/BlenderDMX

Blender addon to design and render DMX lighting.

Primary LanguagePythonGNU General Public License v3.0GPL-3.0

BlenderDMX

Blender addon to design DMX lighting.

Click on the image below to watch the video!

v0.2.5 video

This addon will always be free and open source, if you can donate and help me keep developing tools for artists I'd be really grateful.

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  • Bitcon (BTC only): 1BApp5s16pEPk5oECtJJ7G8iYmbj7r2YrG

INTRODUCTION

Most commercial DMX 3D visualisers are focused on real-time rendering, so they can be used as a tool for designing the show's presets and animations. However, when it comes to final render quality, it's hard to achieve true photorealistic results. Blender is a phenomenal open source 3D software that supports both real time and photorealistic rendering, and this addon makes it easier to create and control common DMX fixtures.

INSTALL

First of all, make sure you have installed Blender 2.9 or higher; Then, download the zip file:

  • LATEST RELEASE (STABLE)

    1. Download the latest release dmx.zip file

  • ROLLING RELEASE (UNSTABLE)

    1. Download the repository ZIP BlenderDMX-main.zip file
    2. Unzip it
    3. Rename the folder BlenderDMX-main inside it to dmx
    4. Zip it back, so you have: dmx.zip/dmx/<contents>

Finally:

  1. Open Blender
  2. Edit > Preferences > Add-ons > Install
  3. Pick the addon zip file

To enable the addon, go to Edit > Preferences > Add-ons, search for "DMX" and toggle the checkbox on.

Install

USAGE

First make sure you're on the 3D View and in Object Mode. Then, make sure you have an object in scene. A "DMX" tab should appear on the right, and clicking it you can find the "Setup" toolbox. If it doesn't, select the object. (I'm looking for ways to improve this) Click "Create Blank Show", and a "DMX" collection should appear on the scene inspector.

To add a fixture, go to the "Fixtures" toolbox and choose the fixture class. After setting the fixture properties, click "OK" and it should appear on the 3D View. You can move the fixture body around and use the target object to set it's direction.

Usage

Then, select the lights on the scene or the list and you can set their colors and intensity. You can create and use groups for selecting multiple fixtures at once.

Usage2

The DMX > Setup panel allows setting the background color and creating a Volume Scatter box around the whole scene. You can either use Eevee or Cycles.

Usage3

WHAT'S NEXT?

The alpha version offers no real DMX features. The main focus is to create a productive workflow to place, focus and program DMX lighting inside Blender.

The beta version will mainly introduce DTGF Fixture Profiles, a "Channels" toolbox (so the 512 channels can be manually manipulated individually) and a Scene recorder.

Once this is done, the final step towards the vanilla release is the "ArtNet" panel, to allow the manipulation of such values by any ArtNet system.

Please feel free to make suggestions on the Issues section and to pull improvements to the code.