Compound shape control
======================
1) GUI control
It is now possible to control which child shape is added to
a parent compound shape in the Physics buttons. The "Compound"
shape button becomes "Add to parent" on child objects and
determines whether the child shape is to be added to the top
parent compound shape when the game is stated.
Notes: * "Compound" is only available to top parent objects
(objects without parent).
* Nesting of compound shape is not possible: a child
object with "Add to parent" button set will be added
to the top parent compound shape, regardless of its
position in the parent-child hierarchy and even if its
immediate parent doesn't have the "Add to parent" button set.
2) runtime control
It is now possible to control the compound shape at runtime:
The SetParent actuator has a new "Compound" button that indicates
whether the object shape should be added to the compound shape
of the parent object, provided the parent has a compound shape
of course. If not, the object retain it's individual state
while parented.
Similarly, the KX_GameObject.setParent() python function has
a new compound parameter.
Notes: * When an object is dynamically added to a compound
shape, it looses temporarily all its physics capability
to the benefit of the parent: it cannot register collisions
and the characteristics of its shape are lost (ghost, sensor,
dynamic, etc.).
* Nested compound shape is not supported: if the object
being parented is already a compound shape, it is not
added to the compound parent (as if the Compound option
was not set in the actuator or the setParent function).
* To ensure compatibility with old blend files, the Blender
subversion is changed to 2.48.5 and the old blend files
are automatically converted to match the old behavior:
all children of a Compound object will have the "Add to
parent" button set automatically.
Child ghost control
===================
It is now possible to control if an object should becomes ghost
or solid when parented. This is only applicable if the object
is not added to the parent compound shape (see above).
A new "Ghost" button is available on the SetParent actuator to
that effect. Similarly the KX_GameObject.setParent() python function
has a new compound parameter.
Notes: * This option is not applicable to sensor objects: they stay
ghost all the time.
* Make sure the child object does not enter in collision with
the parent shape when the Ghost option if off and the parent is
dynamic: the collision creates a reaction force but the parent
cannot escape the child, so the force builds up and produces
eratic movements.
* The collision capability of an ordinary object (dynamic or static)
is limited when it is parented: it becomes automatically static
and can only detect dynamic and sensor objects.
* A sensor object retain its full collision capability when parented:
it can detect static and dynamic object.
Python control
==============
KX_GameObject.setParent(parent,compound,ghost):
Sets this object's parent.
Control the shape status with the optional compound and ghost parameters:
compound=1: the object shape should be added to the parent compound shape (default)
compound=0: the object should keep its individual shape.
In that case you can control if it should be ghost or not:
ghost=1 if the object should be made ghost while parented (default)
ghost=0 if the object should be solid while parented
Note: if the object type is sensor, it stays ghost regardless of ghost parameter
parent: KX_GameObject reference or string (object name w/o OB prefix)
use PY_SET_ATTR_FAIL and PY_SET_ATTR_SUCCESS return values so the fake subclassing can know if a value failed to be set or if it was missing from the type. (with PY_SET_ATTR_MISSING)
Also noticed some other mistakes.
- KX_LightObject, setting the type didnt check for an int.
- KX_SoundActuator, didnt return an error when assigning an invalid orientation value
- KX_GameObject, worldOrientation didnt return an error value.
http://www.graphicall.org/ftp/ideasman42/game_euler.png
- dont calculate handles for key added (it does them all at the end).
- was doing twice the number of curve lookup's per frame as was needed.
- test handles function that runs at the end was converting to ipo transformation values for no reason.
- when adding new curves set them to linear interpolation.
Servo control motion actuator did not work as expected when the object
is moving on a moving platform.
This patch introduces a new Ref field in the servo motion actuator
to set a reference object for the velocity calculation.
You can set the object during the game using the actuator "reference"
attribute; use an object name or an object reference.
The servo controller takes into account the angular velocity of the
reference object to compute the relative local velocity.
A new bookmark button is available on the controller UI.
When set, the controller is guaranteed to execute before all
other non-bookmarked controllers, provided it is scheduled
for execution.
This is useful for initialization scripts that run once at startup or
scripts that must set some prerequisite for the other controllers at
the start of each logic frame.
This feature is also available at python level with the "bookmark"
attribute. It can be changed during the game.
Note that if several script are bookmarked, their relative order of
execution is not guaranteed. Make sure they don't depend on each other.
A new type of "Sensor" physics object is available in the GE for advanced
collision management. It's called Sensor for its similarities with the
physics objects that underlie the Near and Radar sensors.
