Added a new constraint, "Limit Distance". This constraint defines a 'virtual sphere' around the target which the owner can be made to stay inside, outside, or on the surface of it.
This constraint is best used when applied using the Ctrl-Alt-C hotkey, as the radius is set correctly that way.
One usage, is to prevent the target of an IK-chain from straying away from the chain. Care should be taken to not use a member of the IK-chain as the target though.
Description of Variables:
* 'Dist' - Radius of virtual sphere
* 'R' - Click on this to recalculate the 'Dist' value (note: like the 'R' button in the StretchTo constraint, this is currently buggy)
' Mode' - This menu gives different options for how the limiting sphere should act. The mode names are self explanatory.
* 'Soft' and 'SoftDistance' - currently not functional (so settings are hidden). These are used to define a smaller radius around the sphere of influence where a non-linear relationship between input and resulting locations occurs to prevent the owner 'crashing' into the sphere.
Proxy protected bones can now get local (per-file) constraints added to them, which will be preserved after a file load. This is necessary for adding constraints to proxy-protected bones for special purposes while animating (i.e. adding CopyLocs to IK-hand controls to pick up an object).
These must be added after any constraints from the proxy, as proxy constraints may come and go without warning. As such, the UI forbids this from happening by removing the relevant button.
I've also made UI-changes to show which constraints come from the proxy (the buttons to move the constraint up/down and delete it, are replace with two icons - a the proxy 'ghost' icon and a lock). Also, trying to change any settings of proxy-protected constraint will show an error.
Notes:
* Object constraints are still not playing nice with proxies yet. They didn't before this commit either...
-- Peach request (from wiki feature request list) --
When translating a bone using Auto-IK, you can now use the ScrollWheel on the Mouse or the Page Up/Down keys to adjust the chain length.
Notes:
* Up decreases the length, while Down increases it.
* The previously used chain-length is stored per scene
* Currently, it might be too sensitive. Also, it would help to have some kind of indication of the current chain-length somewhere...
* The chain length specified this way determines the MAXIMUM chain length possible for all chains (if 0, then the default chain-length is used). Chains are clamped to have a chain length which does not exceed the default chain length. This restriction may be removed following further feedback...
* [Peach Request] AutoIK now respects axis locking (rotation locks).
- Temporary DOF-Locks are turned on for those bones that are part of an AutoIK chain while transforming. These locks get cleared after transforming.
- This works for all bones except the root bone of the chain, which doesn't seem to be able to be locked.
* Limit Location constraint can now optionally affect Translations too (i.e. NKEY panel values won't change).
- LimitRot,LimitScale support (for their respective transforms) will be done at a later date
- This only works if the constraint is using World/Local space (the other spaces are not supported yet).
- I've added a temporary button in the LimitLoc panel to enable this option (it is disabled by default). This button will be properly assigned a place in that panel sometime.
-> Constraint Influence Ipo now can be local, linked to constraint itself
You enable this in the IpoWindow header, with the Action icon to the left
of the Ipo Type menu. The button tooltips give the clue as well.
Tech note: the Ipo now can get directly linked to a constraint, and is
being called during regular pose constraint solving.
Actions (and drivers in actions) are being calculated *before* pose
constraint solving. Result of actions then is written in bones, which
then solves the entire pose.
This means you can have a driver on both the constraint, as on the action
channel for the constraint! Not that I'm going to debug that easily :)
Additional fix: Joshua added a copy/paste IpoCurve feature, but he broke
the functionality to be able to paste in an empty ipo channel. That now
works again
Patch by: Roland Hess (harkyman)
For example, a constraint can be sub-targeted at the 50% (or 31.2% or 85% etc.) point of its target bone, giving you enormous rigging flexibility and removing the need for complex contraptions to do such things as:
- A bone whose base slides only between to points on a rig (CopyLoc with a variable, animated subtarget point)
- Bones that attach to multiple points along another bone (CopyLocs, each with a different head/tail percentage)
- Bones that need to stretch to a point midway between specific spots on two other bones (old way: too crazy to mention; new way: stretch bone between points on end bones, then another stretch to the midpoint of the first stretch)
It is only used for the constraint types for which it is relevant: CopyLoc, TrackTo, StretchTo and MinMax, TrackTo, and Floor.
