The particle data used by the Particle Info node was stored in cycles as a list in each object. This is a problem when the particle emitter mesh is hidden: Objects in cycles are only intended as instances of renderable meshes, so when hiding the emitter mesh the particle data doesn't get stored either. Also the particle data can potentially be copied to multiple instances of the same object, which is a waste of texture space.
The solution in this patch is to make a completely separate list of particle systems in the Cycles scene data. This way the particle data can be generated even when the emitter object itself is not visible.
The particle data is stored in a separate texture if any of the dupli objects uses particle info nodes in shaders. To map dupli objects onto particles the store an additional particle_index value, which is different from the simple dupli object index (only visible particles, also works for particle dupli groups mode).
Some simple use cases on the code.blender.org blog:
http://code.blender.org/index.php/2012/05/particle-info-node/
pass index, and a random number unique to the instance of the object.
This can be useful to give some variation to a single material assigned to
multiple instances, either manually controlled through the object index, based
on the object location, or randomized for each instance.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Nodes/More#Object_Info
Most of the changes are related to adding support for motion data throughout
the code. There's some code for actual camera/object motion blur raytracing
but it's unfinished (it badly slows down the raytracing kernel even when the
option is turned off), so that code it disabled still.
Motion vector export from Blender tries to avoid computing derived meshes
when the mesh does not have a deforming modifier, and it also won't store
motion vectors for every vertex if only the object or camera is moving.
Currently supported passes:
* Combined, Z, Normal, Object Index, Material Index, Emission, Environment,
Diffuse/Glossy/Transmission x Direct/Indirect/Color
Not supported yet:
* UV, Vector, Mist
Only enabled for CPU devices at the moment, will do GPU tweaks tommorrow,
also for environment importance sampling.
Documentation:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Passes
* Add max diffuse/glossy/transmission bounces
* Add separate min/max for transparent depth
* Updated/added some presets that use these options
* Add ray visibility options for objects, to hide them from
camera/diffuse/glossy/transmission/shadow rays
* Is singular ray output for light path node
Details here:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.5/Source/Render/Cycles/LightPaths
