[Bf-committers] Re: Newbie coding advice.

[Greg MacDonald]

I wanted to use python. It's worked great so far for materials and geometry.
I thought about using the real-time properties to store extra openflight
info and then allow the user, via a seperate python gui script, to edit the
properties. The user could then use lamps to represent light points, empties
for any of the control type nodes in OpenFlight like levels of detail,
objects would remain objects. It would have been functional.

But I didn't care for this idea mostly because directional light points
wouldn't be represented very well. Also, I thought the editing script might
be a pain to use. The user would have to go out of their way to find the
script, assuming they knew about it. And I wasn't too excited about using
real-time properties for something general. I figured maybe there was a
reason it was specific to the real-time.

With everything being integrated into blender, I get a visual widget for
editing directional light points, plus absolutely zero learning curve for
someone that knows Blender and Creator (OpenFlight). Plus I'm having too
much fun on my Blender coding adventure. Did you know that rgb values for
icons in Blender are stored in a struct created form a png file? And that
someone edited the struct instead of the png file? That made me smile until
I realized I'm not sure how I can add my new icons without destroying the
struct editor's icons. Maybe if I can find which one it is, I can do a
screen grab and stick it back into the source png file.

Anyway, if someone can suggest ways to extend the python api to create new
object types, I'd be willing to work on it. I don't know the code well
enough to even say if that's feasible.

-Greg

On 9/28/05, Johnny Matthews <johnny.matthews at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The python api is pretty powerful and is getting better all the time.
> You may not want to totally drop the
> idea of an export script. It may actually give you more flexibility
> (depending on what you want to accomplish)
> good luck either way. The more sectors that blender makes in-roads into
> the better!
>
> Johnny
>
> Greg MacDonald wrote:
> > Thanks. I'll try tuhoppu in a few months. Maybe if I code it up in an
> > unobtrusive way, it'll eventually make it into the main tree.
> >
> > On 9/28/05, Jeremy Wall <zaphar at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> There will undoubtedly be folks who will object to the added
> >> complexity for only a subset of users. That shouldn't stop you though.
> >> The worst that could happen is your changes don't make it into the
> >> official source but you will still be able to use it at work. and
> >> other people can still use them if they use open flight and want to do
> >> a custom compile.
> >>
> >> I do have one piece of advice though. Try it out in tuhoppu first.
> >> This kind of thing usually starts there so people can play with it and
> >> get comfortable before moving it over. You usually get more acceptance
> >> going that route first rather than starting in the official Blender
> >> release branch.
> >>
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bf-committers mailing list
> > Bf-committers at projects.blender.org
> > http://projects.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
> >
> >
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://projects.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/attachments/20050928/9a4aaa18/attachment.htm