With this commercial (CDN $4.99) you can use your favorite text editor to edit Blender Text files.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGMFDmbR9U8&feature=player_embedded
Sinan Hassani writes:
Hi, I wrote a plugin which basically takes the current text inside Blender text editor, saves it to a temp file and launches an External Text Editor (the one the OS associates with the file extension). Plugin adds file extension automatically if there is none.
User can edit the text inside the External Text Editor, and save as much as they want. Once they close the External Text Editor and go back to Blender the text updates inside the Blender text editor.
In addition, file extensions are associated with each text file inside the .blend file, and support for .py, .lua as well as shader files are supported (ex glsl, hlsl, cg, etc).
The plugin is $4.99 (CDN), is written by me (Sinan) and sold at Sinsoft (sinsoft.com).
Link
18 Comments
May not be useful to anybody but seems like a nice add-on for scripters.
What if a programmer sees a pay-for plugin like this and thinks "nice concept, but I think I'll rip off the ideas, write my own version, and release it for free"?
Would this be considered bad manners by the Blender community? Could it be legally wrong?
I don't "mind" the idea of Blender developers selling their products, but it does make me worry about possible ugly situations. Mostly I think it WILL be handled through civil communication between fellow Blender nerds, but... this is money we're talking about. It can turn ANYTHING ugly:/
Are there any good articles or forum threads that shine a light on the topic?
(I wish the developer all luck with selling it, personally I'm just not in the external-editor-needy target audience regardless of availability)
hm... you can already do this by loading a text block...
@encn I would think it would be like creating a new style rear view mirror for a Ford say. Ford doesn't have a say if you can sell it or not.
I believe you can do this with Stani's Python editor too, plus you get a whole Python IDE thrown into the deal (click the Blender button in SPE) and for free. Haven't done this in an age, seems a bit like overkill if you don't write scripts regularly. Could this software (a mother of script since its written in Python) be converted to an add-on for Blender 2.5+? The only problem I see is converting the WXWidgets code to BGL besides the obvious jump from 2.x to 3.x for Python. Seems a shame to let this software languish.
Ford does have a say if you are using their patented connector to attach the device. The 3D printer industry has been sued for replicating parts that are no longer produced or sold and are apparently copyright. There is no chance of these shoe string operators can afford even an hour of capable counsel. So its only a matter of time.
I've been doing this for years:
have a .py or .txt file that you intend to use in the .blend; load it in Blender text editor; load it in your favorite text editor; modify the text file as needed in your favorite; in Blender, press "reload" and the text is updated!
I think this would be a very useful and time-saving plug-in. And it's only about $5.20 USD. I think I'll pick this up.
Some developers will find this quite useful, if they do and purchase it. After all it's only $5, then so be it.
If a developer uses this kind of thing frequently, or has been coding in Blender for sometime then chances are they have a work flow set-up.
Indie game developers probably have it worked out as well, but new comes can look at this and get what seems to be a pretty nice little script for a very cheap price, with out having to deal with the hassle of setting up a work around etcetera.
@driesiedriewiel: could you elaborate on that?
@FloridaJo: Ford would have a great deal to say about it if they had designed the FIRST rear-view mirror and you had copied it, which is closer to this situation.
Personally I think it is a bit of a shame that even little add-ons like this are starting to be charged for, given how much free time is donated to the Blender project by others. On the other hand, I would rather have the extra add-ons available, so maybe it is okay. Just hope it doesn't become too much of a trend.
@encn
Recreating this plugin and giving it away free (or for any cost) is perfectly acceptable as long as one doesn't violate the copyright and violate any patents that the software has. Violating the copyright for proprietary software is usually pretty difficult because the companies involved in that protect their source code well. It would be unlikely that another developer would randomly write something similar.
Violating a patent usually is more easy simply because software patents deal more with "ideas" than actual source code. A company with a patent could say well it does x, y and x therefore you need to license our patent or else.
A lot of open source software had it's ideas come from some propriety software. OpenOffice (Libre), Blender and Gimp to name just a small handful.
Hi folks, I'm the dev who wrote this script.
@driesiedriewiel
this plug-in saves you from having to save and load anything. When you press edit your file is saved in a temporary directory, as soon as you save and close the External Editor, the text is updated right inside Blender. So it's a time saver for those who save externally *in order to use an external text editor*. You won't have to do that anymore.
The plug-in also associates file extensions with each Blender text file. So if you use a game engine with Blender like GameKit, and you have all sort of different files like .py, .lua, .glsl, and material files inside your .blend file this plugin helps you keep track of everything, plus of course as you edit externally you get your text highlighted (since the file will contain the correct extension).
I'm charging for the plug-in simply because it took time to write and test. If I sell enough copies I will re-license it to GPL.
Sinan
One more thing to mention, say you press edit to launch the external text editor, and then Blender crashes for some reason, or the operation was not complete for some reason. You can always find the temp text file in your temporary directory that you set using Blender User Preferences.
The plug-in deletes the temp file only after you close out of the external text editor successfully. So please keep this in mind as well.
What I want to know, is does it run on Linux and other similar platforms? It seems to be a Blender plugin, so I imagine it would, but I would like to be sure about it before I'd invest any money.
@Tynach
It's only been tested on Windows. However it uses Blender python API and python which is multi-platform. I couldn't see why it wouldn't work on Linux.
If you purchase for Linux (or Mac) and you couldn't get it to work, please reply back to [email protected], with the error message you get.
Okay, I just tested the plugin on Ubuntu 11.04 and MacOSX and both give "permission denied" errors when writing to /tmp through Python.
So the plugin only works on Windows (at least for now).
Okay, I just tested the plugin on Ubuntu 11.04 and MacOSX and both give "permission denied" errors when writing to /tmp through Python.
So the plugin only works on Windows. Website updated.
I'm a programmer and I think I should buy this extension. I use vim heavily, and I love drawing 3D model in blender. This extension must be quite suitable for me.