User:Sybren/SfA/custom-properties

Scripting for Artists: Custom Properties

• Last video: added existing properties to a panel. Real power comes from adding your own properties.
• Can be added to pretty much any type in bpy.types, so Object, Mesh, Scene, WindowManager, Camera, etc.
• Different kinds of properties
  • Existing properties, like object.location or scene.name.
  • Custom Properties, from the Custom Properties panel.
  • A third kind: your own properties. These are also "custom" because they're added by your add-on and not standard in Blender. Behind the scenes they also use the same way to store their values as Custom Properties. This means that if your add-on is not loaded, the values are still stored in the blend file.

Your Own Properties

• We have seen those when we created an operator: the Monkey Grid operator had count_x, count_y, and size properties.
• We created the operator by creating a class, and then putting the properties in there. These properties are not limited to our own classes. We can also assign them to existing classes.

Mass import OBJ files and allow re-importing

• Scene property: directory containing the OBJ files.
• Object property: name of the OBJ file it came from.
• Big assumption: one OBJ file corresponds to one object.
• Draw on panel.

Temporary Properties on the Window Manager

• Set properties before we call the Monkey Grid operator.