We at Laubwerk currently do not explicitly store the index of refraction, but implicitly assume the index of refraction for all Laubwerk materials to be 1.33. That should be reflected, until the index of refraction is explicitly stored, for materials compatibility between different host applications.

Prior to the next release, update the README to reflect the new UI elements for batch editing - as well as the changes to delete and make_unique.

Plant selection and edit is currently limited to the active plant (and all identical instances from the same template). The Laubwerk Player for other tools allows for selecting all of the same plant (lbw.gz file) or all plants.

The Thicket edit panel could add a way to identify which plants are affected: e.g. current, all of this plant, all plants and update the panel with the number of instances and templates affected.

This would require the option of "No Change" or similar to avoid changing the plant, model, or season when the intent was to only change some of those.

It may be reasonable to disallow changing the plant for these builk edits.

From: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/entitlements/com_apple_security_cs_disable-library-validation?language=objc

"The Hardened Runtime enables library validation by default. This security-hardening feature prevents a program from loading frameworks, plug-ins, or libraries unless they’re either signed by Apple or signed with the same Team ID as the main executable. The macOS dynamic linker (dyld) provides a detailed error message when the system prevents code from loading due to library validation. Use the Disable Library Validation Entitlement if your program loads plug-ins that are signed by other third-party developers.

To add this entitlement to your app, first enable the Hardened Runtime capability in Xcode, and then under Runtime Exceptions, select Disable Library Validation."

Until Blender updates their build, Thicket will fail with a Traceback like this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Library/Application Support/Laubwerk/Python/laubwerk/init.py", line 39, in
from laubwerk._laubwerk import *
ImportError: dlopen(/Library/Application Support/Laubwerk/Python/laubwerk/_laubwerk.cpython-39-darwin.so, 2): no suitable image found. Did find:
/Library/Application Support/Laubwerk/Python/laubwerk/_laubwerk.cpython-39-darwin.so: code signature in (/Library/Application Support/Laubwerk/Python/laubwerk/_laubwerk.cpython-39-darwin.so) not valid for use in process using Library Validation: mapping process and mapped file (non-platform) have different Team IDs
/Library/Application Support/Laubwerk/Python/laubwerk/_laubwerk.cpython-39-darwin.so: stat() failed with errno=13

John Payne reports that attempting to change the installation path of a Laubwerk Plant Kit on Windows will install the Plants at the specified destination, but the Python SDK is still installed in "C:\Program Files".

If this is by design, the Thicket Add-on preferences may need to allow specifying the Plants and Python folders individually, rather than assume they both exist under a common Laubwerk installation path.

Need to confirm intent with Laubwerk.

Since pretty much every property in the Principled BSDF shader could differ per side, I believe it makes more sense to have two BSDF nodes and mix them through a single "Mix Shader" node instead of mixing every single property with its own "Mix" node.

Tested in 2.80, 2.82 and 2.91
I always get the following error

INFO: thicket: Importing "Abies koreana"
[debug] Time to create control mesh: 60ms
[debug] subdiv helper generation time : 0.121s
[debug] subdiv helper generation time : 0.129s
[debug] subdiv helper generation time : 0.127s
[debug] subdiv helper generation time : 0.024s
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\mnu\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.80\scripts\addons\thicket-0_3_2\__init__.py", line 661, in execute
    thicket_ui_obj = tp.import_lbw()
  File "C:\Users\mnu\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.80\scripts\addons\thicket-0_3_2\__init__.py", line 380, in import_lbw
    return thicket_lbw.import_lbw(filepath, self.model, self.viewport_lod, self.render_lod, mesh_args)
  File "C:\Users\mnu\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.80\scripts\addons\thicket-0_3_2\thicket_lbw.py", line 284, in import_lbw
    render_lod == 'PROXY')
  File "C:\Users\mnu\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.80\scripts\addons\thicket-0_3_2\thicket_lbw.py", line 100, in lbw_to_bl_obj
    mat = lbw_to_bl_mat(lbw_plant, mat_id, mat_name, qualifier, proxy_color)
  File "C:\Users\mnu\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.80\scripts\addons\thicket-0_3_2\thicket_lbw.py", line 134, in lbw_to_bl_mat
    mat.diffuse_color = proxy_color or lbw_mat.get_front().diffuse_color + (1.0,)
AttributeError: 'Side' object has no attribute 'diffuse_color'

location: <unknown location>:-1

Thanx, mnu

If changes are made to plant properties in the Add or Edit modes and the use then switches to the Select_Add or Select states, and then cancels that operation, the UI returns to View state instead of the previous state, and the property edits are lost. A user can reasonably expect the Cancel button to take them back to the previous view of the UI with their edits preserved.

