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Blender becomes more and more impressive with each release. The lack of Ngons was, especially for architects using the software, always a bit of an annoyance. N

Blender becomes more and more impressive with each release. The lack of Ngons was, especially for architects using the software, always a bit of an annoyance. Now with BMesh, it should be a lot easier to create solid models. Sidenote, the featureset, UI, and Python-API of blender are so impressive that we decided to write the level-editor for our upcoming (non 3D) game as a blender plugin instead of going all the way and writing our own editor. This saved us a tremendous amount of time, and the editor is really good.

rollypolly 15y ago
Did you consider using Inkscape as a non-3D game editor?
- terhechte 15y ago
  A bit, but we used blender before, so we already knew the ins and outs of it's interface, and we're using Macs and I don't like running apps in X. It's kinda sad that there's still no production native Inkscape. I know that people were working on that years ago, but somehow it never went anywhere (or I'm not smart enough to find it). Is Inkscape also easily extendable?
  - dineshk78 15y ago
    Agreed, Inkscape UX on Mac is really bad. The Windows version is much better in comparison. In my opinion, FWIW, a custom UI toolkit like Blender uses gives a much better UX cross platform and presumably a lot less maintenance too.
    - terhechte 15y ago
      Yeah, or even Qt, since their UI toolkit is also highly optimized for all kinds of plattforms. The advantage of the blender approach, of course, is that the app feels the same on every platform, since it is not bound to platform-specific UI requirements. So it doesn't end up in an uncanny valley, where it is kinda like the native UI, but not quite like it.
      - evincarofautumn 15y ago
        Don’t forget that Blender’s UI toolkit is extremely well designed. Consistent user experience doesn’t matter when that experience is consistently poor.
- ibisum 15y ago
  I'm using Inkscape as a 2D game editor, targetting the MOAI framework. Its a wonderful thing to be able to simply drag and drop/copy-paste game items around the Inkscape world, then parse away from the .SVG dom ..
- Tobu 15y ago
  @ibisum if you read this: I am sorry to see that your account has been hellbanned; you should probably create another, as your comments are hidden to most users.
dtf 15y ago
That's great to hear, I've always wondered about using API for custom editors. Are there any particular packages or Python files in the distribution that you'd recommend reading through as get a good introduction to the necessary parts of the API?
- vibrunazo 15y ago
  Just start from the official Blender python api docs [1]. It's very well documented and easy to get started if you got some Python background. We're building Blender scripts for character editors instead of map editors. For our game engine. It's just so easy to get some cool looking 3d models built programmaticly with the Blender API ^^ [1] http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_63_release/#blender-python-documentation http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_63...
- terhechte 15y ago
  Most of the Blender UI is actually generated through Python files that are part of the distribution. So after reading the API docs I found it most helpful to just dive into the accompanying Python files in the blender.app package. Edit: There's also a ton of plugins for Blender that are all written in Python. Our map exporter actually started as a fork of a simple exporter plugin for another format (I forgot what it was initially). http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts

rollypolly 15y ago

Did you consider using Inkscape as a non-3D game editor?

terhechte 15y ago
A bit, but we used blender before, so we already knew the ins and outs of it's interface, and we're using Macs and I don't like running apps in X. It's kinda sad that there's still no production native Inkscape. I know that people were working on that years ago, but somehow it never went anywhere (or I'm not smart enough to find it). Is Inkscape also easily extendable?
- dineshk78 15y ago
  Agreed, Inkscape UX on Mac is really bad. The Windows version is much better in comparison. In my opinion, FWIW, a custom UI toolkit like Blender uses gives a much better UX cross platform and presumably a lot less maintenance too.
  - terhechte 15y ago
    Yeah, or even Qt, since their UI toolkit is also highly optimized for all kinds of plattforms. The advantage of the blender approach, of course, is that the app feels the same on every platform, since it is not bound to platform-specific UI requirements. So it doesn't end up in an uncanny valley, where it is kinda like the native UI, but not quite like it.
    - evincarofautumn 15y ago
      Don’t forget that Blender’s UI toolkit is extremely well designed. Consistent user experience doesn’t matter when that experience is consistently poor.
ibisum 15y ago
I'm using Inkscape as a 2D game editor, targetting the MOAI framework. Its a wonderful thing to be able to simply drag and drop/copy-paste game items around the Inkscape world, then parse away from the .SVG dom ..
Tobu 15y ago
@ibisum if you read this: I am sorry to see that your account has been hellbanned; you should probably create another, as your comments are hidden to most users.

dtf 15y ago

That's great to hear, I've always wondered about using API for custom editors. Are there any particular packages or Python files in the distribution that you'd recommend reading through as get a good introduction to the necessary parts of the API?

vibrunazo 15y ago
Just start from the official Blender python api docs [1]. It's very well documented and easy to get started if you got some Python background. We're building Blender scripts for character editors instead of map editors. For our game engine. It's just so easy to get some cool looking 3d models built programmaticly with the Blender API ^^ [1] http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_63_release/#blender-python-documentation http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_63...
terhechte 15y ago
Most of the Blender UI is actually generated through Python files that are part of the distribution. So after reading the API docs I found it most helpful to just dive into the accompanying Python files in the blender.app package. Edit: There's also a ton of plugins for Blender that are all written in Python. Our map exporter actually started as a fork of a simple exporter plugin for another format (I forgot what it was initially). http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts