ZenoBlend

Integrate the ZENO node system into Blender for creating robust physics animations!

End-user Installation

Goto Release page, and click Assets -> download zeno-linux-20xx.x.x.zip.

Then, start Blender and Edit -> Preferences -> Add-ons -> Install, and choose the file you just downloaded. Afterwards, type 'Zeno' in the search bar, and tick the Physics: Zeno Blend line it pops in.

Developer Build

Setup

First of all, please run this command:

git submodule update --init --recursive

To fetch ZENO which is included a submodule.

Requirements

For configurations of ZENO, please refer to the README of ZENO itself. This README will focus on ZenoBlend itself here.

You need to use Python 3.9 which is the same Python version as Blender 3.0 bundled.

If you use other Blender versions, for example Blender 2.83: check the Python version in it, and use that Python version instead.

Such trouble is all thank to the smart design of Pybind11: it must bind to a specific Python version, otherwise it will raise an RuntimeError.

Ubuntu 20.04

apt-get install -y python3.9-dev

Arch Linux

A little difference for Arch users. The Blender installed from pacman -S blender is 3.0 but uses Python 3.10 instead. Yes, Arch release a customized Blender that link against Python 3.10 in system, a bit different from the offical release at blender.org.

pacman -S python blender

Windows

Install Python 3.9 with a .msi from https://www.python.org, and add it to PATH.

Build

NOTE: It's suggested to use Blender 2.93 or 3.0, other versions are untested now thus may not work.

Ubuntu 20.04

python3.9 build.py

build.py will automatically detects the current Python version running it, and passes the -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=python3.9 argument to CMake. If you are using IDE for running CMake, please add the -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=python3.9 manually.

Arch Linux

python build.py

Windows

cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

@rem Use this if you are using vcpkg:
@rem cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=[path to vcpkg]/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake

Then open build/zenoblend.sln in Visual Studio 2019, and switch to Release mode in build configurations, then run Build -> Build All.

IMPORTANT: In MSVC, Release mode must always be active when building ZENO, since MSVC uses different allocators in Release and Debug mode. If a DLL of Release mode and a DLL in Debug mode are linked together in Windows, it will crash when passing STL objects.

Run

blender -P blender.py

Release

python dist.py