As the leaf shaders seemed a bit to reflective for my taste, I tried to edit the materials. But as far as I can see, the plant shaders seem to be hidden from the user.

I would like to see the possibility to dive into materials and edit properties like reflectivity, bump strength or proabably even replace bitmap textures.

Blender guidelines discourage logging to the root logger or configuring it in an add-on:
https://code.blender.org/2016/05/logging-from-python-code-in-blender/

Create a "thicket" logger and log it to a file by default, ensuring that regardless of how the user (or other add-ons..... cough rpr cough) configures the logging system.

This should simplify the error reporting process by not requiring users to launch Blender from the command line in order to capture the log output.

The preview image (in both, browser and property editor) currently is really low resolution. That doesn't look good and also makes it hard to make out details that may be helpful to consider when picking a plant in the browser.

The Laubwerk SDK has default values for these (presumably per plant) and the Laubwerk Players allow the user to optionally specify these.

Add a boolean property to ThicketPropGroup for each of these and add it to the Plant Properties Panel to enable or disable these properties. If disabled, pass None to import_lbw and drop these from the call to get_mesh(), letting the Laubwerk SDK determine the appropriate value.

Hello,
Thicket works fine in Blender 2.92, but since version 2.93 they are using Python 3.9 instead of 3.7, and that breaks some addons, including Thicket.
I tested it on Blender 3.0.0 alpha. It can be installed, but cannot be enabled (ticked) in addon preferences. It throws such an error:

"
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\E-Cycles_X_Pro_3.0_a_20211008_win\3.0\scripts\modules\addon_utils.py", line 351, in enable
mod = import(module_name)
File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\3.0\scripts\addons\thicket-0_4_0_init_.py", line 70, in
log_path = Path(bpy.utils.user_resource('SCRIPTS', "addons", True)) / name / "thicket.log"
TypeError: user_resource() takes 1 positional argument but 3 were given
"

Is there a chance for an update for newest Blender versions?

Best regards

Blender 2.91 now reports the use of bpy.app.binary_path_python as a warning, recommending the use of sys.executable instead:

bpy.app.binary_path_python
'/Applications/Blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.91/python/bin/python3.7m'

/Applications/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/Blender:1: RuntimeWarning: Use 'sys.executable' instead of 'binary_path_python'!

There are only two instances of this usage in Thicket, both in init.py. Before making the change, we need to determine if this is backward compatible with Blender 2.80 through 2.90 and special case earlier versions if not.

I contacted I Laubwerk. They are not willing to distribute the SDK. Without it your add-on is not usable.

Quoting myself from #32:

One possible optimization (not sure if it has any performance implications, but it may simplify/clarify the material graph): Perhaps keep a list of texture input nodes around and just re-use a node when a texture is used multiple times (with the same color space setting). In the example above, e.g. the input node for the front BSDF color could be re-used as input to the Mix BSDF node.

When switching the render engine to Radeon ProRender v2.4.11, Blender 2.83 reports:

WARNING rpr.export.node [123145529303040]: Ignoring unsupported output socket <bpy_struct, NodeSocketFloat("Backfacing")> <bpy_struct, ShaderNodeNewGeometry("Geometry")> <bpy_struct, Material("Acer_palmatum_lf_01_au")>

This does not occur for Evee or Cycles.

Need to research how to identify and mitigate feature restrictions across popular render engines.

The current mechanism to update plants collects information from the UI and passes it to the thicket_lbw module to import the Laubwerk plant. It does not attempt to determine if reloading is strictly necessary, which results in unnecessary recreation of existing geometry and user wait times.

