[Bf-committers] Render Plugin Development

Campbell Barton cbarton at metavr.com
Wed Aug 15 17:53:26 CEST 2007


Jonathan Merritt wrote:
> Campbell Barton wrote:
>> Can you give an example of why a C render plugin would need to call a 
>> python script?
>>   
> 
> I'd imagine that one use for this could be procedural generation of 
> render output.
> 
> Current RenderMan engines allow external programs to generate procedural 
> geometry.  Each time the C render plugin is queried for geometry by the 
> RenderMan callback, it would execute the Python script.  The script 
> would then call functions in the plugin (via an implementation of the 
> CGKit interface, for example), to direct it to provide more output to 
> the renderer.
> 
> I can see this kind of thing being used to provide customized, 
> highly-efficient objects which are tightly integrated into both Blender 
> and the external renderer.  As a case in point, think of the "nail map" 
> from the X-Men movie... the one where the little columns moved up and 
> down to produce a map of New York.  Just as an example, an effect like 
> that is simple to implement as RenderMan procedural geometry, but would 
> take vast amounts of system resources if you created (and animated!) all 
> of the geometry in Blender itself.  There are many other examples I can 
> think of... custom particle and curve effects, landscape rendering, LOD 
> procedurals, etc.
> 
> Jonathan Merritt.
> 

This still dosnt make sense to me, are you saying the render API should 
provide some special function to run a python script? - C can alredy do 
this without too much trouble.


-- 
Campbell J Barton (ideasman42)


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