Dev:Ref/Proposals/UI/Startup Templates

Startup .blend Templates

The idea to save and load "template" blend files (like managing multiple startups) has been on the ideas list for a while. You would likely have an entry in the File menu with a submenu to pick a template .blend to start from. Each of those would be its own startup.blend.

Use Cases

• Training: instructors can provide a bundle of template .blend files or pre-install if they set up the computers with Blender on them.
• Customization: give users an easy way to start 3D printing, create second life models, etc.

Feedback

Brecht 16:45, 24 November 2013 (CET)

I think multiple startup.blend files is the wrong solution for these use cases.

• Training: it's unclear to me how it is much better to have the training .blend files installed as templates instead of in some folder provided by the instructor:
  • If the files reference any external files like image or movie files, they would need to be packed or installed along with the .blends, which adds extra complication and is probably undesirable for large files. Saving the files in another location would remap paths but any external files would still be in the templates folder.
  • If the .blend files are provided in an external folder, saving them to the right location is easy because users can just overwrite the existing ones. This ensure files are saved in the right location and with consistent file names, when the files need to be sent back to the instructor for evaluation.
  • When the training is over the user would have to uninstall these templates. They are a temporary thing, so why include them as templates in Blender itself.

• Customization: a startup.blend by itself is insufficient to customize blender, so a more general solution is needed.
  • Typical customizations would come with addons which can't be included in a startup.blend
  • Often you do not want to start from them, but rather have some existing model that you want to e.g. 3D print. In that case starting a new template.blend is not convenient, rather you want to be able to use these customizations for existing .blend files too.

• Additional issues:
  • If a user customizes their default startup.blend, those changes would not be propagated to the other template startup.blends. For example the default render output path, screen layouts, etc. It seems that for most use cases this is not actually the intention.
  • Would these have a UI for adding, removing, naming, etc, or be a kind of hidden feature where you place files in a folder and Blender finds them?
  • If you open such a template and do ctrl+U, which .blend does it save to?

For the customization case, I think addons are a better solution. In particular, it would be good if addons could register screen layouts which would then show up next to the user saved layouts. They could then add their own buttons, add functionality to add template meshes, etc. So you would click the "3D printing" tab and it would give you a screen layout with all the relevant tools.

Creating such addons could be simplified if screen layouts could be library linked, you would then just need a basic .py script and a .blend in the addon, where the addon links the screen layout from the .blend.