**** NEW: Group Nodes
Node trees usually become messy and confusing quickly, so we need
not only a way to collapse Nodes into single 'groups', but also a
way to re-use that data to create libraries of effects.
This has been done by making a new Library data type, the NodeTree.
Everything that has been grouped is stored here, and available for
re-use, appending or linking. These NodeTrees are fully generic,
i.e. can store shader trees, composit trees, and so on. The 'type'
value as stored in the NodeTree will keep track of internal type
definitions and execute/drawing callbacks. Needless to say, re-using
shader trees in a composit tree is a bit useless, and will be
prevented in the browsing code. :)
So; any NodeTree can become a "Goup Node" inside in a NodeTree. This
Group Node then works just like any Node.
To prevent the current code to become too complex, I've disabled
the possibility to insert Groups inside of Groups. That might be
enabled later, but is a real nasty piece of code to get OK.
Since Group Nodes are a dynamic Node type, a lot of work has been
done to ensure Node definitions can be dynamic too, but still allow
to be stored in files, and allow to be verified for type-definition
changes on reloading. This system needs a little bit maturing still,
so the Python gurus should better wait a little bit! (Also for me to
write the definite API docs for it).
What works now:
- Press CTRL+G to create a new Group. The grouping code checks for
impossible selections (like an unselected node between selected nodes).
Everthing that's selected then gets removed from the current tree, and
inserted in a new NodeTree library data block. A Group Node then is
added which links to this new NodeTree.
- Press ALT+G to ungroup. This will not delete the NodeTree library
data, but just duplicate the Group into the current tree.
- Press TAB, or click on the NodeTree icon to edit Groups. Note that
NodeTrees are instances, so editing one Group will also change the
other users.
This also means that when removing nodes in a Group (or hiding sockets
or changing internal links) this is immediately corrected for all users
of this Group, also in other Materials.
- While editing Groups, only the internal Nodes can be edited. A single
click outside of the Group boundary will close this 'edit mode'.
What needs to be done:
- SHIFT+A menu in toolbox style, also including a list of Groups
- Enable the single-user button in the Group Node
- Displaying all (visible) internal group UI elements in the Node Panel
- Enable Library linking and prevent editing of Groups then.
**** NEW: Socket Visibility control
Node types will be generated with a lot of possible inputs or outputs,
and drawing all sockets all the time isn't very useful then.
A new option in the Node header ('plus' icon) allows to either hide all
unused sockets (first keypress) or to reveil them (when there are hidden
sockets, the icon displays black, otherwise it's blended).
Hidden sockets in Nodes also are not exported to a Group, so this way
you can control what options (in/outputs) exactly are available.
To be done:
- a way to hide individual sockets, like with a RMB click on it.
**** NEW: Nodes now render!
This is still quite primitive, more on a level to replace the (now
obsolete and disabled) Material Layers.
What needs to be done:
- make the "Geometry" node work properly, also for AA textures
- make the Texture Node work (does very little at the moment)
- give Material Nodes all inputs as needed (like Map-to Panel)
- find a way to export more data from a Material Node, like the
shadow value, or light intensity only, etc
Very important also to separate from the Material Buttons the
"global" options, like "Ztransp" or "Wire" or "Halo". These can not
be set for each Material-Node individually.
Also note that the Preview Render (Buttons window) now renders a bit
differently. This was a horrid piece of antique code, using a totally
incompatible way of rendering. Target is to fully re-use internal
render code for previews.
OK... that's it mostly. Now test!
********* Node editor work:
- To enable Nodes for Materials, you have to set the "Use Nodes"
button, in the new Material buttons "Nodes" Panel or in header
of the Node editor. Doing this will disable Material-Layers.
- Nodes now execute materials ("shaders"), but still only using the
previewrender code.
- Nodes have (optional) previews for rendered images.
- Node headers allow to hide buttons and/or preview image
- Nodes can be dragged larger/smaller (right-bottom corner)
- Nodes can be hidden (minimized) with hotkey H
- CTRL+click on an Input Socket gives a popup with default values.
- Changing Material/Texture or Mix node will adjust Node title.
- Click-drag outside of a Node changes cursor to "Knife' and allows to
draw a rect where to cut Links.