Like the Near and Radar object it is:
- static and ghost
- invisible by default
- always active to ensure correct collision detection
- capable of detecting both static and dynamic objects
- ignoring collision with their parent
- capable of broadphase filtering based on:
* Actor option: the collisioning object must have the Actor flag set to be detected
* property/material: as specified in the collision sensors attached to it
Broadphase filtering is important for performance reason: the collision points
will be computed only for the objects that pass the broahphase filter.
- automatically removed from the simulation when no collision sensor is active on it
Unlike the Near and Radar object it can:
- take any shape, including triangle mesh
- be made visible for debugging (just use the Visible actuator)
- have multiple collision sensors using it
Other than that, the sensor objects are ordinary objects. You can move them
freely or parent them. When parented to a dynamic object, they can provide
advanced collision control to this object.
The type of collision capability depends on the shape:
- box, sphere, cylinder, cone, convex hull provide volume detection.
- triangle mesh provides surface detection but you can give some volume
to the suface by increasing the margin in the Advanced Settings panel.
The margin applies on both sides of the surface.
Performance tip:
- Sensor objects perform better than Near and Radar: they do less synchronizations
because of the Scenegraph optimizations and they can have multiple collision sensors
on them (with different property filtering for example).
- Always prefer simple shape (box, sphere) to complex shape whenever possible.
- Always use broadphase filtering (avoid collision sensor with empty propery/material)
- Use collision sensor only when you need them. When no collision sensor is active
on the sensor object, it is removed from the simulation and consume no CPU.
Known limitations:
- When running Blender in debug mode, you will see one warning line of the console:
"warning btCollisionDispatcher::needsCollision: static-static collision!"
In release mode this message is not printed.
- Collision margin has no effect on sphere, cone and cylinder shape.
Other performance improvements:
- Remove unnecessary interpolation for Near and Radar objects and by extension
sensor objects.
- Use direct matrix copy instead of quaternion to synchronize orientation.
Other bug fix:
- Fix Near/Radar position error on newly activated objects. This was causing
several detection problems in YoFrankie
- Fix margin not passed correctly to gImpact shape.
- Disable force/velocity actions on static objects
This commit completes the support for modifiers in the BGE.
- The physic shape is generated according to the derived mesh.
This is true for all types of shapes and all types of
objects except soft body.
- Optimization for static derived mesh (mesh with modifiers
but no armature and no shape keys). Replicas will share
the derived mesh and the display list: less memory and
faster rendering. With this optimization, the static
derived mesh will render as fast as if the modifiers were
applied.
Known Limits:
- Sharing of mesh and display list is only possible between
in-game replicas or dupligroup. If you want to instantiate
multiple objects with modifiers, use dupligroup to ensure
best memory and GPU utilization.
- rayCast() will interact with the derived mesh as follow:
Hit position and hit normal are the real values according
to the derived mesh but the KX_PolyProxy object refers to
the original mesh. You should use it only to retrieve the
material.
- Dynamic derived mesh have very poor performance:
They use direct openGL calls for rendering (no support
for display list and vertex array) and they dont't share
the derived mesh memory. Always apply modifiers on dynamic
mesh for best performance.
- Time dependent modifiers are not supported.
- Modifiers are not supported for Bullet soft body.
This commit extends the technique of dynamic linked list to the logic
system to eliminate as much as possible temporaries, map lookup or
full scan. The logic engine is now free of memory allocation, which is
an important stability factor.
The overhead of the logic system is reduced by a factor between 3 and 6
depending on the logic setup. This is the speed-up you can expect on
a logic setup using simple bricks. Heavy bricks like python controllers
and ray sensors will still take about the same time to execute so the
speed up will be less important.
The core of the logic engine has been much reworked but the functionality
is still the same except for one thing: the priority system on the
execution of controllers. The exact same remark applies to actuators but
I'll explain for controllers only:
Previously, it was possible, with the "executePriority" attribute to set
a controller to run before any other controllers in the game. Other than
that, the sequential execution of controllers, as defined in Blender was
guaranteed by default.
With the new system, the sequential execution of controllers is still
guaranteed but only within the controllers of one object. the user can
no longer set a controller to run before any other controllers in the
game. The "executePriority" attribute controls the execution of controllers
within one object. The priority is a small number starting from 0 for the
first controller and incrementing for each controller.
If this missing feature is a must, a special method can be implemented
to set a controller to run before all other controllers.
