Change Details

This is mostly a hack to test the Cycles Alembic procedural until we have a better Blender side mechanism for letting renderers load their own geometry. It is only enabled when the Cycles Experimental feature set is enabled, and only works for viewport rendering. An Alembic Procedural is created for each CacheFile from Blender, and each Blender object having a MeshSequenceCache modifier is added to list of objects of the right procedural. The procedural's parameters derive from the CacheFile's properties. As data is not persistent for final renders and since we load all the data at the begining of the render session, the procedural is only available during viewport renders at the moment. When an Alembic procedural is rendered, data from the archive are not read on the Blender side. Ref T79174, D3089 Depends on D10196

This patch exposes the Cycles Alembic Procedural through the MeshSequenceCache modifier in order to use and test it from Blender. To enable it, one has to switch the render feature set to experimental and activate the Procedural in the modifier. An Alembic Procedural is then created for each CacheFile from Blender set to use the Procedural, and each Blender object having a MeshSequenceCache modifier is added to list of objects of the right procedural. The procedural's parameters derive from the CacheFile's properties which are already exposed in the UI through the modifier, although more Cycles specific options might be added in the future. As there is currently no cache controls and since we load all the data at the beginning of the render session, the procedural is only available during viewport renders at the moment. When an Alembic procedural is rendered, data from the archive are not read on the Blender side. This is mostly a hack to test the Cycles Alembic procedural until we have a better Blender side mechanism for letting renderers load their own geometry, which will be based on import and export settings on Collections (T68933). Also included in this patch, although it will committed separately, is a setting to always add a cache reader (either a MeshSequenceCache modifier or a Transform Cache constraint) to the objects created from an Alembic archive. This setting is mostly useful to reload every object from the archive when it is updated without having to resort to re-importing the entire scene, but it is also used here to ensure that every object created from Alembic will be rendered through the Procedural. Ref T79174, D3089 Depends on D10196

This is mostly a hack to test the Cycles Alembic procedural until we have a better Blender side mechanism for letting renderers load their own geometry. It is only enabled whenThis patch exposes the Cycles Experimental feature set is enabled, andAlembic Procedural through the MeshSequenceCache only works for viewport rmodifier in order to use and test it from Blendering. To enable it, one has to switch the render feature set to experimental and activate the Procedural in the modifier. An Alembic Procedural is then created for each CacheFile from Blender set to use the Procedural, and each Blender object having a MeshSequenceCache modifier is added to list of objects of the right procedural. The procedural's parameters derive from the CacheFile's properties which are already exposed in the UI through the modifier, The procedural's parameters derive from the CacheFile'salthough more Cycles specific propertiesoptions might be added in the future. As data is not persistent for final rendersAs there is currently no cache controls and since we load all the data at the the beginning of the render session, the procedural is only available during viewport renders at the moment. When an Alembic procedural is rendered, data from the archive are not read on the Blender side. This is mostly a hack to test the Cycles Alembic procedural until we have a better Blender side mechanism for letting renderers load their own geometry, which will be based on import and export settings on Collections (T68933). Also included in this patch, although it will committed separately, is a setting to always add a cache reader (either a MeshSequenceCache modifier or a Transform Cache constraint) to the objects created from an Alembic archive. This setting is mostly useful to reload every object from the archive when it is updated without having to resort to re-importing the entire scene, but it is also used here to ensure that every object created from Alembic will be rendered through the Procedural. Ref T79174, D3089 Depends on D10196