User:Brecht/SculptPerf

From BlenderWiki

Reduce Memory Usage

• Remove ss->fmap need for normals
• Don't use active verts list but nodes
  • Grab brush still needs to be converted
• Separate undo stack for sculpt mode
• Only create DM origindex layer when needed.
• Only create sculpt face normals when needed.
• Store anchored original normals per node
• Remove ss->fmap need for smooth brush
• Store multires displacements outside .blend in a texture file
• Use more compact multires/subsurf DM
• [Use some sort of compression, lzma]

Drawing

• Support multiple partial redraws (for symmetry)
• PBVH drawing working for more draw modes
• Show multires base resolution when navigating view
• Respect smooth/flat shading flags in sculpt mode
• Sometimes wrong partial redraw rect is generated, messing up window draw
• Sometimes normals are not updated in some places (on node boundaries?)

Multires

• Change storage format so we have n grids for a polygon with n verts
• Store multires displacements outside .blend
• Simple subdiv does not work for first level
• Add separate render level
• Add separate sculpt level
• Multires could do partial updates based on what changed when changing levels
• Make smooth brush work again for multires

Performance

• Multithreading for sculpting
• Multithreading for multires/subsurf code.
• Low level optimizations for functions like brush drawing or normal updates (e.g. SSE)
• Move PBVH to DM
• Reduce PBVH build time
• Take advantage of subsurf/multires structure for PBVH build
• When sculpting can't keep up with the user, it would be good if Blender did not lock up but rather kept redrawing the brush and show intermediate results. A simple time limit to force an extra redraw + delay stroke updates could solve most cases.
• [Approximate subdivision surfaces for faster subsurf/multires]

Tools

• Partial Refresh and Show Brush seem to not do anything
• Clicking outside of the mesh seems to lead to getting stuck in sculpting somehow.
• Make default falloff curve smooth instead of sharp (also nicer for paint).
• Falloff curve is not smooth enough. Could use bspline rather than cardinal interpolation (but only internally so user doesn't see it doesn't exactly go through points).
• Support maximum brush strength clamping, instead of always adding on top like airbrush?
• Hiding could use editmode flags? (especially for multires)
• Brush datablock management UI, previews?

External File Storage

• Integrate better with object remove/duplicate/.. .
• Make it work with library linking.
• Support loading only lower levels.
• Free memory after exiting lowering levels (e.g. exiting sculpt).

Other

• Make sculpting shape keys work.