Oogsnoepje
Nov-4-07	BF

Brecht van Lommel: 

IK
==
Solving is now done independent of scale, by scaling the chain to have a
size of about 1.0. This solves some issues with small or big chains, and
also makes the IK stretch setting independent of scale. The latter breaks
backwards compatibility somewhat, but is an improvement over what it did
before.

Hinge Bone Transform
====================
This changes the way hinge bones are transformed when their parent bones
are also selected. Before it just disabled transform for these, now they
are rotated and scaled as well, but without influencing the transform
center, which gives behaviour as if they were regular bones.

Mesh Deform Modifier
====================
The MeshDeform modifier can deform a mesh with another 'cage' mesh.
It is similar to a lattice modifier, but instead of being restricted
to the regular grid layout of a lattice, the cage mesh can be modeled
to fit the mesh better.
http://www.blender.org/development/current-projects/changes-since-244/modifiers/

Implementation Notes:

• OpenNL has been refactored a bit to allow least squares matrices to be built without passing the matrix row by row, but instead with random access. MDef doesn't need this actually, but it's using this version of OpenNL so I'm just committing it now.

• Mean value weights for polygons have been added to arithb.c, a type of barycentric coordinates for polygons with >= 3 vertices. This might be useful for other parts of blender too.

Ton Roosendaal:

New driver option for the poor suffering riggers:

"Rotation Difference"
This option, for Bones, allows the angle between two Bones to be
the driver for another Ipo channel. This angle now is hardcoded 
based on the Bone-space orientation (without parenting rotation).
Thanks to nathan for poking and test!

A different approach for the new driver option: it now uses pose-space
instead of bone-space. This makes it visual easier to use. For the todo:
a large array of buttons for users to pick what kind of 'space' is used?