[Bf-committers] Edit Mesh ideas

Kiernan Holland bf-committers@blender.org
Wed, 26 Nov 2003 12:17:01 -0700


Is it possible that the mesh data can be abstracted from the edit mode 
functions that manipulate the mesh data, such that the functions can be 
written to apply to any kind of surface data. I'm thinking more as a way 
that the programmers can choose the level of complexity that they 
wish to deal with when performing edits on the structure.. Like if I wanted
to 
design a new kind of mesh warp tool I could maybe request a view on 
the data structure of all the points, which would return a list of pointers
to 
the vertex data in the general surface/curve/point-cloud type, then I could
do 
my transformations on the general type and update the surface..  It 
also should be possible to efficiencies sake to toggle the surface between 
compressed/compact form and expanded form in the interest of 
trading memory usage off for speed of manipulation. 

I believe that as soon as there is a way to abstract the surface types from 
the functions that manipulate them, it will be easier to write new
functions to 
manipulate the surfaces and easier to change the underlying types,
incorporate 
new data types and manage the code that exists. Eventually this has to
happen. 

I think once this happens, it will be easy to port the code to C++ if
efficient. 
I think it will also allow the python interface to such capabilities to be
kept 
simple, thus reducing overlap.