[Bf-committers] Render Panel Proprosal (Variable OSA, Render Sizes)

[Robert Tiess]

Hello, everyone.  This is my first time ever doing something like this, 
so I hope with all my heart I do this properly.

For the longest time I have admired the efforts of the Blender coders 
and enjoyed creating things based on the incredible program you've 
created for us.  THANK YOU for that.  Your work is incredible and inspiring.

Today I have begun to study the Blender source code and examine where 
there might be some minor opportunities for productivity enhancement.  I 
have tested three minor new changes I've introduced into the Render 
panel with promising results using the Cygwin and the gcc compiler.

The coding guidelines ask us to send a separate mailing/patch per 
feature change/addition, but almost all my changes occur in the same 
section of code (with the exception of a necessary button name 
definition in butspace.h), and since this is all in one area of the 
Render window I thought it might be better this way -- especially since 
I am hesitant to mess with the text outputted by cvs diff.

So I will divide this e-mail into three parts, beginning with the 
variable OSA slider I added to replace the predefined OSA buttons.  I am 
enclosing the entire patch code at the end of this message.

Thank you for your time.


PART  ONE: VARIABLE OSA SLIDER

OSA right now ranges from 5 to 16, with the preset button values of 5, 
8, 11, 16.  My slider allows users to go from 2 to 16 in increments of 
1.  There are several advantages to allowing users more control over OSA:

- Lower OSA values require less memory

- Lower OSA values result in faster renders

- Lower OSA values can also offer dramatic speed boosts for complex 
renders - especially animations, where Motion Blur is used.

Using an early 100 frame animation I made involving a fish swimming 
along a circular path, I tested OSA 2 with a Motion Blur factor of .5 at 
a resolution of 640x480 (clicking the PC resolution button in the Render 
pane).  The complete animation rendered with motion blur (using AVI 
Jpeg) in 1 minute and 25 seconds on a Pentium 4 2.4ghz system.  Granted, 
motion blur was not nearly as attractively distributed as would be 
available with higher OSA values, but the fact that detectable motion 
blur was produced using this minimal value helped move the animation 
renders along quickly and for the computations to take up not as much 
memory and processing time required by higher OSA values.

The same animation using the minimal OSA 5 value and the same criteria 
mentioned above rendered in about 4 minutes 30 seconds, and the motion 
blur wasn't much noticeably improved (at a slower frame rates/higher 
resolutions it would be increasingly apparent though).

For static renders, greater OSA control can be very helpful, especially 
when used in conjunction with the variable Gauss filter:  for test 
renders (i.e. those renders produced before the final render), this 
means you can preview a model/scene/animation at a very low OSA value 
while being able, later, to go slightly higher existing OSA presets 
without overtaxing your computer -- for example, a user with not a 
particularly powerful system may want slightly better OSA than 5 but may 
be overly burdened by an attempt to do OSA 11 -- with the adjustable OSA 
slider, OSA 7, 9, or 10 become available.  This is just one example, but 
you get the idea.


PART TWO:  VARIABLE RENDER SIZE SLIDER

Render size buttons currently occupy a sizeable portion of the Render 
pane.  I have created a variable RendSize slider to replace these 
buttons with the following advantages in mind:

- A simpler/cleaner interface

- Increased render size range capability (my slider goes from 10% up to 
200%)

- The absence of the 25%, 50%, and 75% buttons leave room for possibly 
another button or two or a slider

- To get larger renders (up to 200% larger) it is no longer necessary to 
edit your SizeX and SizeY settings

- For test renders, especially ray tracing and or radiosity renders, the 
ability to render really small and fast can be a major productivity 
boost.  For example, if you're using the FULL button to set resolution, 
that produces a render size of 1280x1024.  To get an extremely fast 
preview, a user could swing the slider down to 10% and get a quick 
thumbnail, or go higher... 15 or 20%.  Such small renders would not be 
good for checking details visible only at substantially higher 
resolutions, but these micro renders could provide speedy previews for 
key elements in a scene, particularly lighting and colors.  The 
advantages of these extremely small renders also become evident during 
animation test renders, where you might be just checking on the motion 
or rotation of an object or set of objects.


PART THREE:  A "PC2" BUTTON

This is the simplest of changes proposed for the Render pane.  Currently 
there is a PC button that loads the values 640 and 480 respectively in 
the SizeX and SizeY buttons.  640x480 is a standard VGA resolution. 
 Over the past few years, 800x600 SVGA displays became more common as 
minimal resolutions.  With the increase of 17" and larger displays, 
resolutions such as 1024x768 are becoming increasingly common on end 
user systems.  My changes in the patch code below resize the current PC 
button to half its horizontal size and use the extra pixel space gained 
to establish a "PC2" button, which when clicked sets SizeX to 800 and 
SizeY to 600.


A screen capture summarizing the proposed Render panel revisions is 
available at
http://webusers.warwick.net/~u1019306/myblenderimages/blenderRenderWindow021704.jpg

What follows now is the patch code generated by the cvs diff patch 
command prescribed by the coding guidelines.  I deeply apologize in 
advance if I have gone about any of this incorrectly.  The Blender 
coding team has my highest respect, so I am hoping to learn from this 
experience so I might be able some day to help Blender evolve in 
whatever way I can.

Take care everyone,
Robert
(aka RobertT on Elysiun and Blender.org)

Patch code begins with next line:
Index: source/blender/include/butspace.h
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/bf-blender/blender/source/blender/include/butspace.h,v
retrieving revision 1.18
diff -r1.18 butspace.h
257a258
 > #define B_PR_PC2            1625
Index: source/blender/src/buttons_scene.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/bf-blender/blender/source/blender/src/buttons_scene.c,v
retrieving revision 1.37
diff -r1.37 buttons_scene.c
718a719,731
 >     case B_PR_PC2:
 >         G.scene->r.xsch= 800;
 >         G.scene->r.ysch= 600;
 >         G.scene->r.xasp= 100;
 >         G.scene->r.yasp= 100;
 >         G.scene->r.size= 100;
 >         G.scene->r.mode &= ~R_PANORAMA;
 >         G.scene->r.xparts=  G.scene->r.yparts= 1;
 >
 >         BLI_init_rctf(&G.scene->r.safety, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0);
 >         allqueue(REDRAWVIEWCAM, 0);
 >         allqueue(REDRAWBUTSSCENE, 0);
 >         break;
1031a1045,1049
 >     uiDefButS(block, NUM,B_DIFF,"Level:",        
369,86,122,20,&G.scene->r.osa, 2.0, 16.0, 1, 2, "Sets oversample level");
 >
 > /*
 > OLD OSA BUTTONS
 >
1035a1054
 > */
1057a1077,1082
 >
 >     uiDefButS(block, NUM,B_DIFF,"RendSize:",        
565,110,121,20,&G.scene->r.size, 10.0, 200.0, 1, 2, "Set render size 
percentage");
 >
 > /*
 > OLD RENDER BUTTONS
 >
1061a1087,1088
 > */
 >
1195c1222,1223
<     uiDefBut(block, BUT,B_PR_PC, "PC",            1146,90,100,18, 0, 
0, 0, 0, 0, "Size preset: Image size - 640x480, Aspect ratio - 100x100");
---
 >     uiDefBut(block, BUT,B_PR_PC, "PC",            1146,90,50,18, 0, 
0, 0, 0, 0, "Size preset: Image size - 640x480, Aspect ratio - 100x100");
 >     uiDefBut(block, BUT,B_PR_PC2, "PC2",            1196,90,50,18, 0, 
0, 0, 0, 0, "Size preset: Image size - 800x600, Aspect ratio - 100x100");