I haven’t yet studied the code for blender. Before I do, I wondered if it is possible to use an entirely different VM besides Python. Either I would like to take python completely out of the picture or leave it there for compatibility. Is blender set-up to do this?
blender has always used python… I doubt it’d be worth the effort to use something else [not that it’d be difficult, it’s just probably a lot to do]
what did you have in mind?
To use Automatrix. If there is some kind of API, it would be possible. It depends how it is tied together. Blender seems like a powerful set of tools to render. I feel it could be used at a higher degree if users has access to the tools with their language or program environment of choice. In the case of Automatrix, it is a complete object oriented program environment with a dynamic compiler. It makes it easier for me to get what I have in mind sketched when I don’t have to think in tons of different languages. There may be others like this. For example, they may want to use Java.
Blender in written in c (with some c++) and compiled separately for each architecture it supports – there is no VM as in java where the same code is executed on different platforms. Python is used as a scripting language with hooks to the blender c functions and structures in the same way AutoLisp is used in Autocad. You will probably get more info on the www.blender3d.org forum where the coders rather than users hang out.
GreyBeard
There is no Blender API. Blender is a program, not a library. The built-in Python interpreter uses extension modules written in C to access Blender internals directly.
You could replace the Python interpreter, but you would need to write your own interface to Blender’s data structures. Someone already did this with Lua as a proof-of-concept.
This is not a trivial task. BPy has over 60,000 lines of C code.
60,000 lines of code. Hmmm. It would double with Atomatrix. However, Atomatrix is already modular like a code library, so it sounds like it would mean that Blender would need to be more modular.
It sounds worth it. There is obviously a lot of influence on blender, by commercial competitors, that downgrade its use. Call me a BPy noob, but I also know how uber-interfaces make a difference.
One sell point I that a change is do-able. Pen-computers have a completely different cybernetic interface. Currently, it doesn’t seem like blender would work good for my pen computer. If I could sketch and manipulate on my tablet and then render on the my main machine… wonderful.
It’s a bit hard to write python software with a pen-computer. Atomatrix has a dynamic compiler that makes pen-able objects ready to use.
Thanks for the tips.