Darts Blender Add-on

This add-on provides support for exporting a Blender scene as a Darts .json scene file with meshes saved as OBJ files in a meshes subdirectory and textures in a textures subdirectory. The plugin is primarily useful for converting blender objects and positioning the camera, though it does provide rudimentary support for converting some Blender materials to Darts materials.

Features:

• Camera:
  • Exports the camera position, resolution, field-of-view, and depth-of-field settings (only perspective cameras are supported)
• Background:
  • Blender's background color or a (optionally rotated) environment map "envmap" gets exported to the darts "background" field
• Integrator:
  • Optionally sets an "integrator" depending on export settings
• Sampler:
  • Optionally sets an "sampler" depending on export settings. Sets the number of samples according to the Cycles Render "Max samples" field
• Materials:
  • Can either export a single default "diffuse" material for all surfaces, a placeholder "diffuse" material for each Blender surface, or it can convert each Blender material into a corresponding Darts material as follows:
    • Diffuse BSDF -> "diffuse" ("Roughness" parameter is ignored)
    • Emission -> "emission"
    • Glass BSDF -> "dielectric" or "rough dielectric" depending whether distribution is set to "Sharp"
    • Glossy BSDF -> "(rough) conductor", "blinn-phong", "phong", or "metal" depending on export settings
    • Mix Shader -> "mix", supports scalar blend factors as well as Fresnel blends
  • Additionally, for all of the above materials, if a normal map is specified in the shader, the exporter will wrap the material inside a darts "normal map" material
  • Textures are supported for many of the parameters of the above shaders, and written to a textures/ subdirectory
• Surfaces:
  • All meshes, fonts, metaballs, and NURBS surfaces are exported as OBJ meshes into a meshes/ subdirectory
  • Options to write out UVs, normals, and apply modifiers (like subdivision surfaces)
  • Objects can be exported as a single OBJ file for the whole scene, or split into separate OBJ files per Blender object. Darts supports multiple materials for different faces of a single mesh (for each OBJ material, Darts looks for a Darts material with the same name, otherwise it uses the material set for the entire mesh).
  • Can disable mesh and/or texture output. If nothing about the geometry changes (e.g. only camera or material parameters), this can considerably speed up export.
• Lights:
  • All Blender lights are converted to corresponding Darts lights:
    • Point -> "point light"
    • Sun -> "sun light"
    • Spot -> "spot light"
    • Area -> "quad", "sphere", or "disk" (depending on the light shape) with an emissive "emission" material (note that these will be visible by rays in Darts, even though they are invisible "geometry" in Blender)

Installation

• Create a .zip file of this directory (In GitHub use Code -> Download ZIP)
• If you are using Blender >= 4.2, just drag the zip file onto Blender to install. For older versions go to Edit -> Preferences -> Add-ons -> Install from Disk....
• After the plugin is installed, it has to be activated by clicking the checkbox next to it in the Add-ons menu.

Requirements

• Blender >= 2.93
• We recommend Blender >= 4.2