A more intelligent approach would check if the viewport and the render geometry changed individually and only recreate what changed. In some situations, like changing from proxy in the viewport to full render geometry, no reload is necessary.

To accomplish this, the thicket_lbw.import_lbw() routine needs to be broken up to handle the viewport and the render models in separate calls and the logic calling those needs to be moved into init.py where there is knowledge of existing model being updated in order to make better decisions about when to reload.

It appears that translucency is missing from materials. I haven't been able to find it on any model I tested so far.

Adding translucency does appear to be a bit of a pita, though: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/93686/transluscent-leaf-using-principled-shader

Hi and thanks for developing this.
I installed the main branch version in Blender 2.91, all fine.
Then I tried the branch for version Blender 3.0. After installing from the .zip, when trying to activate I would get an error :
"not able to find module thicket-blender_3"
Looking in the ..AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\3.0\scripts\addons I found a folder named "thicket-blender_3.0" , I renamed that "thicket-blender_3", restarted Blender and it worked.

Error Message when selecting Python path. Using thicket 0.4.0 and freshly installed Laubwerk libraries (LaubwerkPlantsKit2 ,LaubwerkPlantsKit8, & LaubwerkPlantsKitFreebie, version 1.034)

Same issue on 2 different PCs

• OS: Windows 10
• OS 20H2
• Blender Version: 2.93.1
• Blender Version: 2.83.4

The other Laubwerk plugins all allow to set material quality to high, medium, and low, to allow for object further away to render much faster. Depending on the way the host application works, this is a setting in the browser or in the object attribute panel. I guess in Blender, since materials get updated when model settings are changed, it could go into the object attribute panel.

For every call to the Laubwerk SDK get_mesh() function, the SDK prints the following to the console:

[debug] Time to create control mesh: 1572ms
[debug] subdiv helper generation time : 0.002604s
[debug] subdiv helper generation time : 0.000803s

There is not option to specify the log level of the SDK.

The typical way to address this is via contextlib.redirect_std(out|err). Unfortunately, this doesn't work with the CPython SDK library.

There may not be a way to address this in Thicket, but tracking this here in case someone knows a way around it. Alternatively, we can reach out to Laubwerk to request a loglevel which honors the standard python log levels and pass in the Thicket log level setting to the SDK directly.

Describe the bug
thicket-0_4_1_rc0.zip

Failed to load Laubwerk Python Extension from this path
error message.

Screenshots

https://ibb.co/yX1Z8g7
https://ibb.co/Csm8vhw

Describe the bug
thicket-0_4_0.zip

https://ibb.co/StNFt81

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: [Windows]
• OS Version [10 22H2]
• Blender Version [3.2.0]

In some cases, users may choose to use the proxy model even in full renders. Provide a checkbox in Render Detail to use the Proxy model.

In this case, it should force the use of the proxy model in the viewport, and only load the geometry for one of them.

hi, how do i fix this, theres an error turning on the add on

Latest from GitHub (for testers and developers)
Exit Blender
Clone the thicket git repository into the Blender addons folder:
Mac: ~/Library/Blender/2.80/scripts/addons/thicket
Windows: %AppData%\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.80\scripts\addons\thicket
Start Blender

Originally posted by @mheljune in #20

Many Laubwerk plants support two sided leaves with front and back materials. lbw_to_bl_mat() currently assumes one sided. Add logic to detect two sided leaves and investigate how to distinguish the two sides within Blender and apply the backside material.

In some cases, the render model may be low detail, or the user may prefer to view the full geometry in the viewport. Add "Render Model" or similar to the viewport detail options. When selected, only the one model should be loaded and made visible in both viewport and render.

The material system has undergone substantial changes with the Python Extension 1.0.24. Some material properties have been renamed (e.g. diffuse_color to base_color and a bunch have been added (e.g. specular_roughness_texture or sheen).

Describe the bug
Somehow the path to the Python extension in Blenders Plugin Settings is not accepted.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to Blender and
2. Click on path for Python extensions
3. See error, path appears red, unfortunately plugin is still disabled

Expected behavior
A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: MacOS
• OS Version [10.15.2]
• Blender Version [2.81a]