BlenDir

BlenDir is a Blender add-on for automatic folder structure creation and management!

Table of Contents

• Features
  • One Click Project Folder Structure
  • Make Custom Folder Structures
  • Bookmarks
  • References Menu
  • Auto Save Image Renders
  • Animation Frames Folder
  • Recent Projects Menu
  • Keywords
  • Keymap
• Setup Instructions
• General Instructions
  • Automatically Generate Folder Structure Files
• Installation
• Notes

Features

One Click Project Folder Structure

Make Custom Folder Structures

• Automatically generate folder structures or make them from scratch
• Add functionality with keywords
• Easily browse your saved folder structures

Bookmarks

• Add local and global folder bookmarks. Selecting a bookmark will open it in the default OS file browser
• Adding more than 8 bookmarks to the pie menu is supported

References Menu

• Quickly open your project references with a pie menu

Auto Save Image Renders

• Automatically save image renders to your render folder

Animation Frames Folder

• When an animation is rendered, a subfolder will be automatically created in the render folder for the frames of the animation

Recent Projects Menu

• Use the recent projects menu to open previous projects made with BlenDir
• All your project references will be automatically opened

Keywords

• Add keywords to program the folder structure generator and add extra features to your folder structures!

  • *B Move the Blender file to this folder
  • *F Replaced with the current Blender file name
  • *D Replaced with the current date
  • *X *Y *Z Replaced with input from the preferences
  • *M Bookmark this folder. This will add the folder to the Bookmarks pie menu for this project only
  • *R Mark this folder as the reference folder. All files added to this folder will show up in the References pie menu
  • *O Set the animation output path to this folder. This will also be used to automatically save image renders.

Keymap

• Use shortcuts to make creating folders even quicker
• Customizable hotkeys for all important operators and menus

Setup Instructions

1. Delete the Animation and Example demo structures that come with BlenDir (use the BlenDir delete button)

2. Click the import button or the new structure button to create a folder structure file

3. Add keywords to the file for custom functionality. For example:

   • replace the root folder name with *F*B
   • add *M to all folders you want to bookmark
   • add *R to your references folder
   • add *O to your render folder

General Instructions

Automatically Generate Folder Structure Files

• Click
• Use the directory browser to select an existing root folder

• The complete folder structure file will be generated automatically
• This file can be used to recreate the saved folder structure

Installation

• Download the ZIP file (don't extract it)

  • Either go to Releases and download the ZIP file for the latest stable version
  • Or press the Code button at the top of the page and then Download ZIP for the newest experimental version

• Don't add a . to the folder name, this will cause an import error

• In Blender, open Preferences and go to Add-ons

• Click Install

• Select the ZIP file in the file browser

• Click Install Add-on

• Enable the add-on by checking the box

Notes

• BlenDir is for Blender version 2.90 and above
• Works on Windows and Linux, untested on macOS