Notes:
- This is accessed by the Head/Tail number-slider.
- This value can be animated per constraint
- The old "Copy Bone Tail" option for the CopyLoc constraint has been automatically converted to 1.0 Head/Bone values for the affected constraints
- In the code, this value is in the bConstraint struct, so it is available for all constraints, even though only a few implement it.
Once again, I've recoded the constraints system. This time, the goals were:
* To make it more future-proof by 'modernising' the coding style. The long functions filled with switch statements, have given way to function-pointers with smaller functions for specific purposes.
* To make it support constraints which use multiple targets more readily that it did. In the past, it was assumed that constraints could only have at most one target.
As a result, a lot of code has been shuffled around, and modified. Also, the subversion number has been bumped up.
Known issues:
* PyConstraints, which were the main motivation for supporting multiple-targets, are currently broken. There are some bimport() error that keeps causing problems. I've also temporarily removed the doDriver support, although it may return in another form soon.
* Constraints BPy-API is currently has a few features which currently don't work yet
* Outliner currently only displays the names of the constraints instead of the fancy subtarget/target/constraint-name display it used to do. What gets displayed here needs further investigation, as the old way was certainly not that great (and is not compatible with the new system too)
Now there's an option for the owner to follow the path of the target cyclically. Previously, if the owner moved past the extents of the side of the bounding-box used for the calculations, the object was placed on the curve at the nearest extent.
This option is only really useful if the curve itself is cyclic, although you can still use it otherwise. To enable, just turn on the cyclic option.
This commit adds a new constraint to Blender: the Transformation Constraint. This constraint gives you more freedom to choose how transforms are copied from one object/bone to another object/bone.
You can assign the Loc/Rot/Scale channels of a source to the Loc/Rot/Scale channels of a destination, specifying the range of motion (per axis) from the source to consider, and the range of motion (per axis) that will be applied to the destination. Also, for each destination axis, you can choose which of the source axes to copy from.
A similar constraint was coded by Jason Blary (snark), as Patch #4991. This constraint is basically rewritten from scratch, although there are some elements of the original patch which may be borrowed in future.
Various notes:
* PyAPI access has been coded.
* Space conversion is also enabled for this constraint.
* Also the useless get_constraint_col function has been removed
* Doing a rotation copy with a ratio that is not 1:1 doesn't always work correctly yet (like for the Copy Rotation constraint).
Note: Visual Studio projectfiles and other buildsystems need to add extern/bullet2/src/BulletDynamics/ConstraintSolver/btConeTwistConstraint.cpp to the project!
After just over a week of coding, I've finished doing a major refactor/cleanup of the constraints code. In the process, quite a few old kludges and ugly hacks have been removed. Also, some new features which will greatly benefit riggers have been implemented.
=== What's New ===
* The long-awaited ``ChildOf Constraint'':
This allows you to animate parent influences, and choose which transformation channels the parent affects the child on (i.e. no translation/rotation/scaling). It should be noted that disabling some combinations may not totally work as expected. Also, the 'Set Inverse' and 'Clear Inverse' buttons at the bottom of this constraint's panel set/clear the inverse correction for the parent's effects. Use these to make the owner not stick/be glued to the parent.
* Constraint/Target Evaluation Spaces:
In some constraints, there are now 1-2 combo boxes at the bottom of their panel, which allows you to pick which `co-ordinate space' they are evaluated in. This is much more flexible than the old 'local' options for bones only were.
* Action Constraint - Loc/Rot/Size Inputs
The Action Constraint can finally use the target's location/rotation/scaling transforms as input, to control the owner of the constraint. This should work much more reliably than it used to. The target evaluation should now also be more accurate due to the new space conversion stuff.
* Transform - No longer in Crazy Space (TM)
Transforming objects/bones with constraints applied should no longer occur in Crazy Space. They are now correctly inverse-corrected. This also applies to old-style object tracking.
=== General Code Changes ===
* solve_constraints is now in constraints.c. I've removed the old `blend consecutive constraints of same type' junk, which made the code more complex than it needed to be.
* evaluate_constraint is now only passed the constraint, and two matrices. A few unused variables have been removed from here.
* A tempolary struct, bConstraintOb, is now passed to solve_constraints instead of relying on an ugly, static workobject in some cases. This works much better.
