[Bf-committers] Re: Newbie coding advice.

[Gilbert, Joseph]

________________________________

From: bf-committers-bounces at projects.blender.org
[mailto:bf-committers-bounces at projects.blender.org] On Behalf Of Greg
MacDonald
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2005 2:11 PM
To: Nathan Letwory
Cc: bf-blender developers
Subject: Re: [Bf-committers] Re: Newbie coding advice.

 

It would've been easier a month ago when I wasn't familiar with the
Blender code. I'm finding that even though some of the code is
uncommented spaghetti, its surprisingly not difficult make changes.
Ton's architecture overview helped out a lot.

I think I've decided to just change the code. The python solution sounds
like a kludge to me. Where as the c solution is sure to be just as
elegent for the user as Blender itself. So its not a question of what's
easiest for me, but what's easiest for people using it. I really would
like the blender openflight solution to be better than what people are
currently using. Not merely sufficient. Otherwise no one will be
compelled to use blender at work.

Thanks for your suggestion though. Any more would be welcomed. (I don't
like programming in a vacuume.) 

-Greg

On 9/29/05, Nathan Letwory <jesterking at letwory.net> wrote:

This sounds to me like you'd be easiest of creating n lights in a
seperate
.blend and then later on link to any of the lamp data you want. Just
give
the lamp data smart names, and you'll have your lighting palette.

/Nathan

> I never would've thought of that, that's a good idea. And I've already
got
> a
> GUI written. But I just have one last wrinkle. Light points have a
> sizeable
> number of properties and a city can have thousands of them. Openflight

> deals
> with this by having light point appearance and animation palettes from
> which
> a light point can index into both at the same time. I was going to
> duplicate
> this in blender by creating palette objects that light point objects
would 
> point to. I also have other non-heirarchical types to consider, like
file
> header information that would contain info like units, flat vs round
> earth,
> etc. I suppose I could just create an empty with attributes attached
for 
> these as well. But that would create the possibility of two header
> objects.
>
> Still I'm drawn to extending blender directly because I don't want the
> user
> to try and edit my mesh light point representations. Plus, I don't
need 
> anything 3D to represent the light points, all I need is a glpoint.
And I
> can make the two header object problem go away in a much nicer fasion.
>
> I'm realy torn between coding in c so I get the effect I want and
coding 
> in
> Python where I'll be sure that my code will be widely accessible. No
one
> in
> the Windows world is going to apply my patch and recompile. That's
going
> to
> decrease the number of people who can benefit from my work
significantly. 
> Especially since Creator, the program that spits out openflight, only
runs
> in Windows.
>
> I think the right thing to do would be to write a general plugin
> architecture for Blender where everything is a plugin, including core 
> functionality. That way people like me wouldn't have a reason to mess
with
> the underlying code base because there wouldn't be any advantages to
it.
> It
> would be slower but Blender isn't a runtime engine.. Oh, wait. It has
one 
> of
> those doen't it. :) I still think it could be good. For the game
engine,
> you
> could have rendering plugins where people could insert the runtime
that
> their developing for and easily have a model viewer that would save
them 
> the
> time of loading their models into a seperate program. I would love to
> contribute to such a project. Would be a huge undertaking though. Is
> anyone
> considering doing this? Because I can't be the only one with this
idea. 
>
> -Greg
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