[Bf-committers] Proposed changes re: procedural textures

[Emanuel Greisen]

>
> if(tex->type)
>    retval = textypes[tex->type].render_func(tex,texvec,texres);
>
May I suggest that it be take into account that this design depends on 
every texture having a unique "id", which actually is an index into an 
array. Hence if two developers both make a new texture (independently) 
their indexes will collide.

To avoid such things on the projects I have resently been working on we 
use GUIDs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globally_Unique_Identifier). 
These are by definition unique, hence there is no risk of collision.

A generator can be found here:

http://kruithof.xs4all.nl/uuid/uuidgen

If we could design it such that these were used to look up the texture, 
then new textures could be added both builtin and as plugins with no 
risk of identifier collision. I know that this would most likely require 
a change in the texture-struct, and thereby a change in the file-format. 
But it could be possible if we have a backward compatibility table for 
the old index based system.

Also, this could be used for any "plug-in" like situation, like the 
modifiers, etc. Giving developers an option to easily extend blender 
with new functionality, without having to specify anything but a GUID to 
be uniquely identifiable in blender.

./Emanuel