[Bf-committers] blender as ui for game engine

Owen Hogarth II gurenchan at gmail.com
Fri Jan 22 06:34:26 CET 2016


Before learning c I was most productive with java so I can understand also
my second platform after linux is android which mainly uses java.

How much easier would it have been to just define a JNI interface to
blender's c DNA/ RNA data structures and deal with those exclusively
instead of generating .class files from blenders source.

All of these issues are hinting at the root issue which blender is built on
c, it's core but it's been a bit neglected and now nobody wants to go into
the basement and clean out the cobwebs. Like you I understand how hard it
will be, i've been in blender c code base. It needs some work.

I do believe that the best option is to turn the core of blender into a
library but to do that there's a lot of unwinding and a proper interface
that needs to be created. Something that doesn't break all that's on top,
think about it like renovating the interior of a building while the outside
stays the same. Although I really don't think it needs to take years unless
it falls into some committe where a bunch of people are arguing over what
to implement instead of just doing it. Sure it might take some time but
years, I doubt that.

That's why I sent this email out to the group to see how many people would
be willing to support me while I did this but the response seems less than
luke warm, although I might be totally wrong.

Best,
Owen

On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 7:03 AM, homac <homac at strace.org> wrote:

> Yes, I can! :D
>
> 1. I like coding.
> 2. I was looking for a library which reads .blend in Java without
>     crashing, provides access to materials, animations, lighting etc.
>     and has no dependencies on other libraries/game engines.
> 3. I was naive enough to think that it will be an easy task.
>     But I stuck to my plan and made it work.
>
> BTW: There have been discussions on a "Blender Plugin System" earlier
> (which is basically what you want, if I read you correctly). From my
> point of view, the baseline of this discussion is, that it is a lot of
> work and has multiple side-effects and therefore takes many years. Users
> will not get aware of the whole effort spend on the plugin system until
> the first thirdparty plugins appear which have features not available
> with python scripts or just better performance. But they will see, that
> progress of other projects slows down instead. Thus, as long as there
> are no trustworthy, reliable, experienced volunteers, who take the
> responsibility to work on it in cooperation with devs of the respective
> Blender submodules, for at least a couple of years, then there will be
> no plugin system.
>
> Again, that is my personal opinion!
>
> But a less intrusive solution to this is of course a C library for
> .blend files. Because, Blender's clipboard functionality (CTRL+C/CTRL+V)
> uses a .blend file as well. I'm not familiar with RNA, but I assume it
> is possible to trigger CTRL-C from python and then run an external
> program to process the data to override objects with the results
> afterwards. That is a basically a loosely coupled plugin (even though it
> runs in its own process).
>
> There are C libraries out there (e.g. assimp, don't know how stable) but
> the best solution would be to take the original source code + a proper
> interface and just link it into a library. (I talked to someone who had
> the same idea - don't remember his name, unfortunately.)
>
>
> Regards
>   Holger
>
>
> On 21/01/16 20:33, Owen Hogarth II wrote:
> > Blender is a massive code base and you've seen a lot of writing your java
> > .Blend library. I am interested in implementing it, it's more a
> refactoring
> > of the core blender c library which seems to put a lot of devs off,
> > although I do understand that code base is massive.
> >
> > I am going to do this project because I am tired of dealing with
> > proprietary and or closed source software especially as a game dev where
> > you'll be using a tool and the original devs disappear or just whatever.
> >
> > Holger in your emails to the list you made a statement to the effect that
> > you were getting off into the weeds writing that java .Blend library. Can
> > you share what was the original project that made you decide to write
> your
> > library?
> >
> > Best,
> > Owen
> >
>
>
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