User:SmartDen/Blendigo

Introduction
Indigo is a renderer still in mid development. Some aspects are incomplete or a little unpolished, as are the scripts written to be exporters. Even so if you take time to learn the ins and outs of what is available and how to use it properly you can produce terrific results. There are many fine renders in the Gallery already that attest to that and the skill of the people who made them.

As with all rendering it is the attention to detail and correctness that produces the most satisfying and convincing results. Extra time spent finding the best textures say, or refining the lighting pays off in the image. In the case of Indigo a sound grasp of the technical basis also brings rewards because the nature of an Indigo render is to model the path of light in a physically correct sense.

We hope this wiki page will familiarise you with the features and requirements of Indigo and how to best use Blender to set up your scenes. Along with that content are some hints and insights into what doesnt work and why and (hopefully soon) some .blends showing some typical situations - for instance, modelling wine glasses or using portals.

If anything mentioned here is unclear feel free to post questions to the forums. Remember there is a search facility available to help you find previous and similar questions and discussions.

Blender
A standard install of the latest Blender version is fine for Indigo purposes - currently 2.48

If you are in the habit of trying out SVN builds of the next Blender version please be aware that from time to time the python API has revisions and the existing Blendigo script may not function without some modifications.

Usually it is best to stick with the recommended set of Blender, Indigo and script versions.

Python
Although Blender comes with a subset of Python having a full Python install is required for many Blender scripts. A full install of Python is required to run the Blendigo script. You need to make sure you have the correct version for the script version you have. Python 2.4.4 is used by earlier versions of the Blendigo made for Indigo releases up to v0.8 and Python 2.5.2 for the most recent Indigo v1.0.9(stable) external link to Python homepage

Indigo
Indigo has no special requirements for installation. You may extract the file to a convenient location. If it is handy to your Blender install thats useful.

Note: Linux builds and 64 bit Windows builds are only available for stable releases. (Prior to v1.0.9 the 64 bit builds of Indigo did not have .exr support.)

Blendigo
Place the Blendigo script in Blenders scripts folder. If you installed Blender to the default location go to C:\Program files\Blender\.blender\scripts\

Place the Indigowrapper.conf in the bpydata folder Again if you installed Blender to the default location go to C:\Program files\Blender\.blender\scripts\bpydata\

You will need to open the wrapper in Notepad and edit the path to the Indigo.exe folder.

Note: You need to use a Blendigo script version matching the Indigo version. For instance Blendigo 1.0.9 is made for Indigo 1.0.9

This is because Indigo and the exporter script are evolving together and not only are new capabilities added but some of the existing ones are changed or even removed.

Additional note: This wiki documents the python script used to export from Blender to Indigo known as ‘Blendigo’. This script was the first available for general use and has been updated and refined by various contributors with each new release of Indigo.

Blendigo is not the only Blender2Indigo script available however. If you search the Blender section of the Indigo forum you will find a few by different coders. Some are slightly different/better than others in some ways but essentially they do the same job.

Much of the information and hints detailed here is applicable to those scripts as well but the UI in each case may be arranged differently. To download the alternative scripts and find explanations of their respective capabilities see the first post of their threads.

Shaders
To use Shader with Blendigo, you have to define some. Open Blender Text editor, open a new text Block and write some ISL(Indigo Shader Language) commands in it.

Example Perlin-Noise shader combined with Fractal Brownian Motion:

Now name this text block like isl_ . The isl_ on the beginnig of the text name is very important. On the base of this prefix can Blendigo separte it from other texts and identify it as an Indigo Shader.

In few moments occure this shader in the shader dropdown menus. Select it and activate shader using by pressing 'Shader' button.