[Bf-funboard] Strong Node-Based architecture

Joal Heagney bf-funboard@blender.org
Wed, 14 Jul 2004 14:48:31 +1000


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> The OOPS in Blender is more about linking the datablocks 
> (texture to a material to an object), not about a flow of information 
> between them. As a  big fan of Shake, I know how incredibly powerful 
> and useful a node-based workflow can be, but as far as I know, it's not 
> a feasible topic for the Blender 2.X architecture.

I'll agree with the original poster in one respect though. It would be nice if the OOPS window had some editing functionality in it rather than purely display. E.g. being able to draw and edit the links between the texture/material/object/meshs. Some possible tools and ways to access them:

Create Link Tool.
Select texture block. Spacebar -> "Create link". Click on material block to build a link between the two. Clicking on an invalid type of block brings up a popup saying "Textures can only be linked to <blahblahblah>".

Delete Data Block Tool.
Select block. Press delete (Or X or any of the other default delete shortcuts.) to erase that data block.

Edit Data Block Tool.
Click on data block. Spacebar -> "Edit properties of object". Pops up a dialog that allows you to, e.g. change the scaling of an object block, change the blending mode of a texture in a material, etc.

Copy Data Block Tool.
Click on data block. CTRL-C (and maybe CTRL-D as well) creates a copy of the data block.

And maybe even Create New Data Block. 
Spacebar -> "Create new ..." -> and a submenu of objects.

While you can do all this from the rest of blender (Except maybe switch the mesh that an object owns. Is there a way to do this? *hopeful*), I tend to look at the OOPS window and think "Hmm. Pretty, but there's a lot of space here that could be filled with functionality."

Anycase, my two cents worth,

Joal Heagney/AncientHart

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On 14 Jul 2004, at 12:12 AM, Konrad Haenel wrote:

>  A GUI that enables link creation by dragging lines from object to 
> object is obviously the ideal way to handel these node-based systems. 
> Thoug I'm not really certain about it I think that the Blender-Core 
> would allow for a fair amount of this functionality. It is 
> object-oriented after all, isn't it? I just wish the GUI'd allow to 
> harvest more of it.

 From what I understand, although the internals of Blender work on an 
object-oriented system, it's not set up at all for a node-based 
workflow. The OOPS in Blender is more about linking the datablocks 
(texture to a material to an object), not about a flow of information 
between them. As a  big fan of Shake, I know how incredibly powerful 
and useful a node-based workflow can be, but as far as I know, it's not 
a feasible topic for the Blender 2.X architecture.

Matt

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