[Bf-committers] Render API follow-up

[Jonathan Merritt]

Hi Terrence, Ton, and everyone,

I also think it's good to focus on Blender's internal functionality  
first... it's obviously important to have a good internal renderer too.

In the RenderMan sphere, we currently have the Mosaic exporter, which  
really has excellent functionality.  It's Python-based, and I think  
that most people will be happy to port Mosaic first for Blender 2.5,  
and will not be disheartened about a wait for a new Render API.  The  
greater power of Python in Blender 2.5 will probably also be  
beneficial for Mosaic.

Overall, the 2.5 development is very exciting!

Jonathan Merritt.

On 09/03/2009, at 8:17 AM, Terrence Vergauwen wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> This is great news, i was thinking something along the same lines,  
> wait till 2.5 RNA api is finalized, then start planning 'something'  
> to start with.
> I'm convinced this will get a great response from the artist  
> community aswell.
>
> I'll start writing some documentation about various possibilities i  
> need to research with more detail asap,
> when we've got our %99.99 ready v0.6 luxrender release out of the  
> door during the next week.
>
> Thnx!,
> Radiance
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 6:45 AM, Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org>  
> wrote:
> 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-
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org     
> www.blender.org
> Blender Institute BV  Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam The  
> Netherlands
>
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