[Bf-python] ThinMesh

[Stephen Swaney]

In another thread Cam Barton wrote:

>  Keep in mind that some people use Meshes that just
> about fill there entire system Ram, so making a copy of ALL NMesh data
> ... is not very efficient.

One of the original bpy design principles was that the bpy interface
would be thru thin wrappers around Blender data.  'Thin wrappers' means
that the bpy objects do not make copies of blender data, but instead
provide a python interface to it.

For most modules this is true, but NMesh is an exception.  It spends a lot
of time and memory making duplicate copies of existing arrays.  Obviously,
this is not an efficient use of resources.

Willian and I have discussed the idea of a ThinMesh type that provides
a true thin wrapper around Blender's Mesh objects.  By accessing 
blender data directly, we would see big improvements in speed and
memory consumption when dealing with large meshes.

At one time, this may have been challenging for us, but now that our
Python extension skills are much improved, maybe it is time to revisit
this idea.  Anyone looking for a project?

-- 
Stephen Swaney			
sswaney at centurytel.net