Add-ons – Blender – Interplanety

BIS: Scene for creating material previews

The Blender scene for creating material previews in the BIS style.

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BIS: the Open storage

Materials which owners granted access to them for all other BIS users are placed in the “Open storage” section.

How to share material for all BIS users

Attention! The shared material becomes available to all BIS users. Sharing your materials you agree to their distribution under a Creative Commons license.

Sign in your account on the BIS website.
Switch to the “Node Groups (Object)” section.
For the material you want to share, click the “Share” button.

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BIS: saving materials to the storage

The “Personal storage” section of the BIS is used for saving users own materials. Stored in the personal storage materials are accessible only to there owner and no one else.

Saving materials to the BIS:

Sign in the Blender add-on.
Make the node tree group.

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BIS: How to start

Welcome to “BIS” (Blender Interplanety Storage) – a service for downloading, storing, management and sharing materials for the Blender 3D suite.

Introducing to BIS:

Create a personal account:

Open the BIS website https://bis.interplanety.org/ in your favorite browser:

Press the “Sign up” button.

Fill in the “Login” and “Password” fields. Please specify an active email address. On the checkbox that confirms your acceptance of the User Agreement.

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Blender add-on «BIS» v. 1.3.0.

Blender add-on BIS (Blender Interplanety Storage) update to v.1.3.0.

Added the “Open storage” section.

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Any material stored in the BIS storage is enabled to share by the owner for other BIS users. Shared materials can be used by all BIS users.

Continue reading “Blender add-on «BIS» v. 1.3.0.”

Learning loops

In general, the “loop” is usually a sequential selection of several points, edges or polygons of a mesh.

However, there is an element in the mesh structure, which is also called a “loop”. It is a combination of one vertex with one edge of the mesh. Let’s try to learn what these “loops” are for.

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Blender add-on «BIS» v. 1.2.0.

Blender add-on BIS (Blender Interplanety Storage) update to v.1.2.0.

The node group storage divided into three separate node group storages by types: Shader, Compositing, World.

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There were some issues with the add-on functionality during the reorganization of the server “BIS” storage engine. Now the add-on is fully functional.

Blender add-on «BIS» v. 1.1.1.

Blender add-on BIS (Blender Interplanety Storage) update to v.1.1.1.

Added labels to preview images
Fixed some bugs with “Frame” and “Reroute” nodes

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Blender add-on «TimeMe» v. 1.1.2.

Blender add-on “TimeMe” v.1.1.2 update.

Enable counting the mouse move event in work time category
Work time damping added

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Blender add-on “ColorMatching” v. 1.1.

Blender add-on “ColorMatching” v.1.1 update.

Added:
- Three additional color fans for search: RAL Classic, RAL Design, RAL Effect.

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How to pass command line arguments to a Blender python script or add-on

When starting Blender from the console it processes all parameters passed through the command line. However, some scripts and add-ons for proper work may require specifying their unique command line arguments. If you specify such additional parameters in the command line, Blender will also try to process them, which is likely to result in an error. Blender provides a special way to exclude such arguments from own processing.

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Add-on Mesh-Int v.1.1.

Blender add-on Mesh-Int v.1.1 update.

Added:
- Select the whole parent chain of the active object
- Select the whole children chain of the active object

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Creating radio buttons in the Blender add-ons interface

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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Add-on TimeMe v.1.1.1

Blender add-on TimeMe v.1.1.1 update.

Added project name to statistic text

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Add-on TimeMe v.1.1.0

Blender add-on TimeMe v.1.1.0 update.

Seconds accuracy enabled
Added Copy to clipboard function
Added Reset time function

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How to programmatically check if the operator is registered in Blender API

Single add-on or script can contain several different operators, and not all of them may be registered in the API by the register() function. To verify that the required operator is registered in the Blender API, run the following command:

hasattr(bpy.types, bpy.ops._operator_bl_idname_.idname())

1	hasattr(bpy.types, bpy.ops._operator_bl_idname_.idname())

Where:

_operator_bl_idname_ – the text value of the bl_idname operator property.

