[Bf-committers] Thoughts on speeding up...

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

Multithread, shared memory, coding is *extreme* work. I've managed to  
do so for the internal scanline render system, but after all  
initializing took place.
Making the entire renderer a thread, with only using 'own' memory  
(which cannot be written or freed by Blender editor) is another huge  
task.

There are possibilities to bypass/hack it somewhat, my current notes on  
this look like this;

- Make internal global R struct allocated
- create a setRender(char *name) call, returning new Render struct
   plus make an associated getRender(char *name) and freeRender(Render  
*r)

then an API to talk to that:

- initRender(Render *r)
   blocking function, creating all render faces, octree, shadowbuffers,  
etc
- doRender(Render *r, int minx, int miny, int maxx, int maxy)
   this can be the threaded call
- endRender(Render *r)
   freeing all render faces, octree, etc. Keeps Render itself

and an API to update partially stuff, like changing camera, tag 1  
material to be changed, 1 object geometry to be changed, etc. Have to  
study that part...

Result can be that any part in a 3d window (ortho too!) can just be  
'border-ed' and rendered, while using material buttons, for example as  
preview.

-Ton-


On 23 Mar, 2005, at 22:55, Austin Benesh wrote:

> Hi Ton,
>
>  
>
> I was looking through your thread render code and got some ideas to  
> help the speed of Blender. What could be done is two threads could be  
> created, one for interfacing and the other for rendering. Then, every  
> time allqueue(REDRAWVIEW3D) is called, the scene could be  
> “re-rendered” without actually drawing pixels and without sacrificing  
> speed. I’m working on an implementation of this right now. Please tell  
> me what’s wrong with this idea, as I am sure there is something wrong.
>
>  
>
> -- Austin
>
>  
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------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton at blender.org  
http://www.blender.org