Book Image

Python Scripting in Blender

By : Paolo Acampora
5 (1)
Book Image

Python Scripting in Blender

5 (1)
By: Paolo Acampora

Overview of this book

Blender, a powerful open source 3D software, can be extended and powered up using the Python programming language. This book teaches you how to automate laborious operations using scripts, and expand the set of available commands, graphic interfaces, tools, and event responses, which will enable you to add custom features to meet your needs and bring your creative ideas to life. The book begins by covering essential Python concepts and showing you how to create a basic add-on. You’ll then gain a solid understanding of the entities that affect the look of Blender’s objects such as modifiers, constraints, and materials. As you advance, you’ll get to grips with the animation system in Blender and learn how to set up its behavior using Python. The examples, tools, patterns, and best practices present throughout the book will familiarize you with the Python API and build your knowledge base, along with enabling you to produce valuable code that empowers the users and is ready for publishing or production. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to successfully design add-ons that integrate seamlessly with the software and its ecosystem.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Part 1: Introduction to Python
7
Part 2: Interactive Tools and Animation
13
Part 3: Delivering Output

Adding a user interface

We have already created the panel.py module, which will contain all the user interface classes and functions, so this file is going to contain our panel class.

Writing the UI module

We will start importing the bpy module and our collection of icons via a relative import of img_loader:

import bpy
from . import img_loader

The OBJECT_PT_structured class is derived from Panel. Like the one from Chapter 5, it contains the bl_* identifiers required by Blender in its static section:

class OBJECT_PT_structured(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the object context"""
    bl_label = "A Modular Panel"
    bl_idname = "MODULAR_PT_layout"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = 'object'

For now, our draw function...