'scripting' Posts:

Making Macro Maker: A Maker's Memoir

A while ago I was doing a series of repetitive actions in Blender - not an uncommon occurrence - and as usual, I began to think of a Python script that I could write to do this task for me...[...] But I write a lot of scripts. And the add-ons I write are often project specific and therefore limited in use. Plus, this task was about manipulating object's and their data and applying modifiers and joining objects and moving them and setting their origins and removing doubles and and...and that sounded like a terrible amount of effort.

Moving Render Layers and Travelling in Time

Over the past few months I found the need to create two more add-ons for Blender 3D: 'Timecode' and the aptly, but rather unexcitingly named 'Move Render Layers'.[...] 'Timecode' is a small add-on that adds the ability to navigate the timeline by inserting a timecode into the Timeline Editor's header (in the form of HH:MM:SS:FF):

Node Pong: A Silly Little Idea

A few months ago I had a silly idea, and as with all my silly ideas I spent far too much time on it. I knew it was silly. I knew because whenever I thought about it I sniggered to myself. I also knew that if I worked on it that the pay-off would be relatively small (compared to the work it would require), but I couldn't resist.

Batch Render Tools (and The Wonderful World of Hummous)

During the freelance work that I've been working on for the last couple of months I had to do a lot of long renders of animations. When I'm doing a really long render I tend to use the command line to do a 'background' render so that Blender's UI doesn't have to be visible (which apparently saves a bit of memory), and as with most things recently, that caused me to write an another add-on...

All My Time is Gone and Other Stories

It's been 4 weeks since I last wrote here, leaving The Internet to descend into madness as it tries to comprehend a world without regular blog posts from me. "When will the literary drought end?", The Internet cries into the dark. "When?!", it cries again, worried that no-one heard the first time. Fear not, I have heard you. The drought/darkness (delete as appropriate) is over. I have returned, albeit briefly, to quench your thirst for ramblings, quenches and of course, thirsts, or my name's not Ray 'The Thirst-Quencher' Mairlot*.

Selective Unhide Add-on

'Heartbreaker' isn't the main thing I'm going to be talking about today. I did do some work on it (as I do every week); it was an update on the head, and I wanted to finish that update before showing a 'before and after' comparison, so until that's fully finished, I'll just show the newer version of the bicep which I also worked on: