[Bf-committers] RE: Blender Plugins

[Bart]

Generating texture plugins (stroke, ink, comic etc.) and shaders using 
python would be very cool. A really nice idea!

Ton Roosendaal schrieb:
> Hi,
> 
> (Reading the thread on plugin API...)
> 
> I'm a little concerned on the direction of the discussion here...  
> designing a good plugin API for Blender won't be interesting if it  
> doesn't reflect how Blender currently works itself.
> As original designer of Blender, I really get confused by the proposals  
> here... I miss general objectives or a compliant & functional  
> structure. How the API technically is structured is really a decision  
> for later.
> 
> Also keep in mind that a program like 3DS was designed from scratch as  
> a plugin system. Maya as well, although it has MEL as glue too. Blender  
> was not *at all* designed that way.
> Second to keep in mind that plugin APIs also serve as a means for  
> closed source applications to allow third parties to extend  
> functionality. We don't need that really... within a production  
> environment, anyone can quickly add the temporal features in Blender  
> they need themselves.
> Third to keep in mind that a plugin system for Blender cannot be made  
> "commercial" with closed source, only GPLed code is allowed to be a  
> plugin in Blender. I doubt it will become an incentive for third  
> parties to make commercial Blender extensions with GPL only.
> 
> If you look at how the python API developed - apart from some pending  
> issues that were caused by too "un-blenderish" design decisions - it  
> does a pretty good job in reflecting Blender, how Blender actually  
> works, and allowing to extend it with new tools. The current team  
> spends long and long design hours on keeping that quality, and  
> improving possibilities to extend Blender.
> Already a very long time ago, it was decided to choose Python as the #1  
> extension/plugin language for Blender. It has many benefits over a  
> plugin API (like accessibility, compliancy) and it allows anyone to  
> build scripts under any license (e.g. allows closed source scripts  
> too). You can even extend Blender - via python - with a closed source  
> library/plugin.
> 
> So... all in all, my guess would still be to stick to one system in  
> Blender, and help out designing better Python methods to extend Blender  
> in ways that would be acceptable on a level for each plugin developer.
> For those specific "plugins" that would require raw speed (like for  
> textures or image plugins) we can use Python potentially still, just a  
> matter of smart code work here.
> Think of a Python based shading API, like renderman! :)
> 
> -Ton-
> 
> On 19 Apr, 2005, at 11:21, levon hudson wrote:
> 
>> you might want to check out this thread, it is simon harveys thread 
>> on  the oceans simulator, and at around page 4 turns to  blender 
>> plugin  format discusion.
>>
>> http://www.blender.org/modules.php? 
>> op=modload&name=phpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=4222&postdays=0&postorder=asc&s 
>> tart=0
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> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --
> Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton at blender.org  http://www.blender.org
> 
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