Click on render-in-progress to choose tile priority area #37220

New Issue

Lawrence D'Oliveiro · 2013-10-27T05:32:46+01:00

2013-10-27 05:32:46 +01:00

%%%The enclosed patch implements a feature whereby the user can click anywhere in the render result display while a render is in progress, to tell the renderer to preferentially choose subsequent tiles near the clicked point.

Sometimes during a lengthy render, you want to specifically see how a particular part of the image is turning out. Currently you have to wait for the tile rendering sequence to work its way out from the centre until it gets to the location of interest. With this patch you can simply click to quickly move the tiling sequence to another point. All the tiles still get rendered, of course, just in a different, user-selectable order.

Overview: previously the threaded_tile_processor routine (pipeline.c) would queue up all the tiles in the workqueue before starting the render threads. Now it queues up just a minimum of tiles to try to ensure the queue will not prematurely empty, and the rest get added one by one as each previously-queued tile completes. This way it can respond to mouse clicks which alter the priority for choosing subsequent unprocessed tiles.

I had to make a couple of API changes to get this to work: add a new routine RE_SetPreferTile to RE_pipeline.h/pipeline.c, and change internal routine wm_job_find (in wm_jobs.c) to exported routine WM_job_find. Also I had to use a more roundabout way than I would like to find the image display region in screen_render_modal, because the obvious CTX_wm_region call kept returning NULL (at least most of the time).

If there is a cleaner way of doing what I’m doing here, please advise, and I will resubmit.

This currently only works for Blender Internal; if all goes well, I might look at how to do it for Cycles. :)%%%

%%%The enclosed patch implements a feature whereby the user can click anywhere in the render result display while a render is in progress, to tell the renderer to preferentially choose subsequent tiles near the clicked point. Sometimes during a lengthy render, you want to specifically see how a particular part of the image is turning out. Currently you have to wait for the tile rendering sequence to work its way out from the centre until it gets to the location of interest. With this patch you can simply click to quickly move the tiling sequence to another point. All the tiles still get rendered, of course, just in a different, user-selectable order. Overview: previously the threaded_tile_processor routine (pipeline.c) would queue up all the tiles in the workqueue before starting the render threads. Now it queues up just a minimum of tiles to try to ensure the queue will not prematurely empty, and the rest get added one by one as each previously-queued tile completes. This way it can respond to mouse clicks which alter the priority for choosing subsequent unprocessed tiles. I had to make a couple of API changes to get this to work: add a new routine RE_SetPreferTile to RE_pipeline.h/pipeline.c, and change internal routine wm_job_find (in wm_jobs.c) to exported routine WM_job_find. Also I had to use a more roundabout way than I would like to find the image display region in screen_render_modal, because the obvious CTX_wm_region call kept returning NULL (at least most of the time). If there is a cleaner way of doing what I’m doing here, please advise, and I will resubmit. This currently only works for Blender Internal; if all goes well, I might look at how to do it for Cycles. :)%%%

Lawrence D'Oliveiro commented

2013-10-27 05:32:46 +01:00

Changed status to: 'Open'

Lawrence D'Oliveiro commented

2013-11-03 02:24:49 +01:00

%%%tile-prio-20131103.patch: resubmission to keep up with changes in source tree.%%%

Thomas Dinges commented

2013-11-15 04:59:44 +01:00

Added subscribers: @brecht, @ThomasDinges

Thomas Dinges commented

2013-11-15 04:59:44 +01:00

This looks nice and would be cool for Cycles as well.

Brecht, could you take a look at the patch please? :)

This looks nice and would be cool for Cycles as well. Brecht, could you take a look at the patch please? :)

Brecht Van Lommel commented

2013-11-15 16:31:14 +01:00

The functionality is ok, but I will need to look into this more closely.

The code is formatted quite inconsistent, please follow the same style as surrounding code or read this:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Code_Style

When that's done, could you submit the diff here? It's hopefully going to be more efficient to do code reviews that way.
http://developer.blender.org/differential/diff/create/

The functionality is ok, but I will need to look into this more closely. The code is formatted quite inconsistent, please follow the same style as surrounding code or read this: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Code_Style When that's done, could you submit the diff here? It's hopefully going to be more efficient to do code reviews that way. http://developer.blender.org/differential/diff/create/

Lawrence D'Oliveiro commented

2013-11-16 23:38:00 +01:00

Demo video here .

Demo video [here ](https://vimeo.com/79161807).

