Hi! Herewith you'll find the first release of our recently developed Blender Add-on: 'TD Scripts v1.0. We're currently seeking for opportunities to make the transition between Blender and Touchdesigner more fluid, especially within the export realm.
Since I'm mostly working with Physically based Rendering, a lot of materials usually contain 4 texture files at least. As projects are getting more complex, geometry can quickly contain more than one material. There are several ways for exporting your mesh (.fbx. .abc .obj. usd), but I have not found a descent export for materials yet. If you have to change the MAT type in Touchdesigner and connect all the textures (again!), at some time.... this starts to get annoying.
The first release of this Add-on for Blender comes with two scripts:
- a blender material to TD converter
- a camera position/rotation script
Both scripts work the same, as in it copies a script to the clipboard that TD can execute. So you just hit the button, create a textDAT in your network, paste the script in and run it.
The 'Camera positions' script speaks for itself; It puts the camera in TD at the exact same position and rotations as in the Blendfile. So it does al the mindflipping-rotation-matrices and Euler/Quaternion transpose shenanigans for you! No export to a file needed.
The 'Blend to pbrMAT' script lets you copy a script to the clipboard which contains a couple of automated steps for setting up a pbrMAT in Touchdesigner. Just like with the camera script, paste the copied text into a textDAT, run it, and it basically copies your Blender material to Touchdesigner!
Since I'm already quite excited about this Add-on and desperately needed to share this with the world, it comes with a couple of sidenotes:
- currently for 'Principled BSDF' shader only
- tested on Blender 2.92 and TD build 2021+
- the image texture nodes needs to be connected to the 'Principled BSDF' sockets DIRECTLY, so no gamma, mix shader nodes in between
This may sound a bit like a bummer at first, but this made my (3D) life already so much easier!
Of course this Add-on is highly under development so additional features, options and fixes to make the transition from Blender to Touchdesigner more fluid are on the top of our minds. If you have any suggestions, tips, ideas for a script or any kind of Blender/TD related thing that stands in your way that you'd like to be fixed, feel free to contact me anytime!
A 'FREE' release this version since it's in a development state. Future plans are releasing something like a free 'LIGHT' version and a Patreon only 'PRO' version with more additional scripts.
Best!
Download latest build here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/td-scripts-v1-2-75092952