Importing files as shaders

[jacblo]

While i understand that this might not be easy, importing blender files with all the materials there and putting them in the material editor on the website could make the experience a whole lot better which would probably cause a whole lot of people to add materials.

There are many ways to parse blender files, and since i don't know what server is running the website and what its capabilities are, i'll tell you what i found in my searches online. You could probably also find them, but just to help -

1. easier is what is written about here, running code in python in a cli blender - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33447680/blender-open-and-parse-a-blend-file-from-python-script
   But it needs blender to be installed so might not be possible - depends on the server.
2. There are some open source parsers for blend files like this one - https://github.com/lukebitts/blend although it's in rust, and this one in javascript - https://github.com/acweathersby/js.blend
3. since blender is open source, you can look around in it's source and find the data serialization / file creation library and just use that.

If you need my help with digging through the source, i'd be happy to help this project with what i can.

[Shadercloud]

Thanks for the feedback. Having an option for people to upload .blend files and have it parsed sounds like a good feature.

I'm thinking a UX flow like:

1. Upload .blend file
2. Server parses it behind the scenes on the fly (i'm assuming parsing the blend file shouldn't be too load intensive)
3. Present user with list of materials that were found in the blend file (so they can select which one(s) they want to share)
4. Allow the users to enter names and categories for each selected material
5. Done

I don't think it would be that difficult seeing as I already have an API for parsing XML submitting from the shader cloud blend addon, so can use the same method (basically dump their selected materials to XML and then use same importer)

I'd probably go with using your options #1 (using blender cli), seeing as the site is written in php (laravel) and i don't really want to have manage a separate js or rust parser.

[Shadercloud]

I've added a "Upload" system which can parse .blend files and allow you to select which materials to import. Multiple materials can be imported at once.

It's still pretty untested, so their might be a few bugs it in still; especially if uploading complex materials.

[jacblo]

so far it has been working really well

[Shadercloud]

I notice your latest bubble material didn't render correctly, so I will try to figure out what's going on there and fix that.

[jacblo]

yeah, it needs alpha hashed so maybe that was the problem