DarthFugu commented

2013-12-10 11:37:22 +01:00

(Migrated from localhost:3001)

Added subscriber: @DarthFugu

DarthFugu commented

2013-12-10 11:37:22 +01:00

(Migrated from localhost:3001)

Could you guide me how to install/run this in Blender? I don't have a clue how to do it.

Thomas Dinges commented

2013-12-10 11:53:41 +01:00

This is a patch, you need to apply it to the source code and compile it.

DarthFugu commented

2013-12-10 12:52:54 +01:00

(Migrated from localhost:3001)

Thats what i mean i've got no idea how to do that i have only installed .py scripts and don't have a clue how to do what you said, thanks for fast reply :D

DarthFugu commented

2013-12-10 22:19:00 +01:00

(Migrated from localhost:3001)

Could you show me some step by step tutorial or something because i've searched how to apply patch to source code, but i didn't even understand how to start the source or even send me a blender version with the patch applied already.

Brecht Van Lommel commented

2013-12-10 23:35:09 +01:00

There isn't really a simple step by step tutorial that we could give, building Blender is fairly complicated if you're not familiar with that kind of thing. See here for how to download the source and compile:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Building_Blender

For applying patches there is some info here:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Tools/Patches#Applying_Patches

There isn't really a simple step by step tutorial that we could give, building Blender is fairly complicated if you're not familiar with that kind of thing. See here for how to download the source and compile: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Building_Blender For applying patches there is some info here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Tools/Patches#Applying_Patches

Manuel Rais commented

2014-08-29 14:56:43 +02:00

Added subscriber: @g-lul

Lawrence D'Oliveiro commented

2014-08-30 00:20:50 +02:00

I must say I am disappointed with the quality of review for this patch. It turns out the functionality is not “ok”, because the calculation of the click point will be thrown off by the width and height of windows to the left and below the image editor window. You can even notice this to some extent in the demo video. And yet it seems the main complaint I get is about the formatting style.

Enclosed tile-prio-20140830.patch is a reworking of the patch to fix this problem by doing the click calculation in a different way. Unfortunately this has its own drawback, which is that responding to the clicks cannot happen until the render actually starts. Which defeats a lot of the point of the patch.

I must say I am disappointed with the quality of review for this patch. It turns out the functionality is **not** “ok”, because the calculation of the click point will be thrown off by the width and height of windows to the left and below the image editor window. You can even notice this to some extent in the demo video. And yet it seems the main complaint I get is about the formatting style. Enclosed [tile-prio-20140830.patch](https://archive.blender.org/developer/F107368/tile-prio-20140830.patch) is a reworking of the patch to fix this problem by doing the click calculation in a different way. Unfortunately this has its own drawback, which is that responding to the clicks cannot happen until the render actually starts. Which defeats a lot of the point of the patch.

Sergey Sharybin commented

2015-02-26 11:47:10 +01:00

Added subscriber: @Sergey

Sergey Sharybin commented

2015-02-26 11:47:10 +01:00

Not really happy with the code from the latest patch:

it seems to contain unrelated changes. which makes checking on actual changes more tricky
Don't really think it should be the same operator as render one, would think separate operator to define POI which you can invoke before render is more handy
Acquiring imbuf is probably not needed, we've got an utility function to convert mouse coordinate to the region space (which would give you normalized 0..1 coordinates in this case)
You shouldn't look up for region manually, it it's NULL from the context it might happen something which is not expected to or you're not using something in the way it was expected to
Would be nice to have it generalized so all render engines can benefit from this

Not really happy with the code from the latest patch: - it seems to contain unrelated changes. which makes checking on actual changes more tricky - Don't really think it should be the same operator as render one, would think separate operator to define POI which you can invoke before render is more handy - Acquiring imbuf is probably not needed, we've got an utility function to convert mouse coordinate to the region space (which would give you normalized 0..1 coordinates in this case) - You shouldn't look up for region manually, it it's NULL from the context it might happen something which is not expected to or you're not using something in the way it was expected to - Would be nice to have it generalized so all render engines can benefit from this

Bastien Montagne commented

2015-05-22 11:56:23 +02:00

Added subscriber: @mont29

Bastien Montagne commented

2015-05-22 11:56:23 +02:00

Changed status from 'Open' to: 'Archived'

Bastien Montagne closed this issue

2015-05-22 11:56:23 +02:00

Bastien Montagne self-assigned this 2015-05-22 11:56:23 +02:00

Bastien Montagne commented

2015-05-22 11:56:23 +02:00

No news here since months… archiving for now, we can always reopen should the raised points be addressed.

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Click on render-in-progress to choose tile priority area #37220