Plugin control for DCCs like Blender

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1

Hi there, im testing some more of the Ayon features, i.e. for how applications can be controlled.

My current example involves Blender but i guess it can be any other package.
If launching a Blender instance using Ayon, the system will load plugins from another location compared to a regular start using the common path.

This will lead to missing plugin installations and i have to reinstall them all one by one for the machine.
The location after a new install path on windows is: \..\%Appdata%\Local\ynput\AYON\addons\openpype_3.18.4\openpype\hosts\blender\blender_addon

Now this is not an ideal situation because it requires the local addon folder to be at least once copied over with plugins, and each time a user or version is changed this needs a revision.

So i assume the best option is to use the variable method to call a different folder as the “to-go” option for checking for plugins.

Can someone shed some light how this could be better utilized?

Cheers,
Kai

2

As far as I know,

Current State:
ayon-core addon (formerly OpenPype addon) is consisting of the main package as well as different hosts’ addons.

so, you’d need to version the ayon-core (or OpenPype) and upload it to the server… and then create a new bundle with the new addon version.

It’s planned to split addons into separated addons which will help a lot with the problem you are mentioning as you will only need to upload the new addon zip file.

I believe this is the startup scripts locations.
The addon it self is the parent folder.

\..\%Appdata%\Local\ynput\AYON\addons\openpype_3.18.4\openpype\hosts\blender

Also, I think this post is relevant

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3

If I understand correctly, you mean Blender addons, not Ayon addons, right? If that’s the case, for Blender specifically you can set a folder to use as addon folder using an environment variable here: ayon+settings://applications/applications/blender/environment, like this:

{
    "AYON_BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS": "C:/Dev/blender-addons"
}

In the folder you need another folder named addons and in there you can put any addon you need!

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4

Hey Guys thanks for the quick reply !

And sorry for the confusion, yes Simone is correct the current question was focussing on how to control the new location of the blender addon ressources, as they changed with an AYON triggerd start and now every previously loaded addon is broken and would require a reinstall.

@mustafa_jafar thanks for the explanation, makes sense, and will be very useful later on when we progressed further. So currently i have to fix some basic issues as there are still some things not working at all as expected, but we will get there :smiley:

@simone.barbieri thanks for the info, so now my question is then how AYON_BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS needs to be fed into blender at all, per variant argument ?
Like adding this as "BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS": "AYON_BLENDER_USER_SCRIPTS" on the 3.6 variant for example ?

Thanks so far

5

The way to configure this is up to you.
In short you can:

  1. Add it for all blender variants
    ayon+settings://applications/applications/blender/environment
  2. Add it per specific blender variant
    ayon+settings://applications/applications/blender/variants/0/environment
    image
    image1609Ă—882 28.1 KB

There are more complex options if you want.
For more info check:

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6

Hey guys, thanks i found it works now, It took some time getting the indentation correct.
So yeah it now loads all available plugins/addons from the specified location. :+1:

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