Other improvements:
- Systematic use of reference in parameter passing to avoid unnecessary data copy
- Use pre increment in iterator instead of post increment to avoid temporary allocation
- Use const char* instead of STR_String whenever possible to avoid temporary allocation
- Fix reference counting bugs (memory leak)
- Fix a crash in certain cases of state switching and object deletion
- Minor speed up in property sensor
- Removal of objects during the game is a lot faster
1) Remove WITH_FREETYPE2 from code, so now blender always need freetype2
2) Remove the old bmfont
3) Remove ftfont and bFTGL library
4) Implement a new BLF_draw_default function for place that still need/use
the old BMF api.
I try to update both, scons and cmake, but I only can test with make, so
hope all work fine.
MSVC is broken, but I don't have Windows, things to search and fix are
any reference to WITH_FREETYPE2, FTGL and BMFONT (take in care that
blenkernel also have a BKE_bmfont.h, this don't have anything to do with bmfont).
Always have to link/include the freetype2 library
Remove any reference to libbmfont
Remove any reference to libftfont
Remove any reference to libbftgl (or libbFTGL)
When enabled, this option converts any positive trigger from the sensor
into a pair of positive+negative trigger, with the negative trigger sent
in the next frame. The negative trigger from the sensor are not passed
to the controller as the option automatically generates the negative triggers.
From the controller point of view, the sensor is positive only for 1 frame,
even if the underlying sensor state remains positive.
The option interacts with the other sensor option in this way:
- Level option: tap option is mutually exclusive with level option. Both
cannot be enabled at the same time.
- Invert option: tap option operates on the negative trigger of the
sensor, which are converted to positive trigger by the invert option.
Hence, the controller will see the sensor positive for 1 frame when
the underlying sensor state turns negative.
- Positive pulse option: tap option adds a negative trigger after each
repeated positive pulse, unless the frequency option is 0, in which case
positive pulse are generated on every frame as before, as long as the
underlying sensor state is positive.
- Negative pulse option: this option is not compatible with tap option
and is ignored when tap option is enabled.
Notes:
- Keyboard "All keys" is handled specially when tap option is set:
There will be one pair of positive/negative trigger for each new
key press, regardless on how many keys are already pressed and there
is no trigger when keys are released, regardless if keys are still
pressed.
In case two keys are pressed in succesive frames, there will
be 2 positive triggers and 1 negative trigger in the following frame.
Use dynamic linked list to handle scenegraph rather than dumb scan
of the whole tree. The performance improvement depends on the fraction
of moving objects. If most objects are static, the speed up is
considerable. The following table compares the time spent on
scenegraph before and after this commit on a scene with 10000 objects
in various configuratons:
Scenegraph time (ms) Before After
(includes culling)
All objects static, 8.8 1.7
all visible but small fraction
in the view frustrum
All objects static, 7,5 0.01
all invisible.
All objects moving, 14.1 8.4
all visible but small fraction
in the view frustrum
This tables shows that static and invisible objects take no CPU at all
for scenegraph and culling. In the general case, this commit will
speed up the scenegraph between 2x and 5x. Compared to 2.48a, it should
be between 4x and 10x faster. Further speed up is possible by making
the scenegraph cache-friendly.
Next round of performance improvement will be on the rasterizer: use
the same dynamic linked list technique for the mesh slots.
Option to run a function in a module rather then a script from a python controller, this has a number of advantages.
- No allocating and freeing the namespace dictionary for every time its triggered
(hard to measure the overhead here, but in a test with calling 42240 scripts a second each defining 200 vars, using modules was ~25% faster)
- Ability to use external python scripts for game logic.
- Convenient debug option that lets you edit scripts while the game engine runs.
PyObjectPlus::ProcessReplica() is now called when any of its subclasses are replicated.
This is important because PyObjectPlus::ProcessReplica() NULL's the 'm_proxy' python pointer I added recently.
Without this a replicated subclass of PyObjectPlus could have an invalid pointer (crashing the BGE).
This change also means CValue::AddDataToReplica() can be moved into CValue::ProcessReplica() since ProcessReplica is always called.
Some functions used
ProcessReplica(replica);
others
replica->ProcessReplica()
Use the second method everywhere so the PyObjectPlus's ProcessReplica() can be called from its subclasses.
Note that PyObjectPlus's ProcessReplica isnt used yet.
Realtime modifiers applied on mesh objects will be supported in
the game engine with the following limitations:
- Only real time modifiers are supported (basically all of them!)
- Virtual modifiers resulting from parenting are not supported:
armature, curve, lattice. You can still use these modifiers
(armature is really not recommended) but in non parent mode.
The BGE has it's own parenting capability for armature.
