[Bf-committers] Proposing a unique ID for Blender objects system, for use with game engines.

[AMDBCG]

Python has an id for each object that can be referenced in your Blender 
importer

https://www.programiz.com/python-programming/methods/built-in/id - where 
id is the main id of the object

-Robert Fornof (amdbcg)

On 11/12/2020 9:24 AM, Juan Linietsky via Bf-committers wrote:
> Hi guys, lead Godot dev here.
>
> I wanted to discuss with you a problem we are often having that I am not
> certain how it can be solved entirely from our side, I add a proposal for
> this, but if you guys have a better recommendation, I'm very open to any
> ideas.
>
> Basically, Godot will import scenes (GLTF/FBX/DAE/etc) as they come from
> blender, and it generates the same object names, resource names, etc. as
> they come from Blender and the resource file.
>
> We use the same names so we can keep track of changes in the Blend file. If
> an object is moved, a material is changed, etc. we detect on re-import and
> everything is updated in Godot.
>
> This is especially more annoying in Godot than in other game engines,
> because Godot can read the whole Blender scene and keep it more or less
> intact, so users love using this for level design workflow (so they can
> design levels in Blender).
>
> So, the problem is that it often happens that for some reason, artists want
> to rename the objects in Blender. Be it because they didn't care at the
> beginning and they want to become more organized later, or because the
> scene became bigger and they need to make their naming of things more
> precise to navigate it around. In this situation, when something is renamed
> on the Blender side and re-exported, the game engines have no idea where
> this object went, so we need to either remove it (resulting in loss data)
> it or orphan it (resulting in duplicated data).
>
> While I do think that good practices solve this and this is probably not
> such an issue in a professional environment, truth is that game development
> has become a huge hobbyist activity, and our users find this situation
> constantly and are annoyed with it, and there is nothing we can do from our
> side.
>
> The obvious proposal to solve this would be to ask Blender whether it's
> possible to generate a unique object ID (UUID?) and make sure it does not
> change over time even if objects are renamed, then changing the exporters a
> bit to (optionally if selected in the export settings) add this information
> as extensions in the existing format (on GLTF it should be rather easy).
>
> If you guys think this is possible, it would be very helpful for us, if you
> have other ideas on how we could solve this, we are very open to discussion.
>
> Best
>
> Juan
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