* Made the formatting of constraint code consistent
* There's a version patch for older files so that constraint settings are correctly converted to the new system. This is currently done for MajorVersion <= 244, and SubVersion < 3. I've bumped up the subversion to 3 for this purpose. However, with the imminent 2.45 release, this may need to be adjusted accordingly.
* LocEulSizeToMat4 and LocQuatSizeToMat4 now work in the order Size, Rot, Location. I've also added a few other math functions.
* Mat4BlendMat4 is now in arithb. I've modified it's method slightly, to use other arithb functions, instead of its crazy blending scheme.
* Moved some of the RigidBodyJoint constraint's code out of blenkernel, and into src. It shouldn't be setting its target in its data initialisation function based + accessing scene stuff where it was doing so.
=== Future Work ===
* Geometry to act as targets for constraints. A space has been reserved for this already.
* Tidy up UI buttons of constraints
At last! The ability to code constraints in Python. This opens up many interesting rigging possibilities, as well as making prototyping constraints easier.
* A PyConstraint script must begin with the line
#BPYCONSTRAINT
* It must also define a doConstraint function, which performs the core actions of the constraint.
* PyConstraints use IDProperties to store custom properties for each PyConstraint instance. The scripter can choose which of these ID-Properties to expose to a user to control the behaviour of the constraint. This must be done using the Draw.PupBlock method.
Credits to Joe Eager (joeedh) for coding the original patch on which this is based. I've made heavy revisions to large parts of the patch.
For more detailed information, and some demo scripts, see the following page:
http://aligorith.googlepages.com/pyconstraints2
This (new) constraint limits the location of an object/bone to the range of locations
on a given curve. It works by comparing the location of the owner on one axis, to
the extents of the curve's bounding-box on the same axis, to find the location on
the curve.
Usage Notes:
* 'Ob:' field must point to a valid curve object
* This curve should have 'Path' turned on in order for this constraint to work. You
don't really need to do this as it will be taken care of by the code.
* 'Auto' toggle automically determines which axis should be used for the distance estimations/calculations. It is the default option, but may not work that well for
some cases.
* X/Y/Z toggles can be used to select the axis to use for these calculations. Try
to choose the axis along which the curve stretches out for most.
Python Notes:
Python API access for this constraint is not included in this commit. Will be coming
soon.
Adding Python counterparts to the Invert params for Copy Rot and Copy Loc.
I had to align the constants being used, so if you had files using those options (introduced after 2.43), you'll have to modify the INVERT settings for ROTLIKE constraints (didn't feel like making a minor version bump for this, if people thing otherwise, please say so).
Based on a patch by Juho Vepsäläinen (bebraw)
Patch by Juho Vepsäläinen (bebraw)
[ #5850 ] Inverted axis' buttons to Copy Rotation and Copy Location constraints
This patch adds the options to invert the value being copied from each axis of the Copy Rot/Copy Loc constraints.
This commit also includes some slight code sanitization and tool tips cleanup (for the two track constraints, the tool tips were really unuseful).
Now it is possible to 'protect' action channels and constraint channels.
* When a channel is 'protected', the only operation possible on keyframes
is selection. All other operations are not able to be performed.
* The padlock to the right of each channel's name toggles the protection
status of that channel. You can only alter the protection status of one
channel at a time.
Todos:
* Menus still pop up when trying to do stuff to keyframes even if
all the keyframes selected are from protected channels.
* Shapekey channels shown in action editor should also get locks
Patch by Matthew Plough: This adds an option to the Track To constraint to use the target's Z axis for Up axis reference instead of the global Z axis.
Off by default for backward compat.
Although we will delay the main Rigid Body user interface after 2.43 release early 2007, I need some constraint data/UI to make progress with COLLADA Physics.
Added RigidBody constraint UI
LR_ALTKEY+LR_CTRLKEY+LR_SHIFTKEY+ P will bake rigidbody
Contribution by RCRuiz, Ramon Carlos.
* Removed un-needed cases for limit loc/rot/scale constraints from expand_constraints, which caused a few compiler warnings
* Removed an odd character in one of the comments for constraints. (Hopefully there wasn't any specific reason why it had to be there)
feature. Old files that had "sticky" set would not show "sticky" under
the new system. Not that anyone ever actually used "sticky".
