# Blender Asset Tracer BAT🦇
Script to manage assets with Blender.
Blender Asset Tracer, a.k.a. BAT🦇, is the replacement of
[BAM](https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/BAM/) and
[blender-file](https://developer.blender.org/source/blender-file/)
Development is driven by choices explained in [T54125](https://developer.blender.org/T54125).
## Setting up development environment
```
python3.9 -m venv .venv
. ./.venv/bin/activate
pip install -U pip
pip install poetry black
poetry install
mypy --install-types
```
## Uploading to S3-compatible storage
BAT Pack supports uploading to S3-compatible storage. This requires a credentials file in
`~/.aws/credentials`. Replace the all-capital words to suit your situation.
[ENDPOINT]
aws_access_key_id = YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_ID
aws_secret_access_key = YOUR_SECRET
You can then send a BAT Pack to the storage using a target `s3:/ENDPOINT/bucketname/path-in-bucket`,
for example:
bat pack my_blendfile.blend s3:/storage.service.cloud/jobs/awesome_work
This will upload the blend file and its dependencies to `awesome_work/my_blendfile.blend` in
the `jobs` bucket.
## Paths
There are two object types used to represent file paths. Those are strictly separated.
1. `bpathlib.BlendPath` represents a path as stored in a blend file. It consists of bytes, and is
blendfile-relative when it starts with `//`. It can represent any path from any OS Blender
supports, and as such should be used carefully.
2. `pathlib.Path` represents an actual path, possibly on the local filesystem of the computer
running BAT. Any filesystem operation (such as checking whether it exists) must be done using a
`pathlib.Path`.
When it is necessary to interpret a `bpathlib.BlendPath` as a real path instead of a sequence of
bytes, BAT first attempts to decode it as UTF-8. If that fails, the local filesystem encoding is
used. The latter is also no guarantee of correctness, though.
## Type checking
The code statically type-checked with [mypy](http://mypy-lang.org/).
Mypy likes to see the return type of `__init__` methods explicitly declared as `None`. Until issue
[#604](https://github.com/python/mypy/issues/604) is resolved, we just do this in our code too.
## Code Example
BAT can be used as a Python library to inspect the contents of blend files, without having to
open Blender itself. Here is an example showing how to determine the render engine used:
#!/usr/bin/env python3.7
import json
import sys
from pathlib import Path
from blender_asset_tracer import blendfile
from blender_asset_tracer.blendfile import iterators
if len(sys.argv) != 2:
print(f'Usage: {sys.argv[0]} somefile.blend', file=sys.stderr)
sys.exit(1)
bf_path = Path(sys.argv[1])
bf = blendfile.open_cached(bf_path)
# Get the first window manager (there is probably exactly one).
window_managers = bf.find_blocks_from_code(b'WM')
assert window_managers, 'The Blend file has no window manager'
window_manager = window_managers[0]
# Get the scene from the first window.
windows = window_manager.get_pointer((b'windows', b'first'))
for window in iterators.listbase(windows):
scene = window.get_pointer(b'scene')
break
# BAT can only return simple values, so it can't return the embedded
# struct 'r'. 'r.engine' is a simple string, though.
engine = scene[b'r', b'engine'].decode('utf8')
xsch = scene[b'r', b'xsch']
ysch = scene[b'r', b'ysch']
size = scene[b'r', b'size'] / 100.0
render_info = {
'engine': engine,
'frame_pixels': {
'x': int(xsch * size),
'y': int(ysch * size),
},
}
json.dump(render_info, sys.stdout, indent=4, sort_keys=True)
print()
To understand the naming of the properties, look at Blender's `DNA_xxxx.h` files with struct
definitions. It is those names that are accessed via `blender_asset_tracer.blendfile`. The
mapping to the names accessible in Blender's Python interface can be found in the `rna_yyyy.c`
files.
## Code Guidelines
This section documents some guidelines for the code in BAT.
### Avoiding Late Imports
All imports should be done at the top level of the file, and not inside
functions. The goal is to ensure that, once imported, a (sub)module of BAT can
be used without having to import more parts of BAT.
This requirement helps to keep Blender add-ons separated, as an add-on can
import the modules of BAT it needs, then remove them from `sys.modules` and
`sys.path` so that other add-ons don't see them. This should reduce problems
with various add-ons shipping different versions of BAT.
## Publishing a New Release
For uploading packages to PyPi, an API key is required; username+password will
not work.
First, generate an API token at https://pypi.org/manage/account/token/. Then,
use this token when publishing instead of your username and password.
As username, use `__token__`.
As password, use the token itself, including the `pypi-` prefix.
See https://pypi.org/help/#apitoken for help using API tokens to publish. This
is what I have in `~/.pypirc`:
```
[distutils]
index-servers =
bat
# Use `twine upload -r bat` to upload with this token.
[bat]
repository = https://upload.pypi.org/legacy/
username = __token__
password = pypi-abc-123-blablabla
```
```
. ./.venv/bin/activate
pip install twine
poetry build
twine check dist/blender_asset_tracer-1.15.tar.gz dist/blender_asset_tracer-1.15-*.whl
twine upload -r bat dist/blender_asset_tracer-1.15.tar.gz dist/blender_asset_tracer-1.15-*.whl
```