blend2bam

blend2bam is a CLI tool to convert Blender 2.80+ blend files to Panda3D BAM files. It also supplies a Python file loader to add "native" blend file support to Panda3D.

Features

The following are supported:

• Static Meshes
• Materials¹
• Textures
• Lights
• Skinned Meshes
• Shape Keys
• Skeletal Mesh Animations
• Shape Key Animations ²
• Separate Animation Files
• Collision Shapes ³
• Tags from Custom Properties
• Convert Particle Systems to Meshes

¹ The focus is on PBR materials with limited support for "legacy" materials. For legacy materials, only diffuse color (pulled from base color) and normal maps are supported.

² Shape key animations require Panda3D 1.10.6+

³ Collision shapes are generated from Blender's rigid body properties and shapes can be built for either Bullet or Panda3D's builtin collision system

Some notable missing features are:

• Object Animations
• Multiple Diffuse/Base Color Textures

The conversion guide provides information on how Blender data gets converted to Panda3D data and any gotchas.

Installation

Use pip to install the panda3d-blend2bam package:

pip install panda3d-blend2bam

Blender 2.80+ is required for blend2bam (ideally available on the system PATH). If it is not, the directory containing blender can be specified with --blender-dir (see CLI usage).

Usage

CLI

usage: blend2bam [-h] [--version] [-v] [-m {legacy,pbr}] [--physics-engine {builtin,bullet}] [--srcdir SRCDIR] [--blender-dir BLENDER_DIR] [--blender-bin BLENDER_BIN]
                 [--append-ext] [--no-srgb] [--textures {ref,copy,embed}] [--animations {embed,separate,skip}] [--invisible-collisions-collection INVISIBLE_COLLISIONS_COLLECTION]
                 [--allow-double-sided-materials] src [src ...] dst

CLI tool to convert Blender blend files to Panda3D BAM files

positional arguments:
  src                   source path
  dst                   destination path

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -v, --verbose         print out extra information (default: False)
  -m {legacy,pbr}, --material-mode {legacy,pbr}
                        control how materials are exported (default: pbr)
  --physics-engine {builtin,bullet}
                        the physics engine to build collision solids for (default: builtin)
  --srcdir SRCDIR       a common source directory to use when specifying multiple source files (default: None)
  --blender-dir BLENDER_DIR
                        directory that contains the blender binary (default: )
  --blender-bin BLENDER_BIN
                        name of the blender binary to use (default: blender)
  --append-ext          append extension on the destination instead of replacing it (batch mode only) (default: False)
  --no-srgb             do not load textures as sRGB textures (default: False)
  --textures {ref,copy,embed}
                        how to handle external textures (default: ref)
  --animations {embed,separate,skip}
                        how to handle animation data (default: embed)
  --invisible-collisions-collection INVISIBLE_COLLISIONS_COLLECTION
                        name of a collection in blender whose collision objects will be exported without a visible geom node (default: InvisibleCollisions)
  --allow-double-sided-materials
                        allow exporting double-sided materials (otherwise force all materials to be single-sided) (default: False)

Python File Loader

blend2bam also supports Panda3D's Python file loader API (requires Panda3D 1.10.4+) to seamlessly adds blend file support to Panda3D's Loader classes. This does not add support to pview, which is a C++ application that does not support Python file loaders.

Development

This repo uses uv. After installing uv, run uv sync to get dependencies (including dev dependencies)

Running Tests

uv run pytest

Building Wheels

uv build

License

MIT