[Bf-funboard] Blend viewer.

[Campbell Barton]

On Sat, Jun 20, 2015 at 6:59 AM, Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 10:46 PM, gandalf3 <zzyxpaw at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 06/19/15 05:18, Knapp wrote:
>> > Is there a Blend viewer that can be linked to Dolphin (KDE Linux) or
>> other
>> > file browsers so we can view blends? If not, would it be hard to write?
>> >
>> There is a plugin to preview .blends in dolphin already:
>> kde-look.org/content/show.php/?content=146380
>>
>> --
>> -gandalf3
>>
>
> Yes, I know and use that, but the thumbnail is way to small but that has
> been talked about before.
> What I meant here is a 3d viewer.

In the 90's there was in fact a blend file viewer (Ton mentioned
recently, not sure it was released?).

The viewer would end up having to be a stripped down version of
Blender (to load libraries, node trees, GLSL shaders, modifiers
etc...) It would basically end up being Blender without the
game-engine, addons or an interface.

Its not especially hard to do this, (though it would take some time to
setup), the problem is more that its a hassle to maintain longer term,
and a reasonable amount of work just for the slight convenience of
viewing Blend files in a different kind of window.

Blender loads fairly fast, just make a wrapper script that loads a
blend file without any UI & only-render view-port option enabled.
Functionally this is nearly the same as a Blend-file viewer.