Tested with Blender 4.43 and 4.5 Beta on a Mac. Blender Publish → Blender Load tested only
(Can’t activate Speckle AddOn in Blender 5.0 Alpha)
I have no clue what features V3 Connectors for the more mainstream Apps like Revit offers already but here are my observations for Blender Connector V3 :
Hierarchy and Collections work fine. Great !
Geometry looks good. Great !
No Cameras. I think these exported in V2 (?)
Looks like basic most top level BSDF Material definitions export. Great !
No BSDF sub level definition, like e.g. “Emission” (color, strength)
Looks like Material Naming is exported. Great !
No Textures (As expected)
Problem :
When you had Textures - all BSDF info will end as default values. When you bring it back to Blender, all related Materials are the same default, white.
Wish :
Speckle, although not able to use certain data, keeps such definitions somewhere as a sideload, so when it is loaded to the same App later - it is not lost (?)
Although using the Free Plan, which means a single Project only, I have to select it again each session or each time switching between Load/Publish. And selecting the Projects needs many seconds.
(in V2 you could switch between Projects and Models in real time)
Wish :
An auto-log in/connect option
I can’t create a new Model from Speckle AddOn (?)
I do not yet really get the “Model cards” and its duplicates, when I never loaded, but published (the same Model) only.
(I do understand for doing Selections of “loaded” Model)
When Publishing, I need to do a Selection each time again.
(Can be cumbersome, depending on Hierarchy)
Wish :
An option to publish everything.
(Or keep/save Selection, or Publish Settings, to choose and save setup versions of which object types, colllections, … to export (or import when loading")) (?)
Hmmh, or better …
do create “Speckle Data” from such definitions.
So maybe a Connector from a different App could possibly make also use of such data. Like from a Material, Camera or a Sun Light and import/extract those that the can support.
Initial import works great. Normals, collections, and material names are carried over from Revit
Can reimport model without getting duplicates
Even if the origin point on an object is moved, reimporting the file will reset both the origin and object position. Excellent!
Cons:
No instancing
No metadata
“Load a specific version” doesn’t work. The list is always empty.
Model cards are confusing. They allow reimporting from the card but do not save with the project.
Does not retain new materials applied to an object after re-import. We replace all materials coming from Revit with our own version in an asset browser library.
Modifiers and UV unwraps are not retained
Revit section box not fully supported. Blender will import the full mesh if only part of it is sectioned/sliced in Revit.
Hope this helps! Looking forward to testing the next version!
I lost a bit overview … but are Textures also a thing ?
(AFAIR i may have read about these have been working before in V2 … but maybe I am just mixing things up)
As - if not - that when Texture no e.g. Diffuse color is already a Blender problem.
At first, when testing, it seemed like Blender would keep an e.g Diffuse color Setting - when adding and removing a Texture overlay - but it does not … as soon as you left the Material, the pre-Texture color setting gets lost in Blender anyway …
(AFAIK, you could just get an “industry standard” behavior with adding a Color + Mix Nodes - but if I got that right (or mixed up with something else) - Material Nodes aren’t supported (?))
