[Bf-committers] Anim system recode

Ton Roosendaal ton at blender.org
Sun Jul 3 19:52:45 CEST 2005


Hi,

(For those who don't have cvs mails, here's the cvs log!)

Result of 2 weeks of quiet coding work in Greece :)

Aim was to get a total refresh of the animation system. This
is needed because;
- we need to upgrade it with 21st century features
- current code is spaghetti/hack combo, and hides good design
- it should become lag-free with using dependency graphs

A full log, with complete code API/structure/design explanation
will follow, that's a load of work... so here below the list with
hot changes;

- The entire object update system (matrices, geometry) is now
   centralized. Calls to where_is_object and makeDispList are
   forbidden, instead we tag objects 'changed' and let the
   depgraph code sort it out
- Removed all old "Ika" code
- Depgraph is aware of all relationships, including meta balls,
   constraints, bevelcurve, and so on.
- Made depgraph aware of relation types and layers, to do smart
   flushing of 'changed' events. Nothing gets calculated too often!
- Transform uses depgraph to detect changes
- On frame-advance, depgraph flushes animated changes

Armatures;

Almost all armature related code has been fully built from scratch.
It now reveils the original design much better, with a very clean
implementation, lag free without even calculating each Bone more than
once. Result is quite a speedup yes!

Important to note is;

1) Armature is data containing the 'rest position'
2) Pose is the changes of rest position, and always on object level.
    That way more Objects can use same Pose. Also constraints are in Pose
3) Actions only contain the Ipos to change values in Poses.

- Bones draw unrotated now
- Drawing bones speedup enormously (10-20 times)
- Bone selecting in EditMode, selection state is saved for PoseMode,
   and vice-versa
- Undo in editmode
- Bone renaming does vertexgroups, constraints, posechannels, actions,
   for all users of Armature in entire file
- Added Bone renaming in NKey panel
- Nkey PoseMode shows eulers now
- EditMode and PoseMode now have 'active' bone too (last clicked)
- Parenting in EditMode' CTRL+P, ALT+P, with nice options!
- Pose is added in Outliner now, with showing that constraints are in
   the Pose, not Armature
- Disconnected IK solving from constraints. It's a separate phase now,
   on top of the full Pose calculations
- Pose itself has a dependency graph too, so evaluation order is lag  
free.

TODO NOW;

- Rotating in Posemode has incorrect inverse transform (Martin will fix)
- Python Bone/Armature/Pose API disabled... needs full recode too
   (wait for my doc!)
- Game engine will need upgrade too
- Depgraph code needs revision, cleanup, can be much faster!
   (But, compliments for Jean-Luc, it works like a charm!)
- IK changed, it now doesnt use previous position to advance to next
   position anymore. That system looks nice (no flips) but is not well
   suited for NLA and background render.

TODO LATER;

We now can do loadsa new nifty features as well; like:

- Kill PoseMode (can be option for armatures itself)
- Make B-Bones (Bezier, Bspline, like for spines)
- Move all silly button level edit to 3d window (like CTRL+I = add
   IK)
- Much better & informative drawing
- Fix action/nla editors
- Put all ipos in Actions (object, mesh key, lamp color)
- Add hooks
- Null bones
- Much more advanced constraints...


Bugfixes;

- OGL render (view3d header) had wrong first frame on anim render
- Ipo 'recording' mode had wrong playback speed
- Vertex-key mode now sticks to show 'active key', until frame change

-Ton-

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton at blender.org  
http://www.blender.org



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