Also, these commits only add support for rotated external target objects,
not target bones inside the same armature.
making it much more useful. Requested and taunted for frequently by
Plumiferos folks. Click on "Use Rot" to take target object rotations
into account.
Good for using rotated empties, etc., as a sloped floor.
Made the frame boost from short to int (30000 -> 300000 frames) complete
by walking through the source and finally changing all frame-variables
to ints.
This should finally fix the framecounter warp around seen in some buttons.
If you step on any further problems that may arise starting from frame
32768 please just give me a hint and I'll fix it.
(Sorry about that, didn't know enough about Blender, when I did it the first
time...)
At long last!
This new constraint is pretty simple. Following in the footsteps of such giants as Copy Loc and Copy Rot, it lets you constrain the size of an object/bone to another object/bone, with per axis restrictions.
The locality is restricted to action or user-transform only. Or as it goes
in the code now: by setting a constraint local, it executes the constraint
before it calculates the influence of Action or user transforms.
ALso note that this works in Evil Eulerians. Meaning that when you only
want to copy the X,Y or Z compenent of a euler, it can give unpredictable
results when the other euler values are set, this because euler axis
rotations work on top of each other.
1) Target-less IK
If you add an IK constraint without a target set (no object or bone target),
it now can be grabbed and moved with IK, using its own Bone tip or root as
target itself. This way you can use IK for posing, without having the IK
executed while it animates or while a Pose is being solved for real IK.
After grabbing "Target-less IK", it applies the resulted motion in the
pose-channels, which then can be used to insert keypositions.
The Target-less IK bone can still be rotated without IK, also its chain
can be edited as usual.
UI: The CTRL+I menu gives this as an option too. In the 3D window it is
drawn with orangish color.
Note that IK is not resistant to non-uniform scaling yet.
2) Auto-IK
When the option "Automatic IK" is set, in Edit Buttons Armature Panel,
it creates automatic temporal Target-less IK for the Bone you grab or
translate.
The rules are:
- it only works when a single Bone is selected
- if the Bone is a root bone (no parent), it adds IK to the end of the
chain(s)
- otherwise it adds the IK to the active Bone
- the temporal IK chain only consists of connected Bones.
This method is still a bit experimental. Maybe it should become a special
grabbing option (like SHIFT+G in Pose Mode). It also only works OK for rigs
that fit for it well... when a rig already is fully setup with IK it can't
do much good. :)
Minor modifications to simplify the code in evaluate_constraint.
The "Stick" feature will need more work as it gives bad results when skipping frames, jumping around on the timeline and when going backward in time.
Suggestion: Would be nice if it could use the local space too, not just global space planes.
Best is to forget yesterday's commit and old docs. New docs are underway...
Here's how IK works now;
- IK chains can go all the way to the furthest parent Bone. Disregarding
the old option "IK to Parent" and disgregarding whether a Bone has an
offset to its parent (offsets now work for IK, so you can also make
T-bones).
- The old "IK to Parent" option now only does what it should do: it denotes
whether a Bone is directly connected to a Parent Bone, or not.
In the UI and in code this option is now called "Connected".
- You can also define yourself which Bone will become the "Root" for an IK
chain. This can be any Parent of the IK tip (where the IK constraint is).
By default it goes all the way, unless you set a value for the new IK
Constraint Panel option "Chain Lenght".
- "Tree IK" now is detected automatic, when multiple IK Roots are on the
same Bone, and when there's a branched structure.
Multiple IK's on a single chain (no branches) is still executed as usual,
doing the IK's sequentially.
- Note: Branched structures, with _partial_ overlapping IK chains, that don't
share the same Root will possibly disconnect branches.
- When you select a Bone with IK, it now draws a yellow dashed line to its
Root.
- The IK options "Location Weight" and "Rotation Weight" are relative,
in case there's a Tree IK structure. These weights cannot be set to
zero. To animate or disable IK Targets, use the "Influence" slider.
- This new IK is backwards and upwards compatible for Blender files.
Of course, the new features won't show in older Blender binaries! :)
Other changes & notes;
- In PoseMode, the Constraint Panel now also draws in Editing Buttons, next
to the Bones Panel.
- IK Constraint Panel was redesigned... it's still a bit squished
- Buttons "No X DoF" is now called "Lock X". This to follow convention to
name options positive.
