[Bf-cycles] Volume Rendering for GSoC

[Brecht Van Lommel]

Hi Rafael,

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 3:23 AM, Rafael Campos <rafaelcdn at gmail.com> wrote:
> Of all ideas, I'm going with OpenVDB integration, and adding Voxel Data
> texture to Cycles.
> I feel that leaving Point Density texture out of the proposal is a bit of a
> shame since the texturing part of volume rendering will be only partially
> satisfied, but I'm all worked up with OpenVDB now, and there is a lot to be
> gained in the future by supporting it.

Ok, sounds good.

>  True. Since there isn't much time before the submission deadline, I'll come
> up with ideas for the design and interaction of these new nodes so we can
> discuss, but probably after submitting the proposal. Is creating a page on
> the wiki for the proposal a good idea or is it better to wait ?

The main thing is to get the proposal submitted with about a paragraph
of explanation for each part you plan to implement, then wait to see
if it is accepted. The specific design can still be worked out
afterwards.

If you want to create a wiki page with more ideas that's fine but not
strictly necessary.

> I'm thinking import/export operations for the OpenVDB format, and using the
> data structure during rendering. Did I miss something or is that it?

Ideally there would be some integration with the smoke system, so
smoke can be exported to OpenVDB and then render from those files, not
sure if you would cover that under import/export. Currently we do not
have anything like a volume object type in Blender, so it's not
obvious to me what you mean by import, how that would work.

Brecht.