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, 100 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/source/blender/blenkernel/BKE_fcurve.h b/source/blender/blenkernel/BKE_fcurve.h
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..82914cbfd59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/source/blender/blenkernel/BKE_fcurve.h
@@ -0,0 +1,100 @@
+/* Testing code for new animation system in 2.5 
+ * Copyright 2009, Joshua Leung
+ */
+
+#ifndef BKE_FCURVE_H
+#define BKE_FCURVE_H
+
+//struct ListBase;
+struct FCurve;
+struct FModifier;
+struct ChannelDriver;
+struct BezTriple;
+
+/* ************** Keyframe Tools ***************** */
+
+// XXX this stuff is defined in BKE_ipo.h too, so maybe skip for now?
+typedef struct CfraElem {
+	struct CfraElem *next, *prev;
+	float cfra;
+	int sel;
+} CfraElem;
+
+void bezt_add_to_cfra_elem(ListBase *lb, struct BezTriple *bezt);
+
+/* ************** F-Curve Drivers ***************** */
+
+void fcurve_free_driver(struct FCurve *fcu);
+
+/* ************** F-Curve Modifiers *************** */
+
+/* F-Curve Modifier Type-Info (fmi):
+ *  This struct provides function pointers for runtime, so that functions can be
+ *  written more generally (with fewer/no special exceptions for various modifiers).
+ *
+ *  Callers of these functions must check that they actually point to something useful,
+ *  as some constraints don't define some of these.
+ *
+ *  Warning: it is not too advisable to reorder order of members of this struct,
+ *			as you'll have to edit quite a few ($FMODIFIER_NUM_TYPES) of these
+ *			structs.
+ */
+typedef struct FModifierTypeInfo {
+	/* admin/ident */
+	short type;				/* FMODIFIER_TYPE_### */
+	short size;				/* size in bytes of the struct */
+	char name[32]; 			/* name of modifier in interface */
+	char structName[32];	/* name of struct for SDNA */
+	
+	/* data management function pointers - special handling */
+		/* free any data that is allocated separately (optional) */
+	void (*free_data)(struct FModifier *fcm);
+		/* copy any special data that is allocated separately (optional) */
+	void (*copy_data)(struct FModifier *fcm, struct FModifier *src);
+		/* set settings for data that will be used for FCuModifier.data (memory already allocated using MEM_callocN) */
+	void (*new_data)(void *mdata);
+	
+	/* evaluation */
+		/* evaluate the modifier for the given time and 'accumulated' value */
+	void (*evaluate_modifier)(struct FCurve *fcu, struct FModifier *fcm, float *cvalue, float evaltime);
+} FModifierTypeInfo;
+
+/* Function Prototypes for FModifierTypeInfo's */
+FModifierTypeInfo *fmodifier_get_typeinfo(struct FModifier *fcm);
+FModifierTypeInfo *get_fmodifier_typeinfo(int type);
+
+/* ---------------------- */
+
+// TODO... general API here..
+struct FModifier *fcurve_add_modifier(struct FCurve *fcu, int type);
+void fcurve_copy_modifiers(ListBase *dst, ListBase *src);
+void fcurve_remove_modifier(struct FCurve *fcu, struct FModifier *fcm);
+void fcurve_free_modifiers(struct FCurve *fcu);
+void fcurve_bake_modifiers(struct FCurve *fcu, int start, int end);
+
+/* ************** F-Curves API ******************** */
+
+/* -------- Data Managemnt  --------  */
+
+void free_fcurve(struct FCurve *fcu);
+struct FCurve *copy_fcurve(struct FCurve *fcu);
+
+/* find matching F-Curve in the given list of F-Curves */
+struct FCurve *list_find_fcurve(ListBase *list, const char rna_path[], const int array_index);
+
+/* -------- Curve Sanity --------  */
+
+void calchandles_fcurve(struct FCurve *fcu);
+void testhandles_fcurve(struct FCurve *fcu);
+void sort_time_fcurve(struct FCurve *fcu);
+short test_time_fcurve(struct FCurve *fcu);
+
+/* -------- Evaluation --------  */
+
+/* evaluate fcurve */
+float evaluate_fcurve(struct FCurve *fcu, float evaltime);
+/* evaluate fcurve and store value */
+void calculate_fcurve(struct FCurve *fcu, float ctime);
+
+
+#endif /* BKE_FCURVE_H*/