[Bf-blender-npr] BEER: a possible action plan and request for comments/feedback.

[Antony Riakiotakis]

Hi,

A few things about the current state of the viewport project and how it
might relate to the beer project.

Basically, the GSOC projects tackled real time drawing centralization under
a single module,
so it has to do with viewport performance and architecture mostly.
The part I have been doing the past few weeks is basically real time
compositing on top of the viewport.

The use of the viewport project in rendering is a target I am considering -
basically it is already quasi-possible with the OpenGL render
functionality, but of course the current system tries to duplicate what
blender internal does during rendering.

What you want to do is basically a new renderer. Your node system is
completely different than blender internal's. At that point you have to
know if you want this to be a GPU renderer, which will interact closely
with what OpenGL can do, or make a CPU renderer with a node interface.
GPUs basically don't allow everything the CPU does (such as ray traced
shadows and refractions for instance) and you will have to code it.

I could help by making the viewport flexible enough to facilitate easy real
time drawing by other engines - if possible. We already have a target to
make a separate node tree for GLSL materials which should allow custom GLSL
code. I am not sure if the shader system we will use will coincide with
what you have in mind. Personally I was inclined towards something more PBR
based, which is oriented to game asset creation mostly, while your own
system looks more geared towards npr rendering. Also it looks like a
mixture of compositing and real time preview, which requires a tight
integration with the viewport - tighter than we will be able to provide
probably.

Like Ton, I don't think having a separate project is a bad idea. I am open
to help in designing the viewport to be more flexible to help with what you
want to do if possible but I need to see a design or system requirements
document from a developer - what data is needed where, what the system is
expected to do, what the GPU is expected to handle. What I have seen so far
looks more like a limited use case document. If you are serious about this
you should provide more details. What is it expected to render, how it will
work with compositing, what is expected to be real time, what will be
nodified. Unfortunately I can't make those decisions for you, so you
really, really need a coder who understands these things, and preferably
blender's code base as well. And if your vision and what blender can do
can't match easily maybe you could consider a separate project, or even a
fork? I don't say that to be negative at all, but the project sounds
different enough that you might want to explore that possibility.
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