Substance Painter experiment

Inspired by a real life flower pot in our garden but weathered quite a lot more:

Sale: Blender Market turns 3

There is something to celebrate: Friday June 9 Blender Market turns 3.
To celebrate, many products will carry a 25% discount that day up til Sunday 11 (applied at checkout, and remember they are on Chicago time), including all products is my shop :-)

How to add a progress indicator to the Info header in Blender

There are many ways to signal progress for long running operations in Blender but the one I like best is the slider which is present when you render a scene. That kind of indicator is pretty clear and at the same time not to intrusive.

However there seems to be no way to add such a progress indicator for other purposes.

Now the menu bar at the top is actually the header of an area within the Info editor, so I tried to add a Panel to this header by specifying 'HEADER' for its bl_region_type. That didn't work: no errors but no visible header either.

So after some digging around I came up with a different approach: replacing the draw() method of the Info header. After all, everything is Python and being a truly dynamic language means we can monkey patch anything.

Basically we get the original draw() method, replace it with our own and call the original again. After this call we add a scene property to the layout of the header and use this float property to signal progress. The result looks like this:

The relevant code looks like this:

# update function to tag all info areas for redraw
def update(self, context):
    areas = context.window.screen.areas
    for area in areas:
        if area.type == 'INFO':
            area.tag_redraw()

# a variable where we can store the original draw funtion
info_header_draw = lambda s,c: None

def register():
    # a value between [0,100] will show the slider
    Scene.progress_indicator = FloatProperty(
                                    default=-1,
                                    subtype='PERCENTAGE',
                                    precision=1,
                                    min=-1,
                                    soft_min=0,
                                    soft_max=100,
                                    max=101,
                                    update=update)

    # the label in front of the slider can be configured
    Scene.progress_indicator_text = StringProperty(
                                    default="Progress",
                                    update=update)

    # save the original draw method of the Info header
    global info_header_draw
    info_header_draw = bpy.types.INFO_HT_header.draw

    # create a new draw function
    def newdraw(self, context):
        global info_header_draw
        # first call the original stuff
        info_header_draw(self, context)
        # then add the prop that acts as a progress indicator
        if (context.scene.progress_indicator >= 0 and
            context.scene.progress_indicator <= 100) :
            self.layout.separator()
            text = context.scene.progress_indicator_text
            self.layout.prop(context.scene,
                                "progress_indicator",
                                text=text,
                                slider=True)

    # replace it
    bpy.types.INFO_HT_header.draw = newdraw

The register() function defines two new scene properties: progress_indicator to hold a value in the range [0,100] which will be shown to indicate progress and progress_indicator_text to hold a configurable label. They refer to an update() function that will be called every time that the value of the property is changed. The update() function just tags any area the is an INFO editor (theoretically there could be more than one) for redraw which will cause the draw() method to be called for any of its regions, including the header region.

Line 30 stores a reference to the original draw() method of the the Info header. Next we define a new method newdraw() that will call the original draw() method (line 36) and then add the new scene property progress_indicator but only if it has a value between zero and 100.

The new function is then used to replace the existing draw function.

How to use the progress indicator

Long running operations are probably best implemented as modal operators and using the progress indicator from a modal operator is very simple. An example of such an operator is shown below (which also starts a timer that will send timer events to the modal operator. The operator will stop after 9 timer ticks and update the progress indicator on each tick. After the final tick it will set the value to 101 which will stop the progress indicator from being displayed:

class TestProgressModal(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = 'scene.testprogressmodal'
    bl_label = 'Test Progress Modal'
    bl_options = {'REGISTER'}

    def modal(self, context, event):
        if event.type == 'TIMER':
            self.ticks += 1
        if self.ticks > 9:
            context.scene.progress_indicator = 101 # done
            context.window_manager.event_timer_remove(self.timer)
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        context.scene.progress_indicator = self.ticks*10

        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        self.ticks = 0
        context.scene.progress_indicator_text = "Heavy modal job"
        context.scene.progress_indicator = 0
        wm = context.window_manager
        self.timer = wm.event_timer_add(1.0, context.window)
        wm.modal_handler_add(self)
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

It is possible to update the progress indicator from a long running non-modal's execute() method as well but although the update functions associated with the scene properties will be called and hence the area tagged for redraw, an actual redraw is only initiated after the operator finishes. There is a way around with a documented but unsupported hack as shown in the code below (line 13):

class TestProgress(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = 'scene.testprogress'
    bl_label = 'Test Progress'
    bl_options = {'REGISTER'}

    def execute(self, context):
        context.scene.progress_indicator_text = "Heavy job"
        context.scene.progress_indicator = 0
        for tick in range(10):
            sleep(1) # placeholder for heavy work
            context.scene.progress_indicator = tick*10
            # see https://docs.blender.org/api/current/info_gotcha.html
            bpy.ops.wm.redraw_timer(type='DRAW_WIN_SWAP', iterations=1)

        context.scene.progress_indicator = 101 # done
        return {"FINISHED"}

Code availability

The full code which includes the two sample operators that illustrate how to use the progress indicator is available on GitHub.

