[Bf-committers] Render API: Framework and Scene Break-Down

[Aaron Moore]

Hi Shaul,

I'm glad you're interested in the project!

> Also, am reading the wiki (haven't finished) but wanted to ask if this API
> will be able to change the information before the render, and if so, will it
> go back to the scene or be part of the rendering only?

Here's how I see this issue. The exporter, given that it's task is
clearly defined, to produce the rendered image data, will not have the
ability to change any of the scene data from the API. The scene data
will be available for read-only query. All information will be there
to allow many kinds of renderers to access the data they need in the
way they need it in order to fulfill their task within blender: to
produce image data.

However, some things are not implemented in a given renderer, and some
things are too complected to provide exact representations of the way
blender does them. Material settings are a good example: shader
implementations will not be accessible through the API, merely
declarations of the type and input values:  type = "phong" spec=".5"
hardness="50"  In these cases, the exporters are expected to make
local copies of the input data so that they can manipulate them for
use in an exporter specific implementation of the type "phong." At
least this is how I currently see it.

Generally speaking, it is a bad idea to make things mutable when they
don't need to be.

Aaron