New Software - Blender Commander

[Howitzer]

Heya folks. I'm trying to get back into programming again. It has become pretty clear to me that the career I thought I wanted I didn't really want. So I will be writing more programs now.

The last GUI program I wrote was FFFront, a GUI frontend for FFmpeg. It was written in Microsoft Visual Studio C#, which is incredibly easy to program with. This time thought, I used Code::Blocks and wxWidgets. wxWidgets+wxSmith proved to be just as easy to use, and I don't plan on going back to VS any time soon.

Anyway, here is the program. It's an easy to use GUI front-end for Blender's console commands. Blender Commander was written to make it easier for one to render their projects on multiple computers. You could copy your projects and the program on all of your systems, and provided Blender was installed, span the project between them. For example, you could have computer one render frames 1 to 1000, and computer two render frames 1001 to 2000, and so on. BC makes this easier by putting a GUI over the console command arguments you would normally want to use, and with BC, you don’t have to use the Blender interface if you don’t know how to use the console arguments. This way, you can reap the benefits of running from the command line with the ease of a simple GUI interface.



Download - blender_commander.zip - 981k

[craigomatic]

Thanks for this - I'll try it out at work

[blenderrenegade]

howitizer how did u call the normal python commands from the other porgram did u use a wrappper ,dll? mate could ushed somelight on yourcode some snippets

[hunter551]

Does the source to this need to be released as its tied in with blender, or not, because it's not actually using any of blenders source?

[Howitzer]

No wrapper dlls, no Blender code. The only thing open source I used was the compiler and IDE, and using those doesn't automatically force you to open source your projects.

All this program does is make the proper console commands for you, and runs them. To find out for yourself, just open the batch file it makes before BC deletes it.

I don't want to share this project with anyone right now, so I won't open source it - however, a Linux version is planned for the future.

[hunter551]

Understood. This would work great with the newly introduced 'touch' and 'no overwrite'.

[Felix_Kütt]

Originally Posted by Howitzer however, a Linux version is planned for the future.

'porting' to mono shouldn't be too hard, because from what i understand,
you don't really make much use of any win library's, do you?

And yeah, i use code::blocks too, its awesome.
I actually like it more than visual studio, not sure why though.

[blenderrenegade]

the reason i asked for some snippets was just to learn ahh its cool now that i know that the program makes batch files i would have thought otherwise it would have been much more cooler if the program would have been able to access the blender api directly
that would have been much more efficient

"loldude udont need to make yourcodeopensource coz its yourownwork"

"suupourtnocommasnoenglish"

[David_Mac]

Thank you, Howitzer. This little GUI is going to be very, very useful.

[Howitzer]

No problem David_Mac, I'm glad some of you have found a use for it.


Also, there will be no linux version. I can't seem to set things up right, and I don't know the first thing about Linux. I will buy some books on Linux soon, because the job I want requires me to be well versed in it. But right now making a Linux version of this program is impossible for me. I will be sticking with Windows for a while.

Sorry.

[jesterKing]

Is this with written in C# ?

/Nathan

[Howitzer]

I used CodeBlocks, wxWidgets, and GCC, which is C++. I got CodeBlocks, and GCC working in Ubuntu, but not wxWidgets. I installed it with Synaptic, but I couldn't include it. It was as though wxWidgets wasn't there.

[quiss42]

Don't hit me for asking: Have you installed the wxWidgets-devel packages, too?

[Sammaron]

this says it helps with multiple computers...but doesn't connect anyway? not like a render farm? because i can just pop on in and say only render this, and only render that, right?

what i'm asking is: can this tell what the other computer should render remotely, or even through LAN?

that looks pretty neat wish you'd release source

[Howitzer]

No, this program doesn't render anything remotely. Your transport protocol is a thumb drive.

I uninstalled Ubuntu, but later I went ahead and installed xUbuntu under a virtual machine. I decided to give it another go. The second attempt failed as well, I can't compile a wxWidgets program in Linux because CodeBlocks behaves as though I didn't install it. But I did.



I feel as though I'm not ready to program only with a text editor. I need an IDE, especially to build the wx interfaces. My alternative though may be to use Irrlicht's gui functions under software-mode. Although it is a bit overkill to use a 3d engine for a simple tool like this...

I'm actually afraid of releasing the source code because I might get laughed at. I'm a n00b and if anyone edits it, I might not understand the changes that are made... and loose control of the program I started. Then again, if I release it, maybe some of you linux savy blender-heads could compile the program and get it to work. But again there is the fact that the program is so simple, anyone can do this on their own. It took me days, but it might take you a few hours.

[superx10]

I'm actually afraid of releasing the source code because I might get laughed at. I'm a n00b and if anyone edits it, I might not understand the changes that are made... and loose control of the program I started. Then again, if I release it, maybe some of you linux savy blender-heads could compile the program and get it to work. But again there is the fact that the program is so simple, anyone can do this on their own.

So long as you don't make the mistake of having 5000 "if..else" statements I don't think anyone has too much room to make fun of the coding practices of someone who is just returning to programming. A lot of people have the misconception that you must use absolute proper programming at all times- this is true to a point (as evidenced by "5000 if else statements"), but really it depends on the complexity of the program you're creating and the timeframe you're looking to complete it in. If you intend to keep this program essentially how it is, then so long as it works correctly and isn't needlessly slow your code is probably fine. On the other hand if you intend to make this a much bigger/more robust software with multiple developers, multiple platforms it pays you to do it properly from the beginning- style guidelines, documenting your code, etc.

In essence the most important part of making a program isn't actually writing the code, it's the planning and documenting that should happen before it even starts. Writing the code is the easy part if you did the planning right

[AlissonMurphy]

I was looking for this the other day. i dont usually post in forums but i wanted to say thank you!

[Blenderer]

FFMPEG ROCKS!!!

You the man Howitzer

[ristesekuloski]

I can't download the program. Is it my computer in question or is there something wrong with the host server?