More Newbie Questions

Support Basics & Interface
#1

I am coming from Maya so I am still adjusting.

I am looking for the equivalent tools that I am use to using.

For example Python seems to be the scripting language. But I can’t tell if you can turn on ECHO ALL COMMANDS and see what Blender is doing. In Maya just about everything is done with a mel command so it is easy to copy and past and make basic scripts for repetitive actions. Same for XSI.

Also Can you add custom attributes to an object. In Maya you have the standard X,Y,Z position, scale and rotation attributes, But you could also attach an attribute of your own. Then you could use this to store and manipulate date for custom scripts, plug-ins etc… Can Blender do this.

And can you make a plugin in c++ and use it as a .dll with Blender. Or do I have to recompile all of Blender to add custom tools. I don’t seem to be able to find a SDK for plugin development.

#2

u need to ask your first 2 questions in the Python and Scripting forum. I think the python script outputs messages to the console window via the print command. I think you can add your own attributes at run-time to an object, but dunno how.

The plug-ins are for textures and video effects, and are done in C. Search forum for a new Brick texture, and for a GreenScreen video plugin as recent examples of plugin functionality that was added by users.

#3

Yeah, they probably should be asked in python, but I’ll answer what I can here. :wink:

I’m not sure what ECHO ALL COMMANDS does, so I’ll skip over that. Unless that means that every time you do some action in Maya like during modelling/animating/etc., then it tells what commands it calls internally so that you could call it over again and again (in which case, I don’t believe blender supports this, could be wrong, or it could be a custom compile feature like a debug tag possibly??? (don’t cite me on this)).

Custom attributes are possible using IDproperties. For a quick tutorial look here:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/ID_Property#Python_Tutorial

Blender has no general purpose C++ API as Papasmurf said. It has C APIs for Texture and Sequence. I suppose if you really wanted to you could possibly write C++ code with a C wrapper (a twist on the old C with a C++ wrapper), but I’m not the guy to really ask about that. Most features are added straight into the source, since it keeps everything in one place and everything up to date and maintanable.

#4

Could you be specific about what you mean by “Plugin”? In Blender plugins are Procedurals specifically for Textures and Sequence Strips, in Maya and Max they are what we call (Python) Scripts in Blender.

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