Blender
Demo
This is a screenshot of a demo I created to show at the Blender
Conference 2003. It shows the texture on a model in Blender being
updated in realtime, while drawing onto it in the Gimp. I used a
patched Blender to be able to edit the textures through a Python
script, running in the right window. This is because the Python
script locks up Blender, to be able to receive callbacks from verse
(there is no timeout function and threading simply doesn't work). The
fact that this demo is one big hack will make it currently very hard to
redo this demo on your computer. Using this technique as an artist is
currently not possible, as this will probably crash the plug-in, lead
to loss of data and maybe not even work at all. You'll need to wait a
bit for this, maybe until Blender 3.0. If you're really motivated, and
have linux installed somewhere, read on.
Blender
Getting the Verse Gimp-Blender demo to run on Linux
Here I'll explain how you can set up Verse to allow you to paint an
image in the Gimp and see the updates in Blender in realtime, on a 3d
model. Setting this up will take some time, is only for power users,
and I'm only putting this up because some people asked me how to get
this running, after I showed it at the Blender Conference. I've only
got it working in Linux right now. Note that this is a hack, and it has
major problems and restrictions. It could certainly be done better, but
that would mean quite a different approach and a lot more code to
write, so I'm not planning to do that right now. Maybe when Blender
(3.0) will be more suited for this kind of thing. If you want to get
this working, follow these steps closely.
- Install the Gimp 2.0, one of
the pre2.0 versions will do too (as
2.0 is not out at the time of writing).
- Download and build Verse.
- Download the Verse
Gimp plug-in and extract it. Edit the Makefile
to point to the directory where you have built Verse. Type 'make' and
'make install'. No need to su, since this will install the plug-in in
your local .gimp-1.3 directory.
- Download the Blender source
and compile it, with this
patch.
- Download PyVerse
and extract. Edit setup.cfg to point to the
directory where you have built Verse. it and build it by typing 'python
setup.py build'. Copy verse.py and _verse.so to the directory of the
blender executable.
- Download these files: gimp.blend
and image.png
and put them in
the directory of the Blender executable too.
- Now we've got everything compiled (is anyone still here after all
these steps?), we can finally see some action. Do these steps in
exactly the same order. It will probably not work otherwise.
- Start the Verse server.
- Start the gimp. Open image.png. Run 'Verse Interaction' from
the 'Xtns' menu. Click 'Connect'. Switch to the 'Images' tab. Choose
image.png from the list and click 'Upload to Verse'.
- Run Blender and open gimp.blend. Open image.png in the image
window. Press Alt+P in the text window. Click the connect button.
Blender will now be 'locked up', and it might look like it has crashed.
But that's what is supposed to happen.
- Go back to the Gimp window of image.png and paint in it.
Hopefully see the image update in the Blender window :).
This is a screenshot of a demo I created to show at the Blender
Conference 2003. It shows the texture on a model in Blender being
updated in realtime, while drawing onto it in the Gimp. I used a
patched Blender to be able to edit the textures through a Python
script, running in the right window. This is because the Python
script locks up Blender, to be able to receive callbacks from verse
(there is no timeout function and threading simply doesn't work). The
fact that this demo is one big hack will make it currently very hard to
redo this demo on your computer. Using this technique as an artist is
currently not possible, as this will probably crash the plug-in, lead
to loss of data and maybe not even work at all. You'll need to wait a
bit for this, maybe until Blender 3.0. If you're really motivated, and
have linux installed somewhere, read on.