- Added new node types RGBtoBW, Texture, In/Output, ColorRamp
- Material Nodes have options to ouput diffuse or specular, or to use
a negative normal. The input socket 'Normal' will force the material
to use that normal, otherwise it uses the normal from the Material
that has the node tree.
- When drawing a link between two not-matching sockets, Blender inserts
a converting node (now only for value/rgb combos)
- When drawing a link to an input socket that's already in use, the
old link will either disappear or flip to another unused socket.
- A click on a Material Node will activate it, and show all its settings
in the Material Buttons. Active Material Nodes draw the material icon
in red.
- A click on any node will show its options in the Node Panel in the
Material buttons.
- Multiple Output Nodes can be used, to sample contents of a tree, but
only one Output is the real one, which is indicated in a different
color and red material icon.
- Added ThemeColors for node types
- ALT+C will convert existing Material-Layers to Node... this currently
only adds the material/mix nodes and connects them. Dunno if this is
worth a lot of coding work to make perfect?
- Press C to call another "Solve order", which will show all possible
cyclic conflicts (if there are).
- Technical: nodes now use "Type" structs which define the
structure of nodes and in/output sockets. The Type structs store all
fixed info, callbacks, and allow to reconstruct saved Nodes to match
what is required by Blender.
- Defining (new) nodes now is as simple as filling in a fixed
Type struct, plus code some callbacks. A doc will be made!
- Node preview images are by default float
********* Icon drawing:
- Cleanup of how old icons were implemented in new system, making
them 16x16 too, correctly centered *and* scaled.
- Made drawing Icons use float coordinates
- Moved BIF_calcpreview_image() into interface_icons.c, renamed it
icon_from_image(). Removed a lot of unneeded Imbuf magic here! :)
- Skipped scaling and imbuf copying when icons are OK size
********* Preview render:
- Huge cleanup of code....
- renaming BIF_xxx calls that only were used internally
- BIF_previewrender() now accepts an argument for rendering method,
so it supports icons, buttonwindow previewrender and node editor
- Only a single BIF_preview_changed() call now exists, supporting all
signals as needed for buttos and node editor
********* More stuff:
- glutil.c, glaDrawPixelsSafe() and glaDrawPixelsTex() now accept format
argument for GL_FLOAT rects
- Made the ColorBand become a built-in button for interface.c
Was a load of cleanup work in buttons_shading.c...
- removed a load of unneeded glBlendFunc() calls
- Fixed bug in calculating text length for buttons (ancient!)
(As usual movies disappears after while)
Face example showing stress values on a blend. White is stretch, black
is squeeze
http://www.blender.org/bf/0001_0014.avi
Quick test with softbody stretch
http://www.blender.org/bf/0001_0100.avi
Based on the difference of the "Orco" (original undeformed coordinate)
and the actual render coordinate, a stress value is computed to make
textures react to stretching or wrinking skin.
The texture coordinate is neutral (0) on relaxed state. -1 is squeezed
to zero, +1 is stretched to infinity.
Note that scaling (object itself or parent) also will result in
stress values.
The reason for the huge commit is a cleanup in allocating memory for
the vertices. These were growing too large with new options, so now it
allocates the optional coordinates dynamically.
Saves about 20 MB memory per 1M vertices already. But best of all is that
I now can add much more fun... so tangents, here we come!
New diffuse shader, "Fresnel", which using existing fresnel formula.
Since it hilights edges (away from lamp), nice to fill darker parts with
the new layering system.
Weird stuff though;
http://www.blender.org/bf/0001_0040.avi
(Movie disappears in a couple of days!)
Note; for ray-shadow you need to use the Bias, to prevent 'terminator'
problems. I made that option default now.
(WIP, don't bugs for this in tracker yet please!)
- New Panel "Layers" in Material buttons, allows to add unlimited amount
of materials on top of each other.
- Every Layer is actually just another Material, which gets rendered/shaded
(including texture), and then added on top of previous layer with an
operation like Mix, Add, Mult, etc.
- Layers render fully independent, so bumpmaps are not passed on to next
layers.
- Per Layer you can set if it influences Diffuse, Specular or Alpha
- If a Material returns alpha (like from texture), the alpha value is
used for adding the layers too.