How to remove user installed add-ons in bulk

I admit that this is probably not a problem many people have but as an add-on developer I find myself every now an then in the situation that I want remove a whole bunch of user installed add-ons in one go.

What I often do when I develop a collection of add-ons is define a common category for all of them that is not one of the predefined categories. That way I can at least easily find them and see them grouped together in the user preferences.

Removing a single add-on is simple but to remove a bunch of user installed add-ons is less so because you have to locate the Blender user config directory (which is different on various operating systems) and you'll have to open each add-on file (or __init__.py file in a subdirectory if it's a multi-file add-on) to see if it defines the relevant category.

Tedious, but fortunately Blender can help. The code below shows you how. It is not an add-on itself, it is meant to be run from the command line inside Blender or from Blender's text editor (clicking Run Script). Removing stuff always carries the risk of accidental deletion so be careful (and use this snippet at your own risk. And keep back-ups, but careful people always do that, right? ). And yes, this code removes add-ons, not just disables them!

import bpy
from bpy.utils import script_path_user
from addon_utils import modules, module_bl_info

import os.path

userdir = script_path_user()

def remove_user_installed_addons(cat='Experimental development', dry_run=True):
    for mod in modules():
        if module_bl_info(mod)['category'] == cat:
            if os.path.dirname(mod.__file__).startswith(userdir):
                print("removing " + mod.__name__)
                if not dry_run:
                    bpy.ops.wm.addon_remove(module=mod.__name__)

remove_user_installed_addons(cat='Experimental development', dry_run=False)

As you can see, Blender provides us with an addon_utils module that has both a function modules() to produce a list of all add-ons (both enabled and not-enabled)  and a function module_bl_info() that returns the bl_info block of an add-on as a dictionary.
So all we have to do is loop over all installed modules, check if the module is part of the specified category and if so, use the script_path_user() function to determine if the directory that the add-on sits in, is in the user path (so we don't accidentally remove bundled Blender add-ons).
If it checks out, we user the addon_remove() operator to do the actual removal.

Blender Add-on Cookbook

I am pleased to announce that my new book Blender Add-on Cookbook is now available on Smashwords and Blender Market

A sample (PDF) is available to give you a small taste of what this book offers.

A Cookbook?

It is a cookbook for Blender add-on developers who want to go one step further and want to add a professional touch to their creations or want to add functionality that isn't so straight forward to implement.

This book offers more than 30 examples of practical issues you may encounter when developing Blender add-ons. It gives you practical solutions with fully documented code samples, offers insight and advice based on years of developing add-ons and is fully illustrated.

Each recipe also comes with links to relevant reference sites and Blender API sections, and each code snippet comes with a small example add-on that can be downloaded from GitHub so you can simply test the given examples.

The book contains a proper index and is available in ePub format. (The Blender Market edition will be available in PDF and Mobi formats as well).

E-book promotion

Promotion!

From one minute past midnight on March 5 Pacific time, till 11:59pm on March 11, Smashwords will host its ninth annual read an e-book week promotion. Many e-books will be heavily discounted or even free.

I participate as well, with 50% off my e-books on Creating add-ons for Blender and Open Shading Language for Blender. They weren't expensive to begin with but still, every saving counts :-)

If you want to get in on this deal, just click on one of the book links above and follow the instruction. During the sale a discount Coupon will be listed next to the book entry. This coupon can then be entered on check-out.

Enjoy!

Nodeset: more flexibility

NodeSet is now also available in a Pro version. Read all about it in this article or check out my BlenderMarket shop if you are interested.

Prompted by a question from Packsod 百草头 I've added the option to disable filtering the list of files. It's still enabled by default and in fact you can now specify a fragment to be used in the filter pattern.

This means that if all your texture sets normally contain an albedo map with _alb in its name, that you not only can configure which files to load but also you can restrict the list of visible files to pick from, to anything you like. This greatly reduces the clutter when selecting a texture collection from a folder that contains many texture sets. (remember that even though you see a limited list from which you only pick one file, other textures with the same name and matching configured suffixes will still be loaded).

This means you can configure any set of suffixes that your favorite texture editing program uses in these settings and save it along with your user preferences, an example is shown below.

I also added the option to make suffix filtering case sensitive or insensitive. This is set to insensitive by default.

Code availability

The latest version of the code (201702051650) is available on GitHub (right click and select save as ... , then in Blender File -> user preferences ... -> Add-ons -> Install from file .... Don't forget to remove the previously installed version first)

Previous articles

Previous articles about the Nodeset add-on:
NODESET: IMPORT SUBSTANCE PAINTER TEXTURES INTO BLENDER
NODESET: TINY UPDATE MIGHT SAVE EVEN SOME MORE TIME
NODESET: SUPPORT FOR AMBIENT OCCLUSION MAPS