- Modifiers are computed on the host (using blender modifier
stack).
- Modifiers are statically evaluated: any possible time dependency
in the modifiers is not supported (don't know enough about
modifiers to be more specific).
- Modifiers are reevaluated if the underlying mesh is deformed
due to shape action or armature action. Beware that this is
very CPU intensive; modifiers should really be used for static
objects only.
- Physics is still based on the original mesh: if you have a
mirror modifier, the physic shape will be limited to one half
of the resulting object. Therefore, the modifiers should
preferably be used on graphic objects.
- Scripts have no access to the modified mesh.
- Modifiers that are based on objects interaction (boolean,..)
will not be dependent on the objects position in the GE.
What you see in the 3D view is what you get in the GE regardless
on the object position, velocity, etc.
Besides that, the feature is compatible with all the BGE features
that affect meshes: armature action, shape action, relace mesh,
VideoTexture, add object, dupligroup.
Known problems:
- This feature is a bit hacky: the BGE uses the derived mesh draw
functions to display the object. This drawing method is a
bit slow and is not 100% compatible with the BGE. There may
be some problems in multi-texture mode: the multi-texture
coordinates are not sent to the GPU.
Texface and GLSL on the other hand should be fully supported.
- Culling is still based on the extend of the original mesh.
If you have a modifer that extends the size of the mesh,
the object may disappear while still in the view frustrum.
- Derived mesh is not shared between replicas.
The derived mesh is allocated and computed for each object
with modifiers, regardless if they are static replicas.
- Display list are not created on objects with modifiers.
I should be able to fix the above problems before release.
However, the feature is already useful for game development.
Once you are ready to release the game, you can apply the modifiers
to get back display list support and mesh sharing capability.
MSVC, scons, Cmake, makefile updated.
Enjoy
/benoit
Separate getting a normal attribute and getting __dict__, was having to do too a check for __dict__ on each class (multiple times per getattro call from python) when its not used that often.
- More verbose error messages.
- BL_Shader wasnt setting error messages on some errors
- FilterNormal depth attribute was checking for float which is bad because scripts often expect ints assigned to float attributes.
- Added a check to PyVecTo for a tuple rather then always using a generic python sequence. On my system this is over 2x faster with an optmized build.
- comments to PyObjectPlus.h
- remove unused/commented junk.
- renamed PyDestructor to py_base_dealloc for consistency
- all the PyTypeObject's were still using the sizeof() their class, can use sizeof(PyObjectPlus_Proxy) now which is smaller too.
This changes how the BGE classes and Python work together, which hasnt changed since blender went opensource.
The main difference is PyObjectPlus - the base class for most game engine classes, no longer inherit from PyObject, and cannot be cast to a PyObject.
This has the advantage that the BGE does not have to keep 2 reference counts valid for C++ and Python.
Previously C++ classes would never be freed while python held a reference, however this reference could be problematic eg: a GameObject that isnt in a scene anymore should not be used by python, doing so could even crash blender in some cases.
Instead PyObjectPlus has a member "PyObject *m_proxy" which is lazily initialized when python needs it. m_proxy reference counts are managed by python, though it should never be freed while the C++ class exists since it holds a reference to avoid making and freeing it all the time.
When the C++ class is free'd it sets the m_proxy reference to NULL, If python accesses this variable it will raise a RuntimeError, (check the isValid attribute to see if its valid without raising an error).
- This replaces the m_zombie bool and IsZombie() tests added recently.
In python return values that used to be..
return value->AddRef();
Are now
return value->GetProxy();
or...
return value->NewProxy(true); // true means python owns this C++ value which will be deleted when the PyObject is freed
Hiding faces is a editing option like selection and should not change rendering, it wasn't even working right because meshes without UVs ignored it.
I thought this was needed for compatibility with old files but just noticed this messes up 2 of the files in demos-2.42.zip
- fix for multiple viewpors broke single viewport (both work now)
- python could get uninitialized values from m_prevTargetPoint and m_prevSourcePoint
- getting the RayDirection for python could crash blender trying to normalize a zero length vector.
- added python attributes
- removed unused canvas from the MouseFocusSensor class
Clamp objects min/max velocity.
Accessed with bullet physics from the advanced button with dynamic and rigid body objects.
- useful for preventing unstable physics in cases where objects move too fast.
- can add linear velocity with the motion actuator to give smooth motion transitions, without moving too fast.
- minimum velocity means objects don't stop moving.
- python scripts can adjust these values speedup or throttle velocity in the existing direction.
Also made copy properties from an object with no properties work (in case you want to clear all props)
