In this video training series, dr. Sybren A. Stüvel shows how to get started with Blender scripting. As the title suggests, this series is aimed at artists, and not so much at people who fancy a programming career.

Serpens aims to make the endless possibilities of blenders python scripting tools more accessible. It gives you Visual-Scripting options based on a custom node system to generate python code which you can then share and install as your own addons. Featuring an extensive Python API, every tool is available for scripting and customization. Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems. We provide daily news, art and tutorials. Follow BlenderNation Twitter Facebook Google+ Tumblr Pinterest+.

We will start by simply copy-pasting commands from Blender's user interface into the Python console, to learn how to let Blender perform tasks by command, rather than clicking on buttons. From there we build more complex scripts that can do a lot of monkey work for us. In effect, we let Blender click its own buttons!

Blender 2.79 and 2.80

The oldest episodes of Scripting for Artists series were made for 2.79; we have added a page with what to change to make things work on Blender 2.80. For changes between 2.80 and current versions of Blender, check the Python API sections of the Release Notes.

Course Structure

The Scripting for Artists course consists of two parts. Firstly there are five training videos to teach you scripting, which already gives you a basis in Blender's Python interface. The second part is a series of shorter tech videos in which we look at concrete problems and their solutions.

The topics are:

• Introduction & copy-pasting code from Blender's UI
• Names & Objects
• Stuff on Lists
• Data Types
• Collections: mass-rename of objects
• Updating animation data
• Rendering 10,000 OBJ files
• Automatically renaming bones & vertex groups
• Rendering an object from all angles

Blender Scripting Simple Human Body

After finishing the series, you'll have an understanding how Python can be used to automate tasks in Blender.

Blender Scripting Python

The slides will be linked into each video description, as well as the links to documentation and other websites.