July 29 Update

Updates

It’s been a bit, but I’ve made some development progress. I spent a large part of the weekend and the start of this week taking a break. In that time, I was moved to a new location for work, where I will be staying for the next week and a half. That being said, there have been some updates regarding my projects, mainly Blender Development and Sakura Rig Utilities.

Blender Development Updates

Blender Development is currently my main focus project, as I’ve wanted to move entirely to PyCharm for writing and managing my Blender API extensions for months now. To start, I’ve begun preparing to publish the plugin to the IntelliJ Marketplace once the codebase is stable and all features are implemented. As of writing, I am working on publishing the first official 1.0.0 beta, which will be the beginning of the end of pre-release development. As such, I got Codex to work on updating the runtime and release scripts to better handle the release infrastructure, and I started cleaning up unneeded artifacts.

Currently, though, there are still some runtime issues with the debug/run system, Blender API stub management, and Python version management. The Blender version management system also needs further refinement.

Overall, I am very happy with the state of the plugin. It’s even at a point where I can reliably use it on Sakura Rig Utilities, although the lint stubs are still an issue—one I will be focusing on for Beta 2 of the development updates.

Sakura Rig Utilities

Sakura Rig Utilities is beginning to receive work again, as my Blender Development plugin is finally at a state where I can work comfortably. While linting is certainly still an issue, the live reload and hot swapping, alongside PyCharm’s more in-depth Python toolset, are great.

I’ve begun rewriting the Rig Manager with more of a focus on downloading and managing versions of SACR from the internet. The Preset Manager will be changed to integrate with Blender’s asset system, which will hopefully lead to a cleaner system overall.

Other Minor Project Notes

SACR is going to receive more focus soon. Previously, I posted a warning on the site saying that R7.4.1 would be the last version released separately, but I’ve decided that this will simply not be the case. R7.5.0 will be released on the website, especially now considering the changes to the Rig Manager. Eventually, I’d like to change the download system so it retrieves artifacts directly from either Codeberg or my Proton Drive.

Story-wise, I’ve been helping a friend write a new Star Wars-based AU, which is fun and allows me to regain some practice writing stories. I do want to try to revive either my Viella lore or my Lone Cyborg lore ideas.

That is all for today. I will continue to refine the Blender Development plugin and use Sakura Rig Utilities to test, verify, and work on the plugin’s development. This will allow me to develop two projects at once. SACR will have its final release finalized and published to the website tomorrow, July 30, with the prototype UI included. The UI will be properly finalized and updated with the release of Sakura Rig Utilities V4 as well.

For right now, however, this is where I leave for the night. Godspeed to all, and good luck.