[tuhopuu-devel] Graphite Integration

[BjornMose]

hi brecht
i am going to look at the papers ASAP to see the maths behind it.
my first feeling on what you wrote: is this could be doubeling math code
over and over again (as happend to linear algebra in blender).
so my suggested strategy would be:
1. fully understand what it does.
2. think of how it can be integrated to blender.
3. start building minimal features to grow.

I think that advaced UV unwrapping could be a killer feature for blender
but
1. maths are not so easy with that (topologly  is not a friend in this case)
2. dumping some code found in the WEB to blender / tuhopuu smells a little.

so what i am trying to say :
play with that stuff, see if it works, integrate to tuhopuu  if you
feel/know it is good.
i read that copyright is no problem, make sure!

i am just a recent joined member to tuhopuu developement, so it is not on me
to decide.
But UV is some of the topics i am really interested in and i'd like to work
on it, so we should keep i touch. (would'n want to do things you're working
on already)

mail bjornmose@gmx.net

CU
bjornmose


----- Original Message -----
From: "Brecht Van Lommel" <blendix@pandora.be>
To: <tuhopuu-devel@blender.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2004 10:58 PM
Subject: [tuhopuu-devel] Graphite Integration


> Hi,
>
> I've been looking for ways to improve the UV editor, and there's still a
> lot of things to improve in the current workflow. But I've also been
> investigating more advanced tools, like relax UV, unfolding algorithms,
> seam cutting and texture atlas packing. There seem to be quite some
> algorithms out there.
>
> I found that one of the most prominent researchers in this area (as far
> as I have an overview of it), Bruno Lévy, has released his application
> 'Graphite' under the GPL license: http://www.loria.fr/~levy/Graphite/.
> It contains many interesting and advanced algorithms for UV mapping. By
> integrating some of it's sources I think Blender could get some really
> professional UV mapping functionality. If you don't believe me, play
> around with Graphite's features, and see what it's possibilities are.
>
> Also, there is a new algorithm coming, ABF++, that IMO is pretty awesome
> (already experimentally available in the Windows binary). It's really
> fast and still has the quality of the ABF algorithm. Combine this with
> them automatic packing of several islands into one texture atlas map,
> various UV map optimization algorithms (to minimize angular and length
> distortion) and an automatic seam cutting algorithm, and you'll see how
> useful this could be. The automatic seam cutting might not always give
> good results, but we would allow the users to define the seams edge by
> edge, as in the end only they know which parts of the mesh are important
> and which parts aren't.
>
> It's hard to compare the Graphite algorithms to those found in
> professional UV mapping applications, as I don't know their algorithms.
> But I know the algorithms available in Graphite are pretty recent and
> IMHO really good. I think I'll ask the main author about this. Anyway,
> he offered to help, and thinks Blender is cool software, so that's quite
> alright too :).
>
> The only problem I see is the size of the current code. Graphite uses
> it's own math library, and two external math libraries. I've already
> stripped down the code quite a bit, to about 4 MB, including the math
> libraries. I'll probably be able to lower it more, but it would
> certainly add up to the compile time and Blender binary size. Blender
> binary size went from 4.5 to 5.3 MB here, but I'm not sure everything is
> actually in there, I think the compiler might have left out unused
> parts. This could also be a good sign, indicating there are still many
> things that could be left out.
>
> I find it important to minimize the amount of Graphite code in Blender,
> to be able to control it. It would be nice to integrate it without too
> many modifications, to be easily able to keep it in sync with Graphite,
> but it also shouldn't be a big amount of code that's not controlled by a
> Blender coder.
>
> The positive side is that the code is very clean and modular, which
> would certainly make things easier to integrate and maintain. It's also
> cross platfom, because Graphite compiles on Windows and Linux.
>
> Now, my question is, would I be allowed to try to integrate this code in
> the Tuhopuu tree? It might not work out, but I can at least try it in
> the experimental tree, right? I'm not sure how useful these features
> would be considered, since UV mapping is my current field of interest,
> and I might consider them to be more important than they actually are.
> Anyway, what do you think?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Brecht
>
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