Scripting for Artists

Scripting for Artists

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In this video training series, dr. Sybren A. Stüvel shows how to get started with Blender scripting. As the title suggests, this series is aimed at artists, and not so much at people who fancy a programming career.

We will start by simply copy-pasting commands from Blender's user interface into the Python console, to learn how to let Blender perform tasks by command, rather than clicking on buttons. From there we build more complex scripts that can do a lot of monkey work for us. In effect, we let Blender click its own buttons!

Blender versions

The oldest episodes of Scripting for Artists series were made with Blender 2.78, and later episodes used the then-latest version. Since it's not possible to re-record the videos every time a new Blender is released, take a look at the Blender Versions page. For more detail about scripting-related changes, check the Python API sections of the Blender Release Notes.

Course Structure

The Scripting for Artists course consists of two parts. Firstly there are five training videos to teach you scripting, which already gives you a basis in Blender's Python interface. The second part is a series of shorter tech videos in which we look at concrete problems and their solutions. And the third part is yet more training videos! Yes, after the first installment, more videos were added. And then some more.

The topics are:

  • Introduction & copy-pasting code from Blender's UI
  • Names & Objects
  • Stuff on Lists
  • Data Types
  • Collections: mass-rename of objects
  • Updating animation data
  • Rendering 10,000 OBJ files
  • Automatically renaming bones & vertex groups
  • Rendering an object from all angles

After finishing the series, you'll have an understanding how Python can be used to automate tasks in Blender.

The slides will be linked into each video description, as well as the links to documentation and other websites.