_nodes.cc
passed in an invalid size for e.g. There where also callers passing in
the strlen(..) of the value unnecessarily.
Resolve with the following changes:
- Add `*MaxSize()` versions of IDP_AssignString & IDP_NewString which
take a size argument.
- Remove the size argument from the existing functions as most callers
don't need to clamp the length of the string, avoid calculating &
passing in length values when they're unnecessary.
- When clamping the size is needed, both functions now include the nil
byte in the size since this is the convention for BLI_string and other
BLI API's dealing with nil terminated strings,
it avoids having to pass in `sizeof(value) - 1`.
These aren't propagated as attributes since interpolating them with the
generic rules often gives strange results, and they're intended to as
an optimization. Though theoretically it would be nice if this
copying became more generic in the future.
Currently `Mesh to Volume` creates a volume using
`openvdb::tools::meshToVolume` which is then filled with the specified
density and the class set to Fog Volume. This is wrong because
`meshToVolume` creates a signed distance field by default that needs
to be converted to a Fog Volume with `openvdb::tools::sdfToFogVolume`
to get a proper Fog volume.
Here is the description of what that function does (from OpenVDB):
"The active and negative-valued interior half of the narrow band
becomes a linear ramp from 0 to 1; the inactive interior becomes
active with a constant value of 1; and the exterior, including the
background and the active exterior half of the narrow band, becomes
inactive with a constant value of 0. The interior, though active,
remains sparse."
This means with this commit old files will not look the same.
There is no way to version this as the options for external band width
and not filling the volume is removed (they don't make any sense for a
proper fog volume).
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/107279
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
- "Lens" can be a transparent object used in cameras, or specifically
its property of focal length
- "Empty" can be an adjective meaning void, or an object type. The
latter is already disambiguated using `ID_ID`
- "New" and "Old" are adjectives that can have agreements in some
languages
- "Modified" is an adjective that can have agreement in some languages
- "Clipping" can be a property of a camera, or a behavior of the
mirror modifier
- "Value" in HSV nodes, see #105113
- "Area" in the Face Area geometry node, can mean a measurement or a
window type
- "New" is an adjective that can have agreement
- "Tab" can be a UI element or a whitespace character
- "Volume" can mean a measurement or an object type. The latter is
already disambiguated using `ID_ID`
These changes introduce the new `BLT_I18NCONTEXT_TIME` translation
context.
They also remove `BLT_I18NCONTEXT_VIRTUAL_REALITY`, which I added at
one point but then couldn't find which messages I wanted to fix with
it.
Ref #43295
Pull Request: #106718
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
For some reason, lattice modifier always depend on self object transform.
This fix just move extra dependencies in to if case statement, also some
cleaning of this code area.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/105293
The potential optimization in the normal edit modifier when flipping
faces isn't worth the "API impurity" and complexity introduced by
adding poly normal editing as part of the API. This change simplifies
future changes to the ownership of poly normals with a shared cache,
which can prevent recomputing poly normals completely.
Avoid introducing another `::modifiers` namespace for now, since it's
not clear if we'll want that long term. This just avoids a bunch of
boilerplate and makes things easier to read.
Use the node group and the properties as arguments instead of
the modifier. This may help to allow reusing the functions outside
of the modifier execution context.
It's a bit easier to follow this way, and we can make better use of
const. It's also more reusable in case we have to use it elsewhere
too (for node group operators?).
Use checks for certain node types with better algorithmic complexity.
They should perform better in some edge case with a lot of nodes or
node group nesting. They're now a bit more similar to each other too.
The goal is to solve confusion of the "All rights reserved" for licensing
code under an open-source license.
The phrase "All rights reserved" comes from a historical convention that
required this phrase for the copyright protection to apply. This convention
is no longer relevant.
However, even though the phrase has no meaning in establishing the copyright
it has not lost meaning in terms of licensing.
This change makes it so code under the Blender Foundation copyright does
not use "all rights reserved". This is also how the GPL license itself
states how to apply it to the source code:
<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>
This program is free software ...
This change does not change copyright notice in cases when the copyright
is dual (BF and an author), or just an author of the code. It also does
mot change copyright which is inherited from NaN Holding BV as it needs
some further investigation about what is the proper way to handle it.
For example
```
OIIOOutputDriver::~OIIOOutputDriver()
{
}
```
becomes
```
OIIOOutputDriver::~OIIOOutputDriver() {}
```
Saves quite some vertical space, which is especially handy for
constructors.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/105594
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
This allows adding spans, arrays, etc. directly to SculptSession, which
simplifies accessing mesh data, especially in #105938. A few files
aren't moved to C++ yes, so I had to add three C accessor functions.
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
Geometry Nodes: SDF Volume nodes milestone 1
Adds initial support for SDF volume creation and manipulation.
`SDF volume` is Blender's name of an OpenVDB grid of type Level Set.
See the discussion about naming in #91668.
The new nodes are:
- Mesh to SDF Volume: Converts a mesh to an SDF Volume
- Points to SDF Volume: Converts points to an SDF Volume
- Mean Filter SDF Volume: Applies a Mean Filter to an SDF
- Offset SDF Volume: Applies an offset to an SDF
- SDF Volume Sphere: Creates an SDF Volume in the shape of a sphere
For now an experimental option `New Volume Nodes` needs to be
enabled in Blender preferences for the nodes to be visible.
See the current work plan for Volume Nodes in #103248.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/105090
Change code fragments where `BKE_mesh_vert_coords_alloc` had been used
to temporarily copy vertex coordinates of a mesh (see #103789) and
providd pointers to the mesh's stored vertex positions instead.
This reduces memory usage and improves performance.
Pull Request: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/105756
