User:Yiming/Proposal 2018/UserDocument

What is LANPR?
LANPR is a new NPR line render engine developed for blender2.8, to replace legacy Freestyle. LANPR is originally developed to speed up feature line extraction and occlusion test, and produce more stable result than Freestyle. Line rendering is good for structural illustration and manga rednering, but Freestyle tend to have many bugs that the result usually needs fix. LANPR's line extraction method is much more stable. As Blender2.8's dropping Freestyle, LANPR take the chance.

Why use LANPR?

 * It's Fast. LANPR features three rendering modes, two modes of them can produce realtime line extraction result, even in very big scenes. For non-rea	ltime rendering mode, the results are predictable and rendering time is greatly reduced than Freestyle's.
 * It's More Stable. LANPR uses different line extraction algorithm than Freestyle's, and it's promised to produce accurate, non-flickering continuous line result, with very rare chance of a occlusion error.
 * It Produces Intersection Lines. LANPR can caluclate intersection lines between geometries. Which Freestyle is incapable of. Intersection line calculation is limited to visible region and it uses acceleration methods as well to speed up the process.

Just like Freestyle, the principle of feature line calculation in LANPR is basically the same, so there won't be so much difficulties understanding the usage of LANPR, since Freestyle has already been there for a while.

But unlike Freestyle, LANPR's infrastrcuture is very different than Freestyle's, which enables functions like multithread occlusion test, intersection lines, stable chaining and fast GLSL rendering. At this viewpoint, LANPR have more potential to extend its functions in future development.

To Begin With
Select any chapter you want:


 * Modes in LANPR
 * How to use: Software Mode
 * How to use: DPIX Mode
 * How to use: Snake Mode
 * Performance Issues

Bugs and Future Development Reference
See the GSoC conclusion document.