Blender and Python incremental object appearance change.

Hi there,

I have a particular problem that needs solving, and someone reading this can help me.

It is perhaps best to explain the general problem using an example. Suppose we have an object. Let’s say a car. This was produced in mint condition – no scratches, no rust, and otherwise perfect off the production line. With time, however, the environment takes its toll on the car. After a few minutes, the car is in all respects still perfect. But after a month, an we might notice a small scratch somewhere, and after a year, there will be numerous small scratches. After 5 years, the car is noticeably different from mint condition, and rust has even started to appear. After 50 years, the car is riddles with rust.

I am looking for a person who is astute at Blender, and Python scripting, who can create a script that can create an object in mint condition, and loop through incremental changes in this object as explained above, and after each loop, save the image to file. It is important that the increments are equal. Another challenge is the number of combinations. For example, one can imagine changing the amount of scratches incrementally, but having no rust at all for each of these settings. On the other hand, for each level of scratches, the may be many degrees of rust. In other words, for two dimensions (rust and scratches, for example), with, say, 10 settings in each, 100 images are possible.

Now, the object may not be a car, but an apple, a piece of wood, or even some abstract 3D model that is exerted to the process of the kind described.

If you think you can solve this problem, I would very much look forward to hearing from you. The initial task is relatively small, but if the task is done well, there may be more of them. By the way, I prefer hiring using Upwork.

Best regards,

Ulrik.

it doesn’t sound like a python problem to me. you could set up your material nodes such that a slider controls the amount of scratches/aging. when the slider is set to 0, the aging texture isnt noticeable. when the slider is set to 0.5, the texture is at half-strength, etc.

if you’ve got a texturing package that supports smart materials, this should be relatively easy. substance designer, quixel and 3d-coat all do this aging simulation.

but that’s just my opinion… it’s not impossible to do fully in python, but it would be somewhat like eating ice cream with a toothpick :smiley:

There are multiple ways of going about this sort of thing. I have over 9 years of Blender experience, have done python scripting and created an addon, and I recently did a project that required this sort of incremental object appearance change. I would love to help you and discuss this project in further detail. I’ve gone ahead and sent you a PM. My contact details are below. This sounds like a really great project!

Contact: [email protected]

As those above me have said, no extra python scripting is needed for this kind of work since the Blender node editor is very capable of this already. I did a small test to demonstrate.