State |
Idea |
Date |
2008-03-06 |
Proposed by |
Ichthyostega |
Design the handling of Parameters and Automation
Parameters of Plugin Components and/or Render Nodes play a role at various levels of the application. Thus it seems reasonable to do a formal requirements analysis and design prior to coding.
Description
Regarding components directly participating in the render (which might be implemented by plugins), we distinguish between configuration (static) and parameters (dynamic). The point of reference for this distinction is the render process: a plugin configuration may well be variable in some manner, e.g. the plugin may provide different flavours of the same algorithm. But this choice has to be fixed prior to feeding the corresponding plugin asset to the builder. Contrary to such fixed configuration setup, the parameters are considered to be variable during the rendering process. They can be changed on-the-fly from GUI, and they may be automated. Probably, each Render Node will have at least one such parameter — namely a bypass switch.
Tasks
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we need to work out an introspection mechanism for parameters
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asses what different types of parameters we need
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find out how much structured parameters will be (do simple values suffice?)
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define how parameters can be discovered/enumerated
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define a naming scheme for parameters, so they can be addressed unambiguously
-
-
value parameters have a value range. Work out how to handle this
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parameters may need a specific presentation in the GUI
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linear/logarithmic scale, scale reference
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selecting the right widget
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So…
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find out to which extent we need these properties
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find out what parts of the App will have what requirements?
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chose a best fitting implementation based on this information
A closely related issue is the handling of Automation. The current draft
calls for an abstract interface ParamProvider, which just allows the
Plugin or RenderComponent to pull a current value, without knowing if the
ParamProvider is a GUI widget or an automation data set with interpolation.
The component using the param value should not need to do any interpolation.
We should re-asses and refine this draft as needed. Note: Render Nodes are
stateless; this creates some tricky situations.
Alternatives
?? (any ideas?)
One alternative would be not to recognise that this is a problematic requirement, and just to hack away and “solve” each obstacle in an ad-hoc manner. Unfortunately I’m unable to take this “alternative” seriously.
Another approach could be to reject the idea of “parameters” being something special and rather to treat them as some kind of different medium — which would subject a parameter stream to pull-processing. This seems to be an interesting angle, since going that route would remove the topic of parameters and automation from the core render engine altogether. However, I am not bold enough to embrace this approach as a solution — since I can not see to what extent such a shift would actually change anything of the actual functionality to be implemented or remove any overhead.
- Ichthyostega
-
2025-09-10
Rationale
The rationale of this RfC is to conduct some requirement analysis before the point where the aforementioned features will actually be required to continue with the coding work. In an ideal world, such analysis would be carried out in parallel by someone knowledgeable enough to recognise the difficulties.
Comments
This seems to be one of those nasty features which do not garner any engagement nor spur any creativity. At some point you’ll just happen to need it, and then, I’m afraid the analysis and planning work will incur significant delay…
- Ichthyostega
-
2025-09-10
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