Comments on: BlenderExtender: .blend Preview Plugin for Windows Explorer

By: Fonsch

Fonsch — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:00:53 +0000

Slightly related:

Is there a possibility to show a preview (in Blender) that shows file B while you are working on file A?

Consider the following scenario: I'm working on file A (like a room) and I'd like to insert all kinds of furniture and other stuff. I have a folder containing all kinds of stuff, but the filename doesn't give enough info about the actual contents of the file. I'd like to be able to see some kind of preview when I select a file before adding it to my "room" in file A.

Any ideas / suggestions?

Thanks

By: Dread Knight

Dread Knight — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:48:53 +0000

Anything for KDE4? :P

By: Joeri

Joeri — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:00:40 +0000

Something blender should do if you ask me.

By: Alex Blank

Alex Blank — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:03:13 +0000

This could be useful…I think I'll grab myself a copy right about now…
BTW why does Windows still insist upon having such a finicky, cryptic registry? I understand the logic in having key system parameters logged in a single area, but it just doesn't do its job (but neither do many other things in Windows either)

By: Tom Gleason

Tom Gleason — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:16:44 +0000

> First, this renders only a tiny 96×96 image and also turns down OSA and other goodies so it's really pretty fast.

Nice, do you think you could share some blender command line expertise with the ResourceSpace DAM community so that a quicker rendering technique might be used for our server-side blend previews?

Right now it's pretty simple-minded:
blender -b file.blend -F JPEG -o target.jpg -f 1

By: Bozo

Bozo — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:01:40 +0000

Sounds interesting, but… what makes me ponder is the warning to "so backup everything, especially your registry" : I'm not sure about how serious you are with that, since backup/restore of the complete windows registry isn't really a trivial task (and for restoring an old registry better have you windows repair/install cd ready…).
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't expect a shell extension to wreak complete havoc on my registry, but such a warning from the developer isn't somehing I want to ignore lightly either ;)

By: Jordan

Jordan — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:59:58 +0000

I second impiaaa's post!

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:19:23 +0000

I get the same pythonw error. I love a solution!

By: TheHeadlessSourceMan

TheHeadlessSourceMan — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:57:42 +0000

Q. What happens with big scenes?
A. First, this renders only a tiny 96×96 image and also turns down OSA and other goodies so it's really pretty fast. If the scene still can't render within 30 seconds (this time can be increased by adding like "killRenderAfter=45" to the .ini file), a safety watchdog will shut down Blender and you'll get the "dead monkey" thumbnail for that file. (OpenGL is a great idea. Maybe v2. ;) )

Q. What's up with the pythonw.exe error?
A. I haven't seen that problem specifically, but I do know that this thing requires the the the actual python25 install. If you have (for instance) Cygwin installed also and that "pythonw.exe" is being found instead, badness results. Let me know what u find out.

By: gokudomatic

gokudomatic — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:50:14 +0000

Looks like a nice idea, but thumbnail in windows is the devil. Since the time in 2k where windows wasn't letting me disconnect properly usb drives because it was keeping a handle on some video files for generating thumbnails, I've always totally disabled this troublesome feature.

I think it would be preferable to have a small blender file explorer, like acdsee for images.