[Bf-python] API overhaul - irc meeting?

[Toni Alatalo]

On Saturday 07 January 2006 15:14, Willian Padovani Germano wrote:
> > * Developing a simpler scripting module or interface.
> This can and should be done directly in Python imo. We can have a
> powerful wrapper for bigger / fancier apps and a simple one for quick,
> more intuitive access, as you suggested.

the simple and intuitive does not have to be less powerful. but i agree it can 
be written in python.

i have already mentioned Theo de Ridder's Blendit / Blendage as an example of 
that, and many of us have seen it at the conference - there certainly are 
interesting lessons to learn .. 
http://download.blender.org/projects/blendit/Blendit-0.1.0.tar.gz (BlendModel 
i think implements the API, which can be used in Blender by doing 'import 
blendage') (is not totally straightforward in that package which also 
includes networking code, which syncs blender with other apps (like the ide 
where Theo likes to write his blender scenes, so might be a bit tricky to 
test)

oh and one idea we had with Theo when were looking at his API and Blender was 
to integrate scripting to the Outliner. Blendage scripts already define 
scenegraphs, like this:

class mycube(Cube): #a new cube or an existing one called'mycube'
    ~wood #links an existing wood material to this cube

the similarity to the outliner is obvious! and the outliner would have nice 
symbols for the types, like meshes (cube) and materials, and would hide the 
awkward use of class .. surely for more complex programming the 
outliner-as-ide will bring more challenging issues but i think it is still 
interesting

also the new node editor coming up to 2.41 from the current orange branch 
might be interesting for this simplification / 'artist friendly' scripting. 
PythonNodes i guess are an obvious thing there.

but for 'power scripters' what i personally want to emphasize more is a nice 
API to the whole NodeTree system, to overcome potentially very frustrating 
issues .. i have really bad memories of the time when had to instanciate by 
hand tens of nodes in PixelShox, each only differing with a single 
parameter .. the system had programmable nodes (in JavaScript) but no way to 
programmatically create / manipulate nodes. dunno if that has been fixed in 
the new incarnation which is Quartz Composer (part of macosx devtools)

> About the color wrapper, issue was that Blender itself is not consistent
> regarding color data representation. Maybe we can / should correct that,

that sounded like a good addition.

some of the orange scripts work also as 'wishlists' for api, i try to collect 
issues learned from writing them for the meeting.

> Willian

~Toni