[Bf-committers] BOAL idea. . something really, really needed

[Brecht Van Lommel]

On Sun, 2004-09-12 at 01:19, joeedh wrote:
> Hi.  Due to the horrible mess of the way Blender handles objects, I have 
> decided to (in my own sources) create a Blender Object Abstraction Layer 
> (BOAL) to use with my new CSG object.
> 
> BOAL is a Blender internal C++ library I'm designing that will be able 
> to implement new objects in Blender without breaking SDNA.  This will be 
> implemented as a new object "type" as to avoid messing up Blender.  
> 
> Among other things, this could be the start of a General Blender Plugin 
> API, as it would (hopefully) be trivial to modify Blender to allow 
> dynamically loaded Object plug-ins!
> 
> So, what do you think?  It'll take me a while to get the exact speifics 
> (there is a LOT of little functions each object class will have to 
> implement, and I have to find all of them. . .*sigh*), so it'll be a 
> while before I can make an actual code-feature proposal.
> 
> joeedh
> 
> P.S.: And please don't say this is a Blender 3.0 thing. . .the current 
> system is really, really inadequate.
> 

Hi,

I can agree the current 'object code' is confusing, and that it's
definitely not easy to add a new object. But, I would rather see the
current code being more abstracted, documented and clarified. Building a
layer on top on what we have now is not going to help. On the contrary,
it will only lead to more confusion and complexity.

Any object will want to be able to do more than just be created and
destroyed. So, hooks throughout the whole Blender source code will be
needed. On top of this, most future extensions to the Blender code will
not be in adding new objects, but rather in adding functionality to
existing ones. These new objects will have to cooperate with the objects
we have now, leading to an even greater mess.

Also keep in mind that the Blender source code is not static. It will
change, and as it does, your abstraction layer will need to adapt too.
This would effectively lead to the Blender developers having to support
the old code, and your abstraction layer.

I don't believe Objects and C++ will magically make things better.

Brecht.

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