Wind + effector force update

Hey,

I took some time to take a look at the effectors. After speaking with Janne (jahka, particles creator), we decided to unify and enhance it.

So this are the enhancements so far:

• Wind got ‘noise’ option
• Deflectors can hide effector force now -
  even realtime in 3dview using ‘continues physics’ option (Example blend file: Hidden wind)

Interesting thing: This two options, were one of the seven highlighted big features in Maya 2008!

Ah wait - I even extended the wind feature having the ability to specify the absorption value of each deflector: So 3 deflectors with 10%, 43% and 3% give a total absorption of 99,87%.

UPDATE:

You can download a high quality version of the demonstration video here: Wind collisions example (21.34 MB)

win64 bit in trunk!

Hello,

Yesterday, I commited my win64 changes to trunk. That was only possible thanks to your great support and donations!

You can now compile blender in a 64bit windows environment using cmake:

cmake -G "Visual Studio 9 2008 Win64" .

Then you can easily open the project in Visual Studio and compile it.

Have fun!

Daniel

First win64 testbuild available [update]

Hey,

I just uploaded the first (un)official testbuild into the download section. It should also have OpenMP enabled.

Please test it for bug/crashes which are not in the normal blender svn trunk version, thanks!

Here’s a render compare which shows that the renderer should work fine:

Known Problems:

• There is a crasher with one of the BBB files (tree_trunk/04.blend), but that is Windows related in general

  UPDATE:

• The builds which I get from Vista64 are not XP64 compatible since they seem to link to 32bit libs, even in a 64bit build environment. Since I have no XP64 I have yet to think how to sort out that issue.

Algorithm challenge: (Approximate) Nearest Neighbour

Hi all,

I just took this day of trying to make a benchmark for fast Nearest Neighour algorithms (I’ll choose the fastest one for the new project). For that purpose, I downloaded and integrated the Stann library into blender. The results are quite disappointing for my sample data set:

• static_chan: 1.923355
• sfcnn_ip: 1.436582
• dynamic_sfc: 3.789894
• sfcnn_op: 1.087444
• blender internal kdtree: 0.008079

So basicly the inbuild kdtree beats the Stann library or the kdtree did not work. Since I am not satisfied with the speed results, I challenge everyone to see if you can bring up a faster “(Approximate) Nearest Neighbour” implementation.

The data set I use for verification is this (C code):

int min = 0, max = 10;
int grid = 500;
float width = (float)((float)(max - min) / (float)grid);
 
// init data set
for(int i = 0; i < grid; i++)
{
	for(int j = 0; j < grid; j++)
	{
		for(int k = 0; k < grid; k++)
		{
			Array[(i*grid*grid) + (j*grid) + k] = float(i*width, j*width, k*width);
		}
	}
}

I am searching normally for the 30 nearest neighbours of an arbitrary point in that Array-set.

Good luck!

Fluid control: Negative forces

Hey,

I took some time to make it possible to use negative attraction forces possible. It can be used to get some object “feared” by the water, or to get some explode effect. I also made start and end time working

Here some example with ipo controlled positive and then negative forces (made by nudel):

Rendering works

I made another patch which made the renderer working for large scenes / blendfiles. As a test-case I used the Big Buck Bunny production files which are known to be quite memory intensive.

The remaining problem is if the patch is allowed to go into Blender svn trunk. I am not really satisfied with the quality and the approach (alot of ifdefs for the long / __int64-case) and would like to talk with other Blender developers about the issues.

Update: After taking a look at the finished render, I thought to me: “Never forget the strands” - I just overlooked the strands.c sourcefile and got this funny picture:

UPDATE: Actually, the topic is not quite true. A specific scene file from BBB crashes that blender version. The most weird thing is that it crashes in the render code after having all layers with big RAM requirements rendered. So i think that the error is elsewhere. I’m digging

I also like to give some good news which is that I successfully enabled OpenMP within the Win64 builds (not yet for download).

UPDATE 2: The crash turned out to be a general render bug not related to my win64 version I am yet waiting for it to be solved in svn!

Fluids working

A quick note out of the dev lab: I just verified that Blender Fluids can use more than 4GB ram on a win64 plattform (after a little fix which I commited to svn).

Blender compiles on win64

Hi,

this evening i took the chance to download a Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Trial Edition to fast access to a 64bit build environment.The installing part was a bit tricky since you have to unfold the options to check the “x64″ build environment option.

I took a clean blender checkout and tried to compile it and fixed the problems along the way. So every blender with subversion revision >15558 should work when you’re using CMake as build tool. Ah wait - you have to disable several additional option in your CMakelist.txt, like: gameengine, ffmpeg, international font support, OpenEXR and OpenAL. It could be that not all of these are necessary but this are the save settings.

Next goal will be testing Blender Win64 Edition with Blender Fluids and memory usage >4GB (testing now possible, thanks to a great donation from a user!). And I have exactly 89 days left until the trial version expires - I hope that is enough time!

As you can see, Blender is a native 64bit process, no “*32″ - 32bit mark!

First Blender Fluid Control tests

Hey,

I just wanted to give some update on the Blender Fluid Control branch.

I was able to make a first integration, yet it is far from complete / bugfree. You can basicly define some control object which the fluid follows for a defined timeframe.

Here is a little example straight from the Blender OpenGl 3d view (made by nudel):

Finally: win64 libraries

Recently I was able to compile most libraries which Blender uses for win64. I had to overcome several problems creating a win64 build enrivonment.

The problem is basicly that the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition doesn’t support x64 target plattform. Since there is also no free version of the Intel C++ Compiler available for Microsoft Windows, I had to fiddle arround that issues.

The result is a x64 build environment but with big headaches based on the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition and the Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows.