How to make Blender fully portable

Nikita
3 Comments / Blender 3D / /

Even if Blender was downloaded as a zip-file and started from the unpacked archive instead of the installation, the files with its settings are stored separately in the user’s directory. The history, the start scene, and user-installed add-ons are also stored there. So if you transfer Blender to another computer, all these preferences will be lost.

However, at startup, Blender first looks for a config directory in its own folder and only if it does not find it there, it accesses the folder in the user’s directory.

In order to make Blender completely portable, it is enough to copy config folders “config” and “scripts” from the user’s directory into Blender’s own directory into the folder with the version number. This will transfer the settings and installed add-ons to the Blender directory, and now all the changes will be made already here, not in the user directory. Blender becomes portable and can be copied to another computer or removable device.

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How to render an object with reflections on a white background

Nikita

The single object visualization most often is performed on a clear white background. It is difficult to achieve this through the common configuring the scene – increasing the illumination of the scene “lights up” the object, decreasing – the background becomes gray instead of white. If the object itself can be simply rendered on a transparent background and then imposed on white, but what about its reflections?

Let’s consider the way how we can render the object and its reflection on a white background.

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Creating radio buttons in the Blender add-ons interface

Nikita
3 Comments / Blender 3D / /

State switches so-called “radio buttons” are used in the case to limit the choice by one value from several available ones. There are a lot of such buttons in the Blender interface, for example, switching between RGB and BW rendering modes or setting the texture mapping mode. Such buttons can be created in the Blender add-ons interface too.

Let’s create our own radio button switcher.

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How to hide the title of the Blender window

Nikita

Every 3D-artist knows that the workplace is always less. The larger monitor, the larger available workspace on it – the work is more convenient and faster. Blender allows winning some extra space on the screen, hiding the window title, which is still not useful.

The key combination:

alt + F11

allows to hide the Blender window title and expand the work area to the entire monitor. Pressing this key combination again returns Blender to its original state.