OVERVIEW
* In 2.7 terminology, all layers and groups are now collection datablocks.
* These collections are nestable, linkable, instanceable, overrideable, ..
which opens up new ways to set up scenes and link + override data.
* Viewport/render visibility and selectability are now a part of the collection
and shared across all view layers and linkable.
* View layers define which subset of the scene collection hierarchy is excluded
for each. For many workflows one view layer can be used, these are more of an
advanced feature now.
OUTLINER
* The outliner now has a "View Layer" display mode instead of "Collections",
which can display the collections and/or objects in the view layer.
* In this display mode, collections can be excluded with the right click menu.
These will then be greyed out and their objects will be excluded.
* To view collections not linked to any scene, the "Blender File" display mode
can be used, with the new filtering option to just see Colleciton datablocks.
* The outliner right click menus for collections and objects were reorganized.
* Drag and drop still needs to be improved. Like before, dragging the icon or
text gives different results, we'll unify this later.
LINKING AND OVERRIDES
* Collections can now be linked into the scene without creating an instance,
with the link/append operator or from the collections view in the outliner.
* Collections can get static overrides with the right click menu in the outliner,
but this is rather unreliable and not clearly communicated at the moment.
* We still need to improve the make override operator to turn collection instances
into collections with overrides directly in the scene.
PERFORMANCE
* We tried to make performance not worse than before and improve it in some
cases. The main thing that's still a bit slower is multiple scenes, we have to
change the layer syncing to only updated affected scenes.
* Collections keep a list of their parent collections for faster incremental
updates in syncing and caching.
* View layer bases are now in a object -> base hash to avoid quadratic time
lookups internally and in API functions like visible_get().
VERSIONING
* Compatibility with 2.7 files should be improved due to the new visibility
controls. Of course users may not want to set up their scenes differently
now to avoid having separate layers and groups.
* Compatibility with 2.8 is mostly there, and was tested on Eevee demo and Hero
files. There's a few things which are know to be not quite compatible, like
nested layer collections inside groups.
* The versioning code for 2.8 files is quite complicated, and isolated behind
#ifdef so it can be removed at the end of the release cycle.
KNOWN ISSUES
* The G-key group operators in the 3D viewport were left mostly as is, they
need to be modified still to fit better.
* Same for the groups panel in the object properties. This needs to be updated
still, or perhaps replaced by something better.
* Collections must all have a unique name. Less restrictive namespacing is to
be done later, we'll have to see how important this is as all objects within
the collections must also have a unique name anyway.
* Full scene copy and delete scene are exactly doing the right thing yet.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D3383https://code.blender.org/2018/05/collections-and-groups/
Brecht authored this commit, but he gave me the honours to actually
do it. Here it goes; Blender Internal. Bye bye, you did great!
* Point density, voxel data, ocean, environment map textures were removed,
as these only worked within BI rendering. Note that the ocean modifier
and the Cycles point density shader node continue to work.
* Dynamic paint using material shading was removed, as this only worked
with BI. If we ever wanted to support this again probably it should go
through the baking API.
* GPU shader export through the Python API was removed. This only worked
for the old BI GLSL shaders, which no longer exists. Doing something
similar for Eevee would be significantly more complicated because it
uses a lot of multiplass rendering and logic outside the shader, it's
probably impractical.
* Collada material import / export code is mostly gone, as it only worked
for BI materials. We need to add Cycles / Eevee material support at some
point.
* The mesh noise operator was removed since it only worked with BI
material texture slots. A displacement modifier can be used instead.
* The delete texture paint slot operator was removed since it only worked
for BI material texture slots. Could be added back with node support.
* Not all legacy viewport features are supported in the new viewport, but
their code was removed. If we need to bring anything back we can look at
older git revisions.
* There is some legacy viewport code that I could not remove yet, and some
that I probably missed.
* Shader node execution code was left mostly intact, even though it is not
used anywhere now. We may eventually use this to replace the texture
nodes with Cycles / Eevee shader nodes.
* The Cycles Bake panel now includes settings for baking multires normal
and displacement maps. The underlying code needs to be merged properly,
and we plan to add back support for multires AO baking and add support
to Cycles baking for features like vertex color, displacement, and other
missing baking features.
* This commit removes DNA and the Python API for BI material, lamp, world
and scene settings. This breaks a lot of addons.
* There is more DNA that can be removed or renamed, where Cycles or Eevee
are reusing some old BI properties but the names are not really correct
anymore.
* Texture slots for materials, lamps and world were removed. They remain
for brushes, particles and freestyle linestyles.
* 'BLENDER_RENDER' remains in the COMPAT_ENGINES of UI panels. Cycles and
other renderers use this to find all panels to show, minus a few panels
that they have their own replacement for.
Folders removed entirely:
* //extern/recastnavigation
* //intern/decklink
* //intern/moto
* //source/blender/editors/space_logic
* //source/blenderplayer
* //source/gameengine
This includes DNA data and any reference to the BGE code in Blender itself.
We are bumping the subversion.
Pending tasks:
* Tile/clamp code in image editor draw code.
* Viewport drawing code (so much of this will go away because of BI removal
that we can wait until then to remove this.
- Undo that changes modes currently asserts,
since undo is now screen data.
Most likely we will change how object mode and workspaces work
since it's not practical/maintainable at the moment.
- Removed view_layer from particle settings
(wasn't needed and complicated undo).
- The common name in computer science are 'getters' and 'setters', so by
adding these names to the documentation (while 'get' and 'set are still
also mentioned) we improve findability. Having 'Getters/Setters' as a
title also makes it clearer that this example is not just about
getting or setting the property value.
- Added a little prefix to each printed value, so that print statement,
expected output, and real output can be matched easier.
The old example had two downsides:
- It promoted a blocking UI design, where the user is shown a popup
before actually executing the operator.
- It didn't show how to actually use the property values.
The new code avoids these mistakes. The properties are also shown in the
redo panel in the 3D view.
Note that I also changed the bl_idname, as this is an example about
properties, not about dialogue boxes, and changed the class name to use
the standard operator naming convention.
I also extended the example to include a panel that sets multiple
properties of the operator, since I see questions about this relatively
frequently.
