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A virtual array is a data structure that is similar to a normal array
in that its elements can be accessed by an index. However, a virtual
array does not have to be a contiguous array internally. Instead, its
elements can be layed out arbitrarily while element access happens
through a virtual function call. However, the virtual array data
structures are designed so that the virtual function call can be avoided
in cases where it could become a bottleneck.
Most commonly, a virtual array is backed by an actual array/span or
is a single value internally, that is the same for every index.
Besides those, there are many more specialized virtual arrays like the
ones that provides vertex positions based on the `MVert` struct or
vertex group weights.
Not all attributes used by geometry nodes are stored in simple contiguous
arrays. To provide uniform access to all kinds of attributes, the attribute
API has to provide virtual array functionality that hides the implementation
details of attributes.
Before this refactor, the attribute API provided its own virtual array
implementation as part of the `ReadAttribute` and `WriteAttribute` types.
That resulted in unnecessary code duplication with the virtual array system.
Even worse, it bound many algorithms used by geometry nodes to the specifics
of the attribute API, even though they could also use different data sources
(such as data from sockets, default values, later results of expressions, ...).
This refactor removes the `ReadAttribute` and `WriteAttribute` types and
replaces them with `GVArray` and `GVMutableArray` respectively. The `GV`
stands for "generic virtual". The "generic" means that the data type contained
in those virtual arrays is only known at run-time. There are the corresponding
statically typed types `VArray<T>` and `VMutableArray<T>` as well.
No regressions are expected from this refactor. It does come with one
improvement for users. The attribute API can convert the data type
on write now. This is especially useful when writing to builtin attributes
like `material_index` with e.g. the Attribute Math node (which usually
just writes to float attributes, while `material_index` is an integer attribute).
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D10994
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Previously, the spreadsheet editor could only show data of the original
and of the final evaluated object. Now it is possible to show the data
at some intermediate stages too.
For that the mode has to be set to "Node" in the spreadsheet editor.
Furthermore, the preview of a specific node has to be activated by
clicking the new icon in the header of geometry nodes.
The exact ui of this feature might be refined in upcoming commits.
It is already very useful for debugging node groups in it's current
state though.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D10875
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There isn't really a reason for not supporting it.
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After further thought, the implementation of the "normal" attribute
from D10541 is not the best approach to expose this data, mainly
because it blindly copied existing design rather than using the
best method in the context of the generalized attribute system.
In Blender, vertex normals are simply a cache of the average normals
from the surrounding / connected faces. Because we have automatic
interpolation between domains already, we don't need a special
`vertex_normal` attribute for this case, we can just let the
generalized interpolation do the hard work where necessary,
simplifying the set of built-in attributes to only include the
`normal` attribute from faces.
The fact that vertex normals are just a cache also raised another
issue, because the cache could be dirty, so mutex locks were
necessary to calculate normals. That isn't necessarily a problem,
but it's nice to avoid where possible.
Another downside of the current attribute naming is that after the
point distribute node there would be two normal attributes.
This commit reverts the `vertex_normal` attribute so that
it can be replaced by the implementation in D10677.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D10676
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This allows us to use it in rna for the spreadsheet editor.
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Currently the implementations specific to each geometry type are in
the same file. This makes it difficult to tell which code is generic
for all component types and which is specific to a certain type.
The two files, `attribute_access.cc`, and `geometry_set.cc` are
also getting quite long.
This commit splits up the implementation for every geometry component,
and adds an internal header file for the common parts of the attribute
access code. This was discussed with Jacques Lucke.
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