[Bf-committers] Render API follow-up
Ton Roosendaal
ton at blender.org
Sun Mar 8 18:45:26 CET 2009
Hi all,
For many years we try to settle the render API topic, especially to
allow advanced export and/or integration with third party renderers.
For various reasons it remains getting postponed; mostly because the
specs for such a system are complex and fuzzy.
Before Wintercamp I was contacted by Terrence from Lux to at least give
some roadmap or insight in how we like to proceed with rendering in
Blender. Many developers out there are eagerly waiting for such
clarity, and they are getting a bit tired or demotivated with our slow
progress in this area. :)
I've promised we would spend some time together during the Wintercamp
workshop on this.
We've discussed a couple of strategies; including a more 'high end'
integration, not based on exporting geometry/materials but for example
exposing an api to use raytrace calls and visibility info.
However, what we quickly fell back to was the simple fact that we first
should work on a good (re)design of how Blender will tackle rendering
in general. This should start with a better way to define own shaders
(real shader tree editor, shader language), but also a more advanced
interal shading/lighting pipeline, and better methods to handle caching
(geometry bucketing, image tiling, shadowbuffer tiling).
This will, combined with the 2.5 flexibility to extend on Blenders data
via RNA, deliver a much better starting point for a future proof design
for integration (plugins) or export.
So... not an easy answer! :) But I think it's fair for Blender to first
fix their own issues before moving to get better support for external
renderers. That topic is really high on the prioriry list, and can get
first priority when 2.5 is in a workable state, when we start up our
next movie project for example.
It's extremely tricky to pin me down on dates for this, but very likely
work on rendering code comes back before july, with a working new
architecture for this some months later (october?).
Designs for an improved render system could start away though, and I'd
be very interested to see what Terrence or others have in mind,
especially how integration should ideally work from their perspective.
-Ton-
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Ton Roosendaal Blender Foundation ton at blender.org www.blender.org
Blender Institute BV Entrepotdok 57A 1018AD Amsterdam The Netherlands
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