[Bf-committers] Re: Newbie coding advice.

[Willian Padovani Germano]

Greg MacDonald wrote:
> 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.

Hi Greg,

Just a suggestion probably worth investigating:

You can create your extra objects using meshes, that's probably the best 
way to represent them well visually. You can store these special meshes 
in a .blend and use python to load them.

For extra data appended to such objects, if needed, you can use object 
properties (check "Add property" in the Logic buttons win (hotkey: F4)). 
The bpy API has support for it (Object module), that can be extended, no 
problem.

The interface can use a GUI script with buttons to place the custom 
objects at the 3d cursor position. This can also be done using a space 
handler script: a hotkey can be defined to open a menu with options (in 
your case: point light, lod node, group node, etc.) and the chosen 
object can be placed at the current cursor position.

If you'd like to try this, the bf-python list and the bpython foruns are 
good places to get help and testers, btw.

Your interest in this may be on a niche, but there's a more general need 
for such ways to extend Blender as a content creation tool for specific 
needs, so we can all benefit from such investigations.

-- 
Willian