Production release of OpenVDB 7.1.0

[Ken Museth]

OpenVDB 7.1.0 is now available to download. The highlights of this release are:

• New fast sweeping methods that outperform existing techniques for computing signed distance fields in addition to supporting velocity extension
• Various improvements and bug fixes to core library and Houdini toolkit
• Removed dependency on boost mpl and boost thread
• Improvements to the CMake build system

The complete release notes are included below for your convenience.

Version 7.1.0 - August 13, 2020

As of this release, support for grid ABI=4 has been removed.

New features:

• Added a novel parallel sparse tools::FastSweeping class that outperforms our existing techniques for computing signed distance fields in addition to supporting velocity extension.
• Added tools::fogToSdf which converts a scalar (fog) volume into a signed distance.
• Added tools::sdfToSdf which re-normalizes a signed distance field;
• Added tools::fogToExt which extends an arbitrary field (e.g. velocity) off the iso-surface of a scalar (fog) volume.
• Added tools::sdfToExt which extends an arbitrary field (e.g. velocity) off the iso-surface of a signed distance field.
• Added tools::fogToSdfAndExt which computes a signed distance and extends an arbitrary field (e.g. velocity) off the iso-surface of a signed distance field.
• Added tools::fogToSdfAndExt which re-normalizes a signed distance and extends an arbitrary field (e.g. velocity) off the iso-surface of a signed distance field.
• Added tools::dilateSdf which dilates a signed distance field.
• Added tools::maskSdf which extends an existing signed distance into a user-defined mask.
• Added Grid::isTreeUnique to tell if the tree is shared with another grid.
• Added PointDataLeafNode::stealAttributeSet and AttributeSet::removeAttribute for releasing ownership of attribute data.
• Added AttributeSet::Descriptor::groupIndexCollision for detecting group index collisions when attempting to merge two Descriptors.
• Added RootNode::childCount, InternalNode::childCount and LeafNode::childCount to count the number of immediate child nodes that exist below the current node.

Improvements:

• Added GroupWriteHandle::setUnsafe() for faster performance when the group array is known to be in-core and non-uniform.
• Add support for default value metadata when creating AttributeArrays or appending to an AttributeSet.
• Added new group inspection methods to the AttributeSet::Descriptor.
• Introduced a StringMetaCache class for convenient string attribute metadata lookup and performed some minor optimizations.
• Removed redundant floor in floatingPointToFixedPoint.
• Add gitignore to repository root.
• Removed some logic for compilers older than Visual Studio 2019.
• Add a new Houdini ABI test binary.
• Fixed an indexing typo in tools::Filter. [Contributed by Yuanming Hu]
• Removed redundant null pointer checks. [Contributed by Kuba Roth]
• Added support for vdb_view on Windows. Requires GLEW.
• Removed support for GLFW 2.
• vdb_view now uses OPENVDB_LOG_FATAL when catching exceptions.
• vdb_view, vdb_print and vdb_render now use std::terminate() when catching an unknown exception.
• Removed Boost::thread as a dependency of vdb_view in favour of std::thread.
• Removed usage of boost/integer.hpp and boost/math/constants/constants.hpp, the latter in favour of new openvdb math constants for pi
• Removed usage of boost/mpl/*.hpp methods in favour of new template meta-programming methods on the TypeList struct. This now supports get, front, back, contains, index, unique, popback, popfront and range removal of types.
• Changed the tree::NodeChain implementation to use an TypeList rather than a boost::mpl::vector and updated all usage of tree::NodeChain accordingly.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed a bug where grids with no active values might return true when the method evalActiveVoxelBoundingBox is called. The correct behavior is to only return true if the grid contains any active values.
• Fixed a sign propagation bug in tools::traceExteriorBoundaries used by tools::meshToVolume. This could cause values to not be propagated across node boundaries, leading to voxels incorrectly being marked as inside the isosurface. [Contributed by Tristan Barback]
• Fixed a rotation order bug in the decompose utility that caused it to fail to decompose some matrices.
• Fixed a bug where Quat::inverse was not marked as const. [Contributed by Michael Tao]
• Fixed a bug in the unit test for util::CpuTimer on Windows by using a more accurate sleep implementation.
• Fixed a bug where the requested uniform value of an AttributeArray was not being applied on attribute creation if the default attribute value was not the default value for that value type.
• Fixed a compiler error when using C++17 by changing std::unexpected() to std::terminate(). [Contributed by Mark Sisson]

API changes:

• Removed a number of deprecated point methods.
• points::StringIndexType is now deprecated, use Index instead.
• PointPartitioner::voxelOffsets now returns a std::unique_ptr instead of a boost::scoped_array.
• Renamed AttributeSet::Descriptor::nextUnusedGroupOffset() to AttributeSet::Descriptor::unusedGroupOffset() to allow for providing an optional group offset hint.

