Loss of Blender Shortcuts and Addons

munkybutt · 6 January 2025 11:57

Hey - our artists are having two issues with the Blender integration and wondered if this was happening for anyone else if there is a work around:

Custom shortcuts are lost on start up. This happens every time Blender is started from the launcher.
Local plugins are lost on start up and have to be manually re-installed:

image1037×862 66.3 KB

This appears to be intermittent, potentially every time we update the Blender addon on the server.

mustafa_jafar · 6 January 2025 17:59

Blender is outside of my expertise but in AYON integration addons there are some processes that run before launching the app:

Pre launch hooks: InstallPySideToBlender, AddPythonScriptToLaunchArgs and BlenderConsoleWindows
Modify environments: add_implementation_envs

I hope this helps finding the issue.

BigRoy · 7 January 2025 04:56

How have you installed your addons and shortcuts? Are you referring to just locally installed ones in Blender, or are these somehow managed in a different way in the studio?

I haven’t heard of this happening myself - but would love to get to the bottom of what you’re facing here because it definitely sounds wrong!

munkybutt · 7 January 2025 21:35

Both are installed locally (we don’t have the bandwidth to sort out studio distribution yet).

We do have our own internal tooling that may be the cause but I am wanting to see if anyone else is experiencing this to help narrow it down.
I think this firmly points things towards our internal tools then so I will have to do some digging there.

munkybutt · 8 January 2025 09:42

So testing this locally with our in house tools disabled:

Launching 4.2.2 LTS standalone my test key map is there and is the active one:

Launching through Ayon, they are not even in the list of presets to pick from:

munkybutt · 8 January 2025 10:42

I have narrowed it down to this line:

github.com

ynput/ayon-blender/blob/692df923e7787800cf1683b8b90d8a572ac87475/client/ayon_blender/addon.py#L53


      
                      previous_user_scripts.add(os.path.normpath(path))
          
              blender_user_scripts = env.get("BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS") or ""
              for path in blender_user_scripts.split(os.pathsep):
                  if path:
                      previous_user_scripts.add(os.path.normpath(path))
          
              # Remove implementation path from user script paths as is set to
              #   `BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS`
              previous_user_scripts.remove(implementation_user_script_path)
              env["BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS"] = implementation_user_script_path
          
              # Set custom user scripts env
              env["AYON_BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS"] = os.pathsep.join(
                  previous_user_scripts
              )
          
              # Define Qt binding if not defined
              env.pop("QT_PREFERRED_BINDING", None)
          
          def get_launch_hook_paths(self, app):

My understanding is this is overriding the default directory, which is contains the missing keymaps and addons.
This variable can only be a single path, but this thread has some work arounds:

munkybutt · 8 January 2025 10:52

The work arounds in that thread won’t work as they require editing native Blender py files.
I thought well if I just get everyone to re-setup their keymaps and addons in a Blender launched by Ayon then they will be setup in the Ayon user scripts location, but that looks to be pointing to the ayon-blender addon folder, so every time a new version is rolled out the key map and addons will be lost again

munkybutt · 8 January 2025 11:50

From the docs:

Yul · 8 January 2025 12:01

You can force BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS in Ayon’s settings, to point to your own scripts folder.
Then Ayon will make sure both your custom scripts and Ayon’s own scripts are all available.

munkybutt · 8 January 2025 13:32

Thanks - issue is the directory is unique to each artist, in their app data folder, so it needs the %APPDATA% variable which does not seem to be expanded/resolved by Ayon’s launch process.
I added my app data as a hardcoded path and it still doesn’t appear to include the key map

I think this is because any pre-existing BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS is moved to AYON_BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS in favour of the Ayon path.

Yul · 8 January 2025 15:26

Yes, your custom BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS is saved into AYON_BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS.
Then, scripts that are in AYON_BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS (your scripts) are executed by Ayon, here :

github.com

ynput/ayon-blender/blob/692df923e7787800cf1683b8b90d8a572ac87475/client/ayon_blender/api/lib.py#L137


      
                              (subcls.__name__, cls.__name__)
                          )
          
          
          def append_user_scripts():
              user_scripts = os.environ.get("AYON_BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS")
              if not user_scripts:
                  return
          
              try:
                  load_scripts(user_scripts.split(os.pathsep))
              except Exception:
                  print("Couldn't load user scripts \"{}\"".format(user_scripts))
                  traceback.print_exc()
          
          
          def set_app_templates_path():
              # Blender requires the app templates to be in `BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS`.
              # After running Blender, we set that variable to our custom path, so
              # that the user can use their custom app templates.

Yul · 8 January 2025 15:28

For me it works all right (to execute both my scripts and Ayon’s scripts).
But I don’t override key maps, so maybe that’s a different beast

BigRoy · 9 January 2025 05:59

@munkybutt with the information you’ve gather and the source to point to - could you create an issue on ayon-blender repository with the minimal details that explain the issue and provide a simple reproducable use case there.

I’m pretty sure user addons are handled as needed already (if not, then let’s make sure to report that as a bug too!) - but it may indeed be that it does not work. If so, report that too, same manner with a minimal reproducable and we can take a look in our backlog.

Also, we should avoid Blender trying to save into the addon for its preferences too - that’s way too confusing and prone to weird behavior I think. If that’s really the case - then that may also warrant an issue of its own.

munkybutt · 15 January 2025 09:49

shall do once I get some spare time