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3D Digital Backbone Driver for Blender

Concepts

This part defines the key terms and concepts used in the documentation and details the types of data supported by the add-on.

Vocabulary

In this documentation, the following concepts will be used several times:

  • .blend file / Blender data file

    The native file format used by Blender to save/load data.

  • 3D Digital Backbone, simplified as DBB

    Database used to store the Blender database, which corresponds to the content of a .blend file. A local database file is used in this documentation. The file extension can be anything; in this documentation, .dbb is used. A DBB can contain multiple Blender databases, meaning that in Blender, when loading content from a DBB you have to first select the filepath and then select the name of the Blender database to load, it is a two-step process.

  • Database name

    A name associated with the Blender database saved in the DBB, as multiple Blender databases can be saved in one DBB, the name acts as the identifier for the Blender database. This name is chosen by the user.

Supported data

The following properties in each data block are saved:

  • Scene: name | collection children | objects children

  • Collections: name | colors | hide_status | collection children | objects children

  • Objects: name | data binding | transform | parent | hide_status

  • Meshes: name | mesh essential data (vertices/edges/loops/polygons)

  • Materials: only nodal materials and the nodes Output and BSDFPrinciple

  • Light: name and for Point Light, the power property

  • Images: all properties

Note

For cameras, no specific properties are saved. Only its properties as objects are saved.