- New texture "Map To" channel allows to have a texture work on a Layer
- Each layer, including basis Material, can be turned on/off individually
Notes:
- at this moment, the full shading pass happens for each layer, including
shadow, AO and raytraced mirror or transparency...
- I had to remove old hacks from preview render, which corrected reflected
normals for preview texturing.
- still needs loadsa testing!
This means the diffuse and specular shaders don't use the normal
for hair (which is actually undefined, a hair is micro cylinder) but
it uses the tangent vector (vector in direction of hair).
For Diffuse, it computes a fake normal now, representing the optimal
hair normal pointing towards the light. All current builtin shaders
work with this, including ramps.
For Specular, it uses another formula to remap dot products for all
lines that now use the tangent vector instead of the normal:
dot = vector * tangent
dot = sqrt(1.0 - dot*dot)
Gives better results than using the 'fake' normal for diffuse. Officially
(according the papers) this could be used for diffuse too, but then hair
becomes very flat. Now you can control the flatness easily with ramps or
using Oren-Nayer for example.
Example image (disappears in some weeks)
http://www.blender.org/bf/rt9.jpg
- Added new texture channel "Strand" to apply textures on hairs over the
length of hair (1 dimensional). Orco now gives 1 fixed coordinate for
the entire hair, based on where it starts.
Note; UV doesn't work yet. Nor vertexcolor.
http://www.blender.org/bf/rt10.jpg
- AO and soft shadow AreaLight tables were generated without fixed seed,
causing animations to give unwanted amounts of noise.
- Made sure these tables now are calculated before render, with fixed seed
- Then found out the BLI_rand() has very bad seeding... it showed up as
patterns. After some experimenting, found a nice method using noise.c
hash tables. For compatibility with old code, named it BLI_srandom() to
use this next to the BLI_srand(). This follows libc rand() and random()
naming convention.
- Then of course threading should work... so made a BLI_thread_rand version
of the calls. Now supports up to 16 threads, comments added in .h and .c
Result is stable animation render with AO and soft shadow. But, please
test and feedback!
This will add Minneart diffuse and WardIso specular to our shader menu.
Minneart gives nice control over darkness/brightness areas, the wardIso
over 'plastic' style sharp or fuzzy specular.
Webpage is being made with nice samples. Will be in release log.
Jorge: one change is in the do_versions, you inserted it on wrong location.
- cancelled previous commit to add RE_findTFAce, instead just added
a MemArena to render struct... free'd at end of render, can be used
to store other data as well
- switch rendering to using DerivedMesh API... this is slightly more
inefficient now because it is doing some unnecessary copying. Can
be fixed by defining a DerivedMesh function to convert the object
into a render object (on todo list)
are owned by mesh (or displistmesh)... this causes problems for
adapting to systems that build tfaces on the fly. Added RE_findTFace
function to allow allocating tfaces inside renderer itself.
- removed reference in render.h (really bad, shouldn't include a platform
specific header so widely unless really necessary)
- added M_PI, M_PI_2, M_SQRT, M_SQRT_2 defines to BLI_arithb.h... this is
a better place as it is more the "standard" blender math header. left
in winstuff.h as well for the moment for simplicity
- other changes are patches to code so everything works ok with this
shuffling.
- removed ugly pointerhack from OSA render (negative indices denoted
pointers). this should solve memory errors when using >1.5 gig mem
- cleaned up usage of zbuffer values. These are signed in Blender, and
treated as unsigned all over, giving confusing code
- fixed incorrect gamma-adding for halos (caused in after xmas commit)
And bugfix #2101; wire render didn't give correct rendering for mist.
This caused by fact wires are 2D pixel lines, and not correctly filled
in faces. Retrieving the 3d coordinate while render cannot use a face-
equation then. Solved by retrieving 3D coordinate based on zbuffer value.
Still todo here: calculating correct texture coordinates for wire-edges
that are no faces.
Render:
- New; support for dual CPU render (SDL thread)
Currently only works with alternating scanlines, but gives excellent
performance. For both normal render as unified implemented.
Note the "mutex" locks on z-transp buffer render and imbuf loads.