For example for an operator:

class TestOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = 'test.operator'
    bl_label = 'Test operator'

    def execute(self, context):
        pass

class TestOperator(bpy.types.Operator):

bl_idname = 'test.operator'

bl_label = 'Test operator'

def execute(self, context):

pass

the command will look like this:

hasattr(bpy.types, bpy.ops.test.operator.idname())

1	hasattr(bpy.types, bpy.ops.test.operator.idname())

How to programmatically check if the Blender add-on is registered

To start working every Blender add-on must be registered by setting up the checkbox before add-on name in the User Preferences window – Add-ons page.

To programmatically find out if the required add-on is registered, run the following command:

'add-on_name' in the file bpy.context.user_preferences.addons

1	'add-on_name' in the file bpy.context.user_preferences.addons

Where:

add-on_name – the name of the add-on file (without the .py extension) or the name of the add-on package, if it was installed from the package.

UV-Int add-on v.1.0.1

Blender add-on “UV-Int” v.1.0.1 update.

Added the ability to seam a UV-Map along the edges, without “blasting” the points on the cutting line.

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Debugging multifile Blender add-on by quick reinstall

It is convenient to use the following system for debugging developing multi-file Blender add-ons. But it has one drawback: modules imported in __init__.py file becomes available only after the file running (after the execution of the register() function). This means that any access to the imported modules before they are registered will cause an error. This is not critical in most cases, but it will cause a problem if, for example, in one imported module is used inheritance from the class, described in the other imported module, because the classes descriptions are processed before the add-on registration.

To get more freedom working with imported modules, we can use another way to debug the add-on – do not run the add-on directly from the development directory, but install it in Blender and check its “live” work. However, manual add-on reinstallation requires a set of routine actions, which complicates such sort of debugging. This issue can be solved by reinstalling the add-on in automatic mode.

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UV-Int add-on

Blender add-on with some extended functionality for working with UV-Maps.

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Add-on is a free and open source. If you want to support it – you can buy the add-on for a convenient price, or set the price to 0 to download it for free.

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Testing my add-ons in Blender 2.79

I tested the functionality of my add-ons in new Blender 2.79.

BIS – Fully functional. The new Principled BSDF shader supported.
PartitionRender – Some code correction made. Add-on needs to reinstall. Fully function after reinstallation.
Wire – Fully functional.
Accurate Render Border – Fully functional.

Add-ons remains compatible with Blender 2.78.

Creating pop-up panels with user UI in Blender add-on

In addition to common panels (N/T/Properties) and their sub-panels, to display the user interface elements while developing Blender add-ons you can also use pop-up panels appearing on the screen when a user presses a certain key combination or perform any action. The simplest example of such panels is the panel that appears when the f6 key is pressed immediately after adding an object (shift+a) to the scene.

Blender API provides developers the ability to create such panels for their add-ons. Let’s consider the creating of a pop-up panel as an example of the “Message box” window.

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BIS v.1.0.0 – Release

BIS (Blender Interplanety Storage) add-on release.

Finally, I finished it. It’s release now!

The server part of the storage has been put in order.
The external and internal design of the BIS website is finished: https://bis.interplanety.org/en
Fixed and corrected some add-on code.
Updated the BIS description page: https://b3d.interplanety.org/en/bis-online-blender-material-storage/
Fixed a number of minor bugs and errors.

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BIS add-on v.0.0.3

BIS (Blender Interplanety Storage) add-on intermediate update to v.0.0.3

The addon is almost in the prerelease state.

All Cycles nodes are supported, including script and nested groups.
Also added the ability to save scripts/texts from the Text Editor.

To make a release, it was left to clean up a bit the server (site) side – increase the previews size, add tags and node names editing, make a separate list for saved texts. And also test the add-on with complex materials.

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Active objects access

How to access the active (selected) objects through the Blender Python API from scripts/add-ons:

The active window (in which current action occurs):

bpy.context.area.spaces.active

1	bpy.context.area.spaces.active

The active scene:

bpy.context.screen.scene

1	bpy.context.screen.scene

The active (selected) mesh:

bpy.context.active_object

1	bpy.context.active_object

The active (selected) material node (in the NODE_EDITOR window):

bpy.context.active_object.active_material.node_tree.nodes.active

1	bpy.context.active_object.active_material.node_tree.nodes.active

The current text in TEXT_EDITOR window:

bpy.context.area.spaces.active.text.as_string()

1	bpy.context.area.spaces.active.text.as_string()

The active (selected) UV-Map:

bpy.context.active_object.data.uv_layers.active

1	bpy.context.active_object.data.uv_layers.active

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