2.5: Blender "Animato" - New Animation System

Finally, here is the basic (functional) prototype of the new animation system which will allow for the infamous "everything is animatable", and which also addresses several of the more serious shortcomings of the old system. Unfortunately, this will break old animation files (especially right now, as I haven't written the version patching code yet), however, this is for the future.

Highlights of the new system:
* Scrapped IPO-Curves/IPO/(Action+Constraint-Channels)/Action system, and replaced it with F-Curve/Action. 
- F-Curves (animators from other packages will feel at home with this name) replace IPO-Curves. 
- The 'new' Actions, act as the containers for F-Curves, so that they can be reused. They are therefore more akin to the old 'IPO' blocks, except they do not have the blocktype restriction, so you can store materials/texture/geometry F-Curves in the same Action as Object transforms, etc.
* F-Curves use RNA-paths for Data Access, hence allowing "every" (where sensible/editable that is) user-accessible setting from RNA to be animated.
* Drivers are no longer mixed with Animation Data, so rigs will not be that easily broken and several dependency problems can be eliminated. (NOTE: drivers haven't been hooked up yet, but the code is in place)
* F-Curve modifier system allows useful 'large-scale' manipulation of F-Curve values, including (I've only included implemented ones here): envelope deform (similar to lattices to allow broad-scale reshaping of curves), curve generator (polynomial or py-expression), cycles (replacing the old cyclic extrapolation modes, giving more control over this). (NOTE: currently this cannot be tested, as there's not access to them, but the code is all in place)
* NLA system with 'tracks' (i.e. layers), and multiple strips per track. (NOTE: NLA system is not yet functional, as it's only partially coded still) 

There are more nice things that I will be preparing some nice docs for soon, but for now, check for more details:
http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-taskforce25/2009-January/000260.html

So, what currently works:
* I've implemented two basic operators for the 3D-view only to Insert and Delete Keyframes. These are tempolary ones only that will be replaced in due course with 'proper' code.
* Object Loc/Rot/Scale can be keyframed. Also, the colour of the 'active' material (Note: this should really be for nth material instead, but that doesn't work yet in RNA) can also be keyframed into the same datablock.
* Standard animation refresh (i.e. animation resulting from NLA and Action evaluation) is now done completely separate from drivers before anything else is done after a frame change. Drivers are handled after this in a separate pass, as dictated by depsgraph flags, etc.

Notes:
* Drivers haven't been hooked up yet
* Only objects and data directly linked to objects can be animated.
* Depsgraph will need further tweaks. Currently, I've only made sure that it will update some things in the most basic cases (i.e. frame change).
* Animation Editors are currently broken (in terms of editing stuff). This will be my next target (priority to get Dopesheet working first, then F-Curve editor - i.e. old IPO Editor)
* I've had to put in large chunks of XXX sandboxing for old animation system code all around the place. This will be cleaned up in due course, as some places need special review.
In particular, the particles and sequencer code have far too many manual calls to calculate + flush animation info, which is really bad (this is a 'please explain yourselves' call to Physics coders!).

1 files changed, 21 insertions, 43 deletions

diff --git a/source/blender/blenkernel/BKE_action.h b/source/blender/blenkernel/BKE_action.h
index 11e2b828436..444a97364ab 100644
--- a/source/blender/blenkernel/BKE_action.h
+++ b/source/blender/blenkernel/BKE_action.h
@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@
  * All rights reserved.
  *
  * Contributor(s): Full recode, Ton Roosendaal, Crete 2005
+ *				Full recode, Joshua Leung, 2009
  *
  * ***** END GPL LICENSE BLOCK *****
  */
@@ -36,11 +37,10 @@
 #include "DNA_listBase.h"
 
 /**
- * The following structures are defined in DNA_action_types.h
+ * The following structures are defined in DNA_action_types.h, and DNA_anim_types.h
  */
 
-struct bAction;
-struct bActionChannel;
+struct nAction;
 struct bPose;
 struct bPoseChannel;
 struct Object;
@@ -52,7 +52,23 @@ struct ID;
 extern "C" {
 #endif
 
-struct bAction *add_empty_action(const char name[]);
+struct nAction *add_empty_action(const char name[]);
+	
+	/**
+ * Allocate a new bAction on the heap and copy 
+ * the contents of src into it. If src is NULL NULL is returned.
+ */
+
+struct nAction *copy_action(struct nAction *src);
+
+/**
+ * Deallocate the action's channels including constraint channels.
+ * does not free the action structure.
+ */
+void free_action(struct nAction *act);
+
+// XXX is this needed?
+void make_local_action(struct nAction *act);
 	
 /**
  * Removes and deallocates all channels from a pose.
@@ -72,18 +88,6 @@ void free_pose(struct bPose *pose);
 void copy_pose(struct bPose **dst, struct bPose *src,
 			   int copyconstraints);
 
-/**
- * Deallocate the action's channels including constraint channels.
- * does not free the action structure.
- */
-void free_action(struct bAction * id);
-
-void make_local_action(struct bAction *act);
-
-/* only for armatures, doing pose actions only too */
-void do_all_pose_actions(struct Scene *scene, struct Object *);
-/* only for objects, doing only 1 channel */
-void do_all_object_actions(struct Scene *scene, struct Object *);
 
 
 /**
@@ -114,13 +118,6 @@ void update_pose_constraint_flags(struct bPose *pose);
 void framechange_poses_clear_unkeyed(void);
 
 /**
- * Allocate a new bAction on the heap and copy 
- * the contents of src into it. If src is NULL NULL is returned.
- */
-
-struct bAction *copy_action(struct bAction *src);
-
-/**
  * Some kind of bounding box operation on the action.
  */
 void calc_action_range(const struct bAction *act, float *start, float *end, int incl_hidden);
@@ -135,22 +132,6 @@ void extract_pose_from_action(struct bPose *pose, struct bAction *act, float cti
  */
 void what_does_obaction(struct Scene *scene, struct Object *ob, struct Object *workob, struct bAction *act, float cframe);
 
-/**
- * Iterate through the action channels of the action
- * and return the channel with the given name.
- * Returns NULL if no channel.
- */
-struct bActionChannel *get_action_channel(struct bAction *act,  const char *name);
-/**
- * Iterate through the action channels of the action
- * and return the channel with the given name.
- * Returns and adds new channel if no channel.
- */
-struct bActionChannel *verify_action_channel(struct bAction *act, const char *name);
-
-  /* baking */
-struct bAction *bake_obIPO_to_action(struct Object *ob);
-
 /* exported for game engine */
 void blend_poses(struct bPose *dst, struct bPose *src, float srcweight, short mode);
 void extract_pose_from_pose(struct bPose *pose, const struct bPose *src);
@@ -164,10 +145,7 @@ void rest_pose(struct bPose *pose);
 float get_action_frame(struct Object *ob, float cframe);
 /* map strip time to global time (frame nr)  */
 float get_action_frame_inv(struct Object *ob, float cframe);
-/* builds a list of NlaIpoChannel with ipo values to write in datablock */
-void extract_ipochannels_from_action(ListBase *lb, struct ID *id, struct bAction *act, const char *name, float ctime);
-/* write values returned by extract_ipochannels_from_action, returns the number of value written */
-int execute_ipochannels(ListBase *lb);
+
 
 /* functions used by the game engine */
 void game_copy_pose(struct bPose **dst, struct bPose *src);