Free Blender addon for Thea

Render by Eduardo Câmara

v. 0.1 for Blender 2.66

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GLOSSARYBlender – Blender applicationexporter – part of plug-in responsible for exporting Blender data to Thea formatIBL – Image Based LightingLUT – Look Up Tablemesh – geometry data for objectobject – Blender and Thea object containing materials assigned to it and meshOS – Operating systemThea – Thea Render application

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INSTALLATIONREQUIREMENTS

To use this plug-in you will need:– Blender in version 2.66– Installed Thea

INSTALLATION To make the Thea export plug-in available in Blender:

1. Start Blender, go to menu File/User Preferences/Addons.2. Select “Install from file” and choose

TheaForBlender_v1.2.001.zip, then enable Thea Render addon. 3. Windows and Mac users need to change also the Thea output

path to an existing one. Note to deactivate the Relative Path option at the File Browsing window.

4. Before exporting or making an Interactive Render, save also your Blender scene.

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IMPORTANT CHANGESIT'S FREE NOW.

Addon is now released under GPL license.

NEW MATERIAL SYSTEM

New, free addon version introduces also new material system.It's based on Thea material components and it's not compatible with previous material system although there is possibility to convert blender material into basic or glossy component.Supported components:

– Basic– Glossy– SSS– ThinFilm– Coating– Clipping– Displacement

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HAIR/STRAND EXPORT

Hair/strands are now exported as mesh objects. Exporting of large amounts of long stands with many steps may take a while.

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FEATURESOBJECT EXPORT Objects are exported with modifiers applied on them.

MATERIAL EXPORT

Material system based on Thea material components and it's not compatible with previous material system although there is possibility to convert blender material into basic or glossy component.Supported components:

– Basic– Glossy– SSS– ThinFilm– Coating– Clipping– Displacement

Thea Material LUT SystemBlender materials can be automatically translated to already prepared Thea materials by use of the material export name. The LUT (lookup table) file is used to translate and assign a Thea material to a corresponding exported Blender material name. This allows for advanced Thea materials to be called automatically on export.LUT file can be generated using Thea LUT Tool panel located in Render panel.File will be generated based on Thea's materials located under Thea materials path.

CAMERA EXPORT All visible cameras are exported with perspective, location and direction.The current Blender camera is set as active camera in Thea.

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DOF distance and camera aperture are also exported. Orthographic cameras are exported as well.

LIGHTS EXPORT Thea's omni, spot, sun, IES and projector lights are supported.

ENVIRONMENT EXPORT Dome, IBL and Physical Sky methods are supported.

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GETTING STARTEDHOW TO WORK WITH EXPORTER The Thea exporter will try to find Thea’s installation directory, using either the Windows registry or installation files, in case of Unix systems.Scenes are exported in xml format and saved in directory set in Output panel. Blender files have to be saved before exporting.

OBJECTS All objects on visible layers are exported unless “Selected only” option in Thea Render panel is enabled. In this case only selected objects will be exported. Objects are exported with modifiers applied on them. Currently only mesh objects are exported so far.Also layers information is exported. Since Thea has only 10 layers and Blender has 20 Thea's if object layer in Blender > 9 then layer = layer - 10.Modifiers are applied at Render level during the export process. In the case of multiple objects using the same mesh, a mesh will be exported only once, but each object will have it's own transformation (scale, translation, rotation) parameters, i.e. duplicated objects. If the option to “Reuse meshes” in Thea Render panel is set, then geometry data won't be exported, assuming that it's already exported. Only new transformation will be exported.

There is also possibility to set material interface for selected object. Proper panel can be found in object panel. To enable/disable shadow casting/receiving, caustic casting/receiving,

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visibility or disable object in Thea go to “Thea object settings” panel in Object panel and change desired settings.

MATERIALS

New material system is based on Thea material components and it's not compatible with previous material system although there is possibility to convert blender material into basic or glossy component.Supported components:

– Basic– Glossy– SSS– ThinFilm– Coating– Clipping– Displacement

Basic and glossy component panel has also "B>T" and "T>B" buttons. When you press those buttons material data will be mostly synchronized between blender material and Thea specific data. This will also trigger generating the material preview.Using "B>T" is good idea when you start with already existing blender material and you want to get diffuse, specular etc. parameters into Thea component. Bitmap textures are also supported and if you want to enable texture to be used by selected component please enable corresponding switch in Mapping panel under Texture panel. It should be at the end of texture panels.Single bitmap texture can be used by more than one component. Also single component can use different textures for i.e. diffuse, specular or bump mapping. Remember to enable component to use this texture and enable i.e. Diffuse color, Specular, Normal or Alpha for this texture.You can also mix two components using layer weight and if needed you can enable Stencil option for bitmap texture and enable this for needed component. This way texture will be used as layer weight map.Exporter also support animated textures. Currently it supports only Sequence type and frame number must be in last four characters of

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file name. In cases when it is difficult or impossible to create the desired material in blender, a user can then call Thea’s material editor directly and edit the automatically generated material in Thea’s material editor. On exit, Thea material editor will save the edited material.To get back to automatically generated material press Delete link button.

Material interfaceMaterial interface for selected object can be set in “Thea material interface” panel in Object panel.To get material list click on “Reset material list”, select material and press “Set material interface” button.Using LUT (lookup tables)

Some materials from Thea library will be used very often with different scenes and for this purpose a user can define a scene’s own LUT file, allowing an exported Blender material name to be mapped directly to a custom Thea material.This way you can easy use existing Thea materials by simply selecting material name from list and click on “Set library material” button.LUT file can be generated using Thea LUT Tool panel located in Render panel.File will be generated based on Thea's materials located under Thea materials path. This will be your global LUT and can also be used as a template guide for your own additions.You can also make a project specific LUT, by making similar file in the same dir as your blend scene file. This enables you to have the same Blender material names but pointing to different Thea materials. So instead of modifying the global LUT for a single project, it would be better to create a project's or scenes own LUT. Values from global LUT will be overwritten with the local LUT.LUT file structure is described below:First two lines are file description and they should stay there.

