Getting Started
Download our Blender Plug-In and easily load your HEAT Animations onto your characters, avatars, or 3D models.
The HEAT Bridge is necessary to be able to pull animations into Blender. If you have not already downloaded and installed the HEAT Bridge please refer to the previous section.
DOWNLOAD AND INSTALLATION
The Blender plug-in is easily downloaded and installed from the plug-in manager within the HEAT Bridge.
Open the HEAT Bridge app and open the Plug-In Manager by right clicking on the HEAT Bridge icon in the system tray and selecting the Plug-in Manager.
Begin by selecting the version of Blender that you would like to install the HEAT plug-in to from menu options on the left hand side.
Once a Blender version is selected you will see in the main window the version, if any, of the HEAT Bridge that is currently installed to Blender. Below that you will see all available versions of the HEAT Blender plug-in that you can choose to install. After selecting your version of Blender and version of the HEAT Plug-in click the Install button (
).When you click Install you will be prompted by windows to "allow PowerShell to make changes to your device". Click yes. This allows the bridge to place the files in the administrator level directories that the plug-ins need to be in.
PowerShell will now open and unpack the plug-in files and place them in the correct directory.
Once the install is complete open Blender and navigate, in the menu bar, to 'Edit -> Preferences'. In the left had menu bar of the Preferences window select 'Add-ons'.
Either locate or search for '3D View: HeatBlender' and click the check box next to it to activate the plug-in. Blender is now ready to receive animations from the HEAT Bridge. Instruction on using the HEAT Bridge with Blender can be found here.
Blender may need to be restarted after activating the HEAT Blender plug-in in the Add-ons manager. If you are having issues importing animations at this point please restart Blender.
UPDATING THE HEAT BLENDER PLUG-IN
The HEAT Blender plug-in is updated regularly. You can easily update the plug-in directly from Blender by following the instructions below.
In the Blender menu bar across the top of the screen navigate to 'Edit -> Preferences -> Add-ons' and search for HEAT in the search bar.
The plug-in will appear labeled as '3D View: HeatBlender'.
Click the drop down arrow next to the add-on name to open all of the settings within the add-on.
At the bottom of the window you will see the 'Updater Settings'. Here you can either click 'Check now for heat_blender update' to manually update the plug-in, or you can click the 'Auto-check for Update' box and have Blender automatically update the plug-in at a set regular interval.
The Blender Plug-in can also be easily updated within the HEAT Bridge Plug-in Manager.
Next we will go over how to use the HEAT plug-in within Blender.
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