[Bf-committers] tfaces, makesdna and custom blobs

[Brecht Van Lommel]

Hi

I'm working on support for multiple UV sets. At this point I have code
support for multiple TFace sets, that contain color, UV's, a texture image
and game engine flags. The next step is to split the color off from TFace,
to also allow multiple color sets, and get rid of the double storage for color
in MCol and TFace.

Makesdna, however, does not allow to read members that have been
removed from a struct, so in order to keep backwards compat, my idea
is to deprecate the TFace struct, and replace it by MCol and MTFace.

typedef struct MCol {
     char a, r, g, b;
} MCol;

typedef struct MTFace {
     struct Image *image;
     float uv[4][2];
     char flag, transp;
     short mode, tile, unwrap;
} MTFace;

This means breaking forward compat, so Blender 2.41 and earlier will
not be able to read UV's, colors, or any game engine data from newer
Blender versions. This is not that great, but it is the only solution I can
come up with that does not involve placing custom hacks makesdna
code. Is losing forward compat acceptable?


But I was thinking, if we break forward compat anyway, we might as well,
you know, break it properly. Like allowing a custom blobs of data to be
attached to verts, edges, and faces, without unified handling of uv's, colors,
vertex groups, and user defined data, for meshes, nurbes, lattices, .. .

That's maybe a bit ambitious, and will further delay multiple UV sets for
those who really want it (hi Campbell :). It doesn't seem impossible,
but clearly won't be for 2.42 then.

Good idea? Bad idea?

Cheers,
Brecht.