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Starting from line 3 you can put your own definitions.The first field contains Blender’s material name, second path, to Thea’s material. $$ means Thea install dir, and it should be left as is, as Thea recognizes the correct location.#Material translation table #Blender_name:path/to/Thea/mat/file ThThinGlass:$$/Materials/Transparent/thin glass clear.mat.thea

The above sample describes the LUT export process. If a Blender material with name ThThinGlass is found, then all exported material settings will be ignored and thin glass clear.mat.thea material from Thea’s $$/Materials/Transparent/ directory will be used.

CAMERA All visible cameras are exported with perspective, location, direction and DOF control to match Blender and Thea's camera.Current Blender camera is set as active camera in Thea.2Orthographic cameras are exported as well.

LIGHTS Blender lamps Point and Spot are supported.Falloff types: Constant, Inverse Linear and Inverse Square are supported.

Point and spot lights can have also a size value to cast soft shadows. To enable soft shadow Samples value has to be > 1. Light size value is in meters.

Spot lights can have bitmap textures to act as projector lights in Thea. To make projector lights set texture Mapping to View.

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If an IES file is added to spot light as texture lamp, it will then be exported as IES light.

ENVIRONMENT Ambient Occlusion have to be enabled to add Dome or IBL light to the scene.To setup a Dome light enable Ambient Occlusion in Blender World settings.

To enable IBL add Wold texture. Supported mappings are: AngMap and Sphere.

To enable Thea's Physical Sky, enable it in the World panel and choose a location.

You can override Sun position by adding lamp called “sun” with type Sun. Direction isn't important, just set lamp position to desired one. If exporter find such lamp it will disable Sun generated by location and will use “sun” lamp.

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Exporting sceneYou can find Thea render settings located in the render panel. To export a scene press “Export Current Frame”. The scene will be saved in the same dir as blend file with the same name. Objects will be saved id ~thexport directory in output location.

Thea Tools panelAnimationWhen Export Animation is pressed the exporter will export all frames according to animation setup. Frame definitions will be saved in ~thexport/frames.While exporting animation also ipt.thea script will be created. This animation script does not contain any mesh and material data, so remember to load your scene first and if necessary setup render parameters.Export all visible camerasWhen the button “ Export Still Cameras” in Render panel is pressed, then the exporter will create an ipt.thea script to render all visible cameras. This allows you to render a scene from different viewpoints at once, without need to change camera. Remember to set time limit in case of using unbiased methods.Enable / Disable Mesh animationThis operators will enable or disable full mesh export for selected objects in case of animation export. By default objects have this option disabled and only new transforms will be exported if they will be included in animation export. To export whole mesh for each frame please enable mesh animation for selected objects.Enable / Disable Caustic ReceiverThis operators will enable or disable receiving / transmitting caustics for selected objects. By default all objects have this option enabled. Enable / Disable Trace ReflectionsThis operators will enable or disable tracing reflections for selected objects materials. By default all objects have this option enabled.

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Thea Setup panelRender presetsYou can choose one of Thea's render presets. This will overwrite your custom render settings while export time. Merging for animation scriptsUse this options to set merging rules while exporting animation and preparing ipt.thea script.

Thea ChannelsThis panel let you enable channels supported by TheaRendering sceneThe current frame can be exported and rendered in Thea after the Image button is pressed. When Render animation is pressed then each frame will be exported before render.

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TIPS & TRICKSFASTER EXPORT When you exporting your scene first time be sure you have “Reuse meshes” option disabled. But later, if you decide to translate, rotate or scale your objects, then you don't have to export meshes again if “Reuse meshes” option is enabled. When exporting meshes with large polycounts, it's better to enable “Reuse meshes”. This prevents exporting meshes again, which can make the export process much faster.In addition, if you decide to change only one or a few of the meshes, then you could enable “Selected only” and export only the selected objects. Once done, you can disable the “Selected only” parameter and enable “Reuse meshes” to export whole scene without mesh data.. very useful when working with big scenes.

FASTER AND SMALLER ANIMATION EXPORT. If in your animation only few objects are moving select them and enable “Selected only” parameter. This will export only selected objects to animation frames files.Also use Enable and Disable mesh animation operators in Thea Tools panel. This will set selected objects as animated mesh so Thea will export full mesh in case of animation export. If it's disabled then only a object material and transformation will be exported and base mesh will be linked. Enable animation only in case if your mesh is changing i.e. softbody, cloth, armature or fluids. There is no need to export mesh if you just move, scale or translate object.

SYNC OBJECTS AND LIGHTS POSITION WITH THEA XML FILE. Export your scene from Blender with enabled option "Start Thea after export", tune your scene with IR and then save scene to the same xml filename as it was exported. Then press "Sync with Thea" button in Blender and selected objects transforms will be synced with Thea xml file.

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TROUBLESHOOTINGTHEA'S DATA PATH PROBLEMS In case when exporter have troubles with automatically discovering Thea's data path where locations and render presets are stored there is possibility to set data path manually.You need to change the Thea Output path (disable Relative Path option) to an existing directory.

CONTACT AUTHORYou can send comments, feature requests or bug information on Thea forum or by mail: grakoczy@gmail.com.

© Grzegorz Rakoczy 2010

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