- Added Undo push for Make/Clear Parent in Editmode Armature
- Use CTRL+P "Make Parent" on a single selected Bone to make it become
connected (ALT+P had already "Disconnect").
On todo next; Visualizing & review of Bone DoF limits and stiffness
- Removed old convention that only allowed one "IK" connection for Bones
in a joint. Was highly frustrating for editing trees or branches.
In a next commit, there will be a different method to define IK target
and IK root, so this option actually will become "Connect Bone" or so.
- the IK group name is gone, now is just an option "Tree IK". When IK
chains share a root they'll form a tree.
Todo is preventing conflicts here (will be for editor to define IK Root)
- Adding new IK constraint with CTRL+I activates Constraint
Full logs for changes will be added later. Worth to note now;
- support for 'tree IK' added
- DOF and stiffness per IK bone (in pose only)
- Orientation IK support (target rotates -> chain follows)
This is still WIP. Buttons might change, button ranges will change, and the
way 'IK groups' are working will change. You can play with this, but don't
expect saved files to work still by end of this day! :)
Main target was cleanup of editconstraint.c and removal of the ugly
ob->activecon (active constraint channel), which was set by the "Show"
button in the Constraint Panel.
Better is to introduce an 'Active Constraint' itself, which stores in
the Constraint itself. By using this setting, and by checking the active
Bone, the UI can update reliably now. This only shows now in IpoWindow
btw (for constraint ipos). The active Constraint is drawn in the Buttons
with a slightly brighter backdrop. Any action in that Panel selects a
constraint now (even click in backdrop).
So now we have pose channels & constraint channels nicely behaving. Now the
darn Action channels... :)
Further in this commit:
- interface.c: Button ROUNDBOX now does button callback too.
Button NUMSLI didn't do the callback on a click only
- Cleaned up include files in yafray, got annoyed it compiled over all the
time.
- removed unused variables from Constraint struct
- switched almost all uiDefBut(..., TOG|BIT|..) to use UiDefButBit and the
name of the actual bit define instead of just a magic constant, this makes
searching the code much nicer. most of the credit here goes to LetterRip
who did almost all of the conversions, I mostly just checked them over.
- Added option to the IK buttons, to have it use the 'tip' as end of the
IK chain. I never really understood this old convention (IK didn't work
on the Bone itself).
Old files still will read OK though. But I made the "To Tip" a default
when adding new IK constraints.
- Hotkey CTRL+I: add IK, with option to have it adding an Empty target,
or use a selected Bone as target. With the new non-modal PoseMode, it
gives instant access to playing with the IK chain.
- Hotkey ALT+I: clears IK, on all selected Bones
- Hotkey ALT+C: clears Constraints on all selected Bones (incl IK)
it used the 'global' (Pose Space) rotation to define the action timing.
That was of course hardly useful, reason for many weird patched rigs.
Nevertheless, sometimes it can be useful, and it's nice to see old files
nicely work still. So: "Local" is an option now.
Note: if you changed last week files because of the new action constraint,
set the new "Local" option in the object-buttons Constraint panel.
Aim was to get a total refresh of the animation system. This
is needed because;
- we need to upgrade it with 21st century features
- current code is spaghetti/hack combo, and hides good design
- it should become lag-free with using dependency graphs
A full log, with complete code API/structure/design explanation
will follow, that's a load of work... so here below the list with
hot changes;
- The entire object update system (matrices, geometry) is now
centralized. Calls to where_is_object and makeDispList are
forbidden, instead we tag objects 'changed' and let the
depgraph code sort it out
- Removed all old "Ika" code
- Depgraph is aware of all relationships, including meta balls,
constraints, bevelcurve, and so on.
- Made depgraph aware of relation types and layers, to do smart
flushing of 'changed' events. Nothing gets calculated too often!
- Transform uses depgraph to detect changes
- On frame-advance, depgraph flushes animated changes
Armatures;
Almost all armature related code has been fully built from scratch.
It now reveils the original design much better, with a very clean
implementation, lag free without even calculating each Bone more than
once. Result is quite a speedup yes!
Important to note is;
1) Armature is data containing the 'rest position'
2) Pose is the changes of rest position, and always on object level.