- This has been made possible by major cleanups in render code, especially
getting rid of globals (example Tin Tr Tg Tb Ta for textures) or struct
OSA or using Materials or Texture data to write to.
- Made normal render fully 4x32 floats too, and removed all old optimizes
with chars or shorts.
- Made normal render and unified render use same code for sky and halo
render, giving equal (and better) results for halo render. Old render
now also uses PostProcess options (brightness, mul, gamma)
- Added option ("FBuf") in F10 Output Panel, this keeps a 4x32 bits buffer
after render. Using PostProcess menu you will note an immediate re-
display of image too (32 bits RGBA)
- Added "Hue" and "Saturation" sliders to PostProcess options
- Render module is still not having a "nice" API, but amount of dependencies
went down a lot. Next todo: remove abusive "previewrender" code.
The last main global in Render (struct Render) now can be re-used for fully
controlling a render, to allow multiple "instances" of render to open.
- Renderwindow now displays a smal bar on top with the stats, and keeps the
stats after render too. Including "spare" page support.
Not only easier visible that way, but also to remove the awkward code that
was drawing stats in the Info header (extreme slow on some ATIs too)
- Cleaned up blendef.h and BKE_utildefines.h, these two had overlapping
defines.
- I might have forgotten stuff... and will write a nice doc on the architecture!
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Ramp_Shaders.348.0.html
Material color and specular now can be defined by a Colorband. The actual
color then is defined during shading based on:
- shade value (like dotproduct)
- energy value (dot product plus light)
- normal
- result of all shading (useful for adding stuff in the end)
Special request from [A]ndy! :)
bytes for RGB.
This to allow very bright contrasted images to be used for AO as well. As
a first start also the Texture->Colors panel now allows contrast setting
up to 5.0 (was 2.0).
Main target was to make the inner rendering loop using no globals anymore.
This is essential for proper usage while raytracing, it caused a lot of
hacks in the raycode as well, which even didn't work correctly for all
situations (textures especially).
Done this by creating a new local struct RenderInput, which replaces usage
of the global struct Render R. The latter now only is used to denote
image size, viewmatrix, and the like.
Making the inner render loops using no globals caused 1000s of vars to
be changed... but the result definitely is much nicer code, which enables
making 'real' shaders in a next stage.
It also enabled me to remove the hacks from ray.c
Then i went to the task of removing redundant code. Especially the calculus
of texture coords took place (identical) in three locations.
Most obvious is the change in the unified render part, which is much less
code now; it uses the same rendering routines as normal render now.
(Note; not for halos yet!)
I also removed 6 files called 'shadowbuffer' something. This was experimen-
tal stuff from NaN days. And again saved a lot of double used code.
Finally I went over the blenkernel and blender/src calls to render stuff.
Here the same local data is used now, resulting in less dependency.
I also moved render-texture to the render module, this was still in Kernel.
(new file: texture.c)
So! After this commit I will check on the autofiles, to try to fix that.
MSVC people have to do it themselves.
This commit will need quite some testing help, but I'm around!
do a make clean in source/blender/ to be sure!
- Included the new shaders from Cessen... well, only the shader calls
themselves. To make sure the shaders work I nicely integrated it
- MaterialButtons: layout changed a bit, but still resembles the old
layout. The 'shader' options now are located together.
- Shaders are separated in 'diffuse' and 'specular'. You can combine them
freely.
- diffuse Lambert: old shader
diffuse Oren Nayar: new shader, gives sandy/silky/skinny material well
diffuse Toon: for cartoon render
- specular Phong: new spec, traditional 70ies spec
specular CookTorr: a reduced version of cook torrance shading, does
off specular peak well
specular Blinn: new spec, same features as CookTorr, but with extra
'refraction' setting
specular Toon: new spec for cartoon render
- default blender starts with settings that render compatible!
- works in shaded view and preview-render
- works in unified render
Further little changes:
- removed paranoia compile warnings from render/loader/blenlib
- and the warnings at files I worked at were removed.
(adding)
#ifdef HAVE_CONFIG_H
#include <config.h>
#endif
also the Makefile.in's were from previous patch adding
the system depend stuff to configure.ac
Kent
--
mein@cs.umn.edu