Houdini:

• Platonic SOP is now verbified.
• Extend all SOP references to support VDB Points.
• Combine SOP will not error in flatten-all mode if second has no grids.
• Changed the label (but not the opname) of Resize Narrow Band SOP to match the corresponding native Houdini SOP. The new label is Activate SDF.
• Fixed a bug by using GEO_Detail::getBBox() instead of GEO_Detail::computeQuickBounds() as the latter was incorrectly using the point of the VDB when computing bounding box. SOPs affected include Clip, Fill, Points Group, Rasterize Points, Read, Remove Divergence. [Contributed by Kuba Roth]
• OpenVDB from Polygons SOP now always displays the vector UI, as otherwise it might be stuck hidden if the input hasn't cooked.
• OpenVDB from Polygons and OpenVDB from Particles SOPs no longer require input geometry to have been cooked to offer a choice of attributes, the user may now also type in a value.

Build:

• Improved the CMake build for the OpenVDB Houdini library on Windows. [Reported by Ian Woodward]
• Remove some logic for compilers older than Visual Studio 2019.
• Fixed a bug in the CMake FindIlmBase/OpenEXR modules which could cause compilers on UNIX systems to fail to find stdlib.h if IlmBase/OpenEXR headers were installed to /usr/include.
• CMake now checks the minimum supported MSVC compiler for Windows.
• CMake now only requires a CXX compiler.
• Improved the Windows README instructions and various MSVC warnings.
• Remove CMake warning when using GLFW 3.2+ on Debian.
• Various fixes to unary minus on unsigned compiler warnings.
• The defines _CRT_NONSTDC_NO_WARNINGS and _CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS are now enabled by default with MSVC.
• New CMake option OPENVDB_BUILD_PYTHON_UNITTESTS to disable or enable the python module tests and fixed the required environment for them on Windows. The python interpreter is no longer required by default if the tests are disabled.
• Improved the CMake user messages when locating python and numpy.
• The python module extension is now .pyd on Windows.
• Fixed some build issues with the Houdini plugin on Windows.
• Standardized the library components install paths for the OpenVDB Houdini shared library.
• Added a USE_PKGCONFIG option to CMake to optionally disable use of pkg-config. [Contributed by Kartik Shrivastava]
• Standardized the dependency search paths in FindPackage modules using GNU install paths.
• Added better library type detection of dependencies through FindPackage modules on UNIX.
• Added missing TBB, OpenEXR and IlmBase defines for static builds on Windows through the relevant FindPackage modules.
• Improved the logic in FindOpenVDB for static builds.
• Fixed a compiler warning on Apple Clang 11.0 where the AttributeArray move constructor was being implicitly deleted despite being marked default.
• Added an option BLOSC_USE_EXTERNAL_SOURCES to FindBlosc to include blosc dependencies as interface libraries.
• Added a root CMake option USE_STATIC_DEPENDENCIES to force CMake to only locate static libraries on UNIX. On Windows, if enabled, located libraries are assumed to be static.
• Added support for CMAKE_MSVC_RUNTIME_LIBRARY for compilers that target the MSVC ABI. Requires CMake 3.15 or greater.
• Fixed an issue where OPENVDB_OPENEXR_STATICLIB was not being defined and OPENEXR_DLL was being defined when linking against static builds of OpenEXR/IlmBase on Windows.
• Improved the behaviour of boost implicit linking with the Boost::disable_autolinking target.
• Added support for importing pyopenvdb and openvdb_houdini through the FindOpenVDB CMake module
• Removed the OPENVDB_2_ABI_COMPATIBLE and OPENVDB_3_ABI_COMPATIBLE macros.
• Fixed a few GCC compiler warnings by adding override keywords. [Contributed by Edward Lam]
• jemalloc/tbbmalloc are no longer linked into library artifacts of the OpenVDB CMake build. The CONCURRENT_MALLOC CMake option now only applies to the executables.
• Introduced a new OpenVDB::openvdb_je interface target through the FindOpenVDB CMake module which adds Jemalloc as a link time dependency.
• CMake build fix for the vdb_render binary on Windows when building statically and using OpenEXR 2.5

[Tyson Ibele]

Looks great Ken, thanks for your tireless dedication to this project.

How much of a performance improvement can be expected with the new FastSweeping class?

[Jeff Budsberg]

woo hoo!  so excited for the sweeping functionality--so many ideas for tools that utilize it.  thanks ken, hope all is well!

[Ken Museth]

Hi Tyson,

I don't have access to my workstation right now (I'm literally camping at the moment), but next week I'm happy to share some performance numbers. It obviously depends on the task (the new algorithm can actually perform tasks that were impossible before - like extend signed distance fields into arbitrary regions or extend arbitrary surface attributes into its surrounding embedding). When compared to existing functionality I've routinely observed more than 2x speedups but I'll give you exact numbers later. In fact, if you join the OpenVDB event during the "Open Source Day" next Thursday at 10am (PT) I will discuss this further. During this meeting we'll also announce an exciting new extension to OpenVDB that will open the door to real-time applications :)

https://events.linuxfoundation.org/open-source-days/program/schedule/

Cheers,

Ken

[Ken Museth]

Hey Jeff!

Yes long overdue! Thanks so much for your help and support with the earlier version of this tool at DWA - I miss collaborating with you! Hopefully you'll find that the current version is much improved. Andre is kindly helping with the Houdini integration so please take it for a spin!

-K