That way more Objects can use same Pose. Also constraints are in Pose
3) Actions only contain the Ipos to change values in Poses.
- Bones draw unrotated now
- Drawing bones speedup enormously (10-20 times)
- Bone selecting in EditMode, selection state is saved for PoseMode,
and vice-versa
- Undo in editmode
- Bone renaming does vertexgroups, constraints, posechannels, actions,
for all users of Armature in entire file
- Added Bone renaming in NKey panel
- Nkey PoseMode shows eulers now
- EditMode and PoseMode now have 'active' bone too (last clicked)
- Parenting in EditMode' CTRL+P, ALT+P, with nice options!
- Pose is added in Outliner now, with showing that constraints are in
the Pose, not Armature
- Disconnected IK solving from constraints. It's a separate phase now,
on top of the full Pose calculations
- Pose itself has a dependency graph too, so evaluation order is lag free.
TODO NOW;
- Rotating in Posemode has incorrect inverse transform (Martin will fix)
- Python Bone/Armature/Pose API disabled... needs full recode too
(wait for my doc!)
- Game engine will need upgrade too
- Depgraph code needs revision, cleanup, can be much faster!
(But, compliments for Jean-Luc, it works like a charm!)
- IK changed, it now doesnt use previous position to advance to next
position anymore. That system looks nice (no flips) but is not well
suited for NLA and background render.
TODO LATER;
We now can do loadsa new nifty features as well; like:
- Kill PoseMode (can be option for armatures itself)
- Make B-Bones (Bezier, Bspline, like for spines)
- Move all silly button level edit to 3d window (like CTRL+I = add
IK)
- Much better & informative drawing
- Fix action/nla editors
- Put all ipos in Actions (object, mesh key, lamp color)
- Add hooks
- Null bones
- Much more advanced constraints...
Bugfixes;
- OGL render (view3d header) had wrong first frame on anim render
- Ipo 'recording' mode had wrong playback speed
- Vertex-key mode now sticks to show 'active key', until frame change
-Ton-
Read today's meeting minutes for a description.
Bjornmose: We'll need some example and screenshots for the dev pages of blender3d.org. If you can do some, neat, if not, I'll do them.
Matt, Emilie and Chris: Please review UI addition. Pixel alignement and all that fun stuff has not be overly looked for (though I did some cleaning by adding alignment blocks).
[SCons] Build with Solid as default when enabling the gameengine in the build process
[SCons] Build solid and qhull from the extern directory and link statically against them
That was about it.
There are a few things that needs double checking:
* Makefiles
* Projectfiles
* All the other systems than Linux and Windows on which the build (with scons) has been successfully tested.
Fixed by checking the object type and changing the up and track axis accordingly.
Also added some comments in the DNA file (recompiling makedna because of comments is fun!)
This is a temporary fix, but a complete fix will require a rewrite of of some part of the where_is_object function, and that would take too much time before 2.31.
Axis options for TrackTo
LockTrack
FollowPath
Auto creation of TrackTo constraint from Ctrl-T (old track still an option)
Auto creation of FollowPath when parenting to path (Normal parent still an option)
Backward compatibility stuff to convert the per object axis settings to per constraint when a Track constraint is present.
Function to convert old track to constraint (commented out)
Revamped the constraints interface with Matt's work from tuhopuu and the stuff we were discussing earlier.
--------------------
For coders:
unique_constraint_name and *new_constraint_data moved to the kernel (constraint.c)
new Projf function in arithb gives the projection of a vector on another vector
add_new_constraint now takes a constraint type (int) parameter
add_constraint_to_object(bConstraint *con, Object *ob) to link a constraint to an object
add_constraint_to_client(bConstraint *con) to link constraint to current client (object or bone)
add_influence_key_to_constraint (bConstraint *con) to (eventually) add a keyframe to the influence IPO of a constraint
(adding)
#ifdef HAVE_CONFIG_H
#include <config.h>
#endif
also the Makefile.in's were from previous patch adding
the system depend stuff to configure.ac
Kent
--
mein@cs.umn.edu
Joshua Leung
Ton Roosendaal
Brecht Van Lommel
Erwin Coumans
Martin Poirier
Roland Hess
Peter Schlaile
Daniel Dunbar
Jens Ole Wund
Nathan Letwory
Kent Mein