Newb using blender on a mac.

[optic delusion]

I've used blender a little bit, but never had any real use for it, because I couldn't import/export .bzw files into it. Apparently, Teppic has updated his python scripts and I want to try it. (I believe it's a script, not a blender plugin, as i was at first told.) Spazzy Mcgee is the only guy i know who ever got teppic's old script to work, on a mac, but he only got export to work, not import, AND he's taking a vacation tomorrow, so I decided to share my experiences.
Installing the scripts into blender is being discussed in a seperate post: http://my.bzflag.org/bb/viewtopic.php?p=88916#88916 If I ever get some solid install instructions I'll be sure to put them in this thread. Here come the links..

Blender is written in java, it says i need java1.4.2, So in my terminal I used "java -version" ..it tells me I already have java1.5.0

Blender, I got the intel-mac-only version http://www.blender3d.org/ There's no installer... just copy everything from the .dmg to a new folder.

now, yafray, which I've heard is indespensible for blender. From the blender site:
"When using the plugin interface, the render in progress will now update continuously in Blender's render window. This gives much faster feedback. It even shows the distribution of the samples taken by the path light when rendering with cached pathlight. YafRay devides the image into blocks and renders them in a random sequence. .... Another big improvement is that a render can now be cancelled by pressing the ESC key"
http://www.yafray.org/index.php?s=1 ...yafray's installer requires a restart. I downloaded yafray and think I installed it correctly, but I'll have to leave that topic for now.

Unless I can get teppic's scripts running, this is all for nothing. Some more from the blender site:
Python:
Some downloaded scripts may require extra Python modules not shipped with Blender. Installing the whole Python distribution is a way to solve this issue for most cases except scripts that require extensions (3rd party modules), but we are starting to add more modules to Blender itself so that most scripts don't depend on full Python installs anymore. This is mostly about Windows, in other platforms Python is usually a standard component nowadays, so unless there's a version mismatch or an incomplete py installation, there should be no problems.
Even if you do have the right version of Python installed you may need to tell the embedded Python interpreter where the installation is. To do that it's enough to set a system variable called PYTHON to the full path to the stand-alone Python executable (to find out execute "import sys; print sys.executable" inside the stand-alone interpreter, not in Blender). To check which Python was linked to your Blender binary, execute "import sys; print sys.version" at Blender's text editor), it's probably 2.3.something -- only the two first numbers should have to match with yours.


Well, that's where I am so far, I hope someday to expand this into actually USING blender, especially how to use the key modifiers with a one-button mouse...

[Teppic]

I spent a lot of time on IRC with A-Delusion, JeffM2501 and A_Temporal_Distraction, for which I thank them, and have managed to get together, fairly good, install and setup instructions for the scripts on Mac now.

These can be found on the BZWiki Tools page along with some extra downloads you may need.

[optic delusion]

Yesterday was a pretty confusing day for me, the biggest problem I had was with subversion, I have it installed, and actually had it working yesterday, but am still confused about setting correct paths for it, and was completely ignorant of needing a frontend for subversion. I got SVNX
http://www.lachoseinteractive.net/en/co ... /features/
Right now, I think if I use this front-end, I don't need to set the paths to subversion. More on this later.

And I'm looking at the wiki, the first thing I see is
$ cd ~/.blender/
Maybe on linux blender's first startup creates the /user/.blender file, but I don't think Mac does. Maybe "mkdir ~/.blender" should be in the wiki.

We're talking about getting someone to test the wiki on, see if they can install it easily. So far we've been on intel-macs, we should test on PPC's too. Any volunteers?

more to come.

[Teppic]

but am still confused about setting correct paths for it

I read the readme, and it does seem similar to *nix here

Code: Select all

 $ echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin' >>/etc/profile

should fix the svn paths for all people and

Code: Select all

$ echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin' >>~/.bashrc

will do it for just you, but you will need to re-open your shell to see it work.

and was completely ignorant of needing a frontend for subversion. I got SVNX

You don't need a front end, if it is in your $PATH the commands listed on the wiki work.

http://www.lachoseinteractive.net/en/co ... /features/
Right now, I think if I use this front-end, I don't need to set the paths to subversion. More on this later.

I think that is true, but IMHO it is easier to give concise instructions on comand line tools, cd ~/ cannot be missunderstood.

And I'm looking at the wiki, the first thing I see is
$ cd ~/.blender/
Maybe on linux blender's first startup creates the /user/.blender file, but I don't think Mac does. Maybe "mkdir ~/.blender" should be in the wiki.

Dude, go in and add it, its a wiki

We're talking about getting someone to test the wiki on, see if they can install it easily. So far we've been on intel-macs, we should test on PPC's too. Any volunteers?

I think the install will be the same, from a Linux users perpective PPC and x86 OS X are the same, just a differing kernel and toolchain, there may be other differences, but that's probably the crux of it.

I think the biggest problem is this missing folder in the Blender install, it's a simple one to work around (provide an archive of the folder), but a pain to find the folders path and install it, as A_T_D, you and I found out.
Maybe one of the mac guys could get a working version, with bzwtools installed, and archive the whole thing for download. After working on the problem yesterday I still believe that installing this on a mac is harder to do than use it. Are iPods this hard to use?

If I could only run an OS X virtual machine in vmware

[Legolas_]

Hmm. ive read through all the documentation on how to get the scripts into blender, but when i open it up, nothing appears under scripts. Could someone host a version of blender download with these scripts pre-installed?

thanks

-Lego

[optic delusion]

Legolas, I assume got the scripts installed in /Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/.blender. You need to create a symlink to the scripts.
(I'm pretty sure this is the correct command. If not, I'm very close)

cp /Applications/blender-2.42-darwin-8.7.1-i386/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/.blender/scripts ~/.blender_scripts

ln -s /Applications/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/.blender/scripts/ ~/.blender_scripts

then
ls ~/.blender_scripts
should show you the scripts you've installed

they're two different things, but a symlink is sort-of like an alias in OSX.

Teppic: I will edit the wiki.

[Teppic]

Nearly, you want

Code: Select all

ln -s /Applications/blender-2.42-darwin-8.7.1-i386/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/.blender/scripts ~/.blendscripts 

and then

Code: Select all

ls ~/.blendscripts 

should show the standard scripts. Once you can do that set your python path to /Users/legolas/.blenderscripts
Check the special mac bits on the wiki, in the configuring section, there is a bit about not seing any scripts on macs.

[Legolas_]

Ok, i got it, thanks for all the help!