Export .obj file with the name of the active object preselected

When you select export .obj from the File menu the name of the file will typically be preselected as the name of your Blender file but with the .obj extension or just object.obj if you haven't named your Blender file yet.

That's fine, you can change the name of course, but when I am working on a collection of object variants, I typically want to export them one a time and to be able to recognize them easily, I typically name the file after the name of the object.

Can this be simplified?

The Export Active Obj add-on

Yes, this can be simplified because we can add the export obj operator to the File menu again, but with the filename prefilled with the name of the active object.

The code is shown below, and it sets some common options I use all the time as well, but the essence is in line 7 (there is some more code in the add-on to set things up). 

def menu_func(self, context):
    self.layout.separator()
    op = self.layout.operator(
        "wm.obj_export",
        text="Export Active Obj",
    )
    op.filepath = context.active_object.name + ".obj"
    op.forward_axis = "Y"
    op.up_axis = "Z"
    op.export_selected_objects = True


def register():
    bpy.types.TOPBAR_MT_file_export.append(menu_func)

The code can be downloaded from my GitHub repo [file: export_active_obj.py] or directly from this link.

Tiny add-on to match data-block names to object names

I often find myself starting with a simple cube mesh, changing it a lot and then only after a while I give the object a meaningful name. I am pretty structured about this so even if my file ends up with a lot of objects, all objects will generally have a descriptive name.

However, the data blocks will at some point have names like Cube, Cube.001, Cube.002, etc., or even worse, have names that reflect other variants. Not a big deal  per se, but it might get confusing after a while so I'd like to rename all data blocks to match the name of the object.

The Name Match add-on

Renaming tens or even hundreds of objects can get tedious so I created a small add-on that when installed adds an item to the Object menu in the 3d-View.

The code is really simple indeed (see below, line 14 , the complete add-on has some extra code to create the menu entry): it assigns the name of the data-block for each selected object to the name property of the object itself. No need to check for objects with the same name because Blender will already take care of that.

When a data-block is linked to more than one object, the objects get names with numerical suffixes.

class NameMatchOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Rename datablocks to match the name of the objects they are linked to"""

    bl_idname = "object.name_match"
    bl_label = "Name match"
    bl_options = {"REGISTER", "UNDO"}

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return len(context.selected_objects)

    def execute(self, context):
        for obj in context.selected_objects:
            obj.data.name = obj.name
        return {"FINISHED"}

Code availability

You can download it from my GitHub repo, or click this link to go to the code directly.

 

Spring sale is on at BlenderMarket ! They are having a sale starting tomorrow, May 21

This means serious discounts on participating products and of course my add-ons are on sale too, including Snap!

Check out BlenderMarket to see if that special product on your wish list now has an 'on sale' label.

Spur gears with geometry nodes: demo

IDMapper add-on verified for Blender 4.1

  

I am pleased to announce that IDMapper is now verified for Blender 4.1. 

It has been tested against version 4.1.1 of April 16, 2024, and no changes were needed.

Blender 4.0 introduced quite a few breaking changes, so this version is not backwards compatible with 3.x

Although no new functionality was introduced in this release, please be aware of the following:

• IDMapper can currently not work with facemaps, because they are no longer supported in 4.0. This may change in the future (hopefully, see this discussion) and if possible I will try to get this back into IDMapper. Meanwhile, I did create a small, free add-on to make selecting faces from facemaps possible in 4.0 which may be useful in some workflows.
• Color picking in Face Paint Mode (with the S-key) is no longer restricted to the 3d-View area, so colors can be picked from anywhere in the Blender application (although still not outside of it).

IDMapper simplifies creation and editing of vertex color layers that can be used as ID-maps in texturing software like Substance Painter or Quixel. It aims to reduce the time it takes to create an ID-map significantly, especially for complex hard surface models. It uses powerful heuristics to create an ID-map from scratch and lets you interactively adjust the results. It offers options to use existing information, like uv-seams, but can also intelligently assign the same color to similar mesh parts. 

The new version is available on BlenderMarket.

This previous article showcases some of IDMapper's functionality.

WeightLifter add-on verified for Blender 4.1

 

WeightLifter has been verified for 4.1 compatibility. It has been tested with the 4.1.1 version of April 16, 2024  and no modifications were needed to make it compatible. If you still encounter a bug, please let me know so that I can have a look at it.

WeightLifter is available on BlenderMarket. This update is free for customers who bought previous versions of WeightLifter.

WeightLifter is an add-on that can calculate all sorts of information and store this into vertex groups or vertex color layers. It can for example determine the visibility of vertices for a certain camera or the distance to some light source and much, much more (the add-on comes with a 30 page fully illustrated manual), information that can for example be used as a density map in particle systems. You can even bake this information if your scene is animated. 

The future

The code in the add-on is very old (10 years, which in Internet terms is ancient) and it does show its age in the way it is structured and also, as I experience myself, it is not very fast, especially on large meshes.

I was tempted to modernize it, and improve its speed if possible, but this might also be an opportunity to add features. So if you have an idea or suggestion, please drop me a note in the contact box at the top right of the page or via BlenderMarket and I'll be happy to consider it.

In its current form it is unlikely it will be supported beyond Blender 4.2 LTS

Floor board add-on (a.k.a. planks) updated for Blender 4.1

It is always good to hear that people are using an add-on, and this time I got a request to update my floor board generator for Blender 4.1.

Blender changes all the time and this time 4.1 even broke the old version of the add-on. Fortunately it was pretty easy to fix, so I am happy to announce that a new version is available on GitHub. [click download in the upper left corner]

If you want to know more about what the add-on can do, check this older article on my blog.

This version also incorporates a few small tweaks:

• the bevel modifier now uses percentage as the default. This gives more consistent behavior across different patterns,
• the bevel modifier now also has the harden normals option checked, which gets rid of quite a few shading artifacts,

and a new pattern: Chevron