We need multithreaded or even GPU accelerated fluid/smoke sims. You can get multithreaded fluid in an openMP build, but that should be in trunk for sure. Personally, I think the fluid sim should be rewritten completely. There are systems that can do high res sims in realtime even with rendering included.
mesh selections should be multithreaded if possible, sometimes when there is hi-poly objects then selecting between objects takes lot of secons when selection occurs. At least now 2.64 BVH building is multithreaded that gives big boost.
That blows I have had a lot of issues compiling Blender from the source due to my custom compiled ffmpeg thus I only use official builds for Linux 64bit. I should probably give it a try again. How do I compile from offical release source… Oops, BF is in violation of GPL, because they don’t supply source code with their official releases o_O WTF?! You gotta be kidding me?!
Apart from SVN access, the source code for every release is available here. Of course to find that, one must have the ability to navigate websites (like the blender.org download page) - which some people don’t have.
its only not turned on with windows releases, because you need MSVC pro to compile with OpenMP and the builders do not have that, if i remember correctly
In relation to your first question, sculpt is multithreaded, softbodies/cloth and fluid particles are multithreaded, fluid sim is multi threaded (divided into sections along the y axis), In svn the compositor is now fully multithreaded
also the interface is now multithreaded, due to 2.6’s jobs system (nicknamed steve) so blender is capable of doing things in the background while you are doing somthing else, like editing the scene while its rendering for instance (results can be unpleasent so don’t )
multi threaded Viewport requires a complete overhaul of blender’s dependency graph (what depends on what) and thats still a long way to go
As far as I know, OpenMP is disabled on official OSX builds too (unless that’s changed recently). Official Linux builds should have it enabled though.
Regarding source code distribution, the GPL is intentionally not very specific about the exact method of distribution. It is certainly not required to include a copy of the source with the binary package though. Blender is not in violation.
One other note: multi-threaded selection is not what’s needed to speed it up; it’s more of an algorithm problem. Moreover, our current selection method is OpenGL-based, and you can’t have multiple threads writing to the GL at the same time.
Edit: forgot to say, you should be able to see if your build was compiled with OpenMP by checking the system info (from help menu.)
its only not turned on with windows releases, because you need MSVC pro to compile with OpenMP and the builders do not have that, if i remember correctly
As i use buildbot version from the official website, i assumed then that my builds were in such case.
But looking on the system info as you mentionned, i noticed on the buildbot version i’m working on currently
I have had a lot of issues compiling Blender from the source due to my custom compiled ffmpeg thus I only use official builds for Linux 64bit. I should probably give it a try again. How do I compile from offical release source… Oops, BF is in violation of GPL, because they don’t supply source code with their official releases o_O WTF?! You gotta be kidding me?!
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