cli-anything-blender

A stateful command-line interface for 3D scene editing, following the same patterns as the GIMP CLI harness. Uses a JSON scene description format with bpy script generation for actual Blender rendering.

Installation

This CLI is installed as part of the cli-anything-blender package:

pip install cli-anything-blender

Prerequisites:

• Python 3.10+
• blender (>= 4.2) must be installed on your system

Usage

Basic Commands

# Show help
cli-anything-blender --help

# Start interactive REPL mode
cli-anything-blender

# Create a new scene project
cli-anything-blender scene new -o scene.blend-cli.json

# Run with JSON output (for agent consumption)
cli-anything-blender --json --project scene.blend-cli.json scene info

REPL Mode

When invoked without a subcommand, the CLI enters an interactive REPL session:

cli-anything-blender
# Enter commands interactively with tab-completion and history

Command Groups

Scene

Scene management commands.

Object Group

3D object management commands.

Material

Material management commands.

Modifier Group

Modifier management commands.

Camera

Camera management commands.

Light

Light management commands.

Animation

Animation and keyframe commands.

Render Group

Render settings and output commands.

Preview

Real preview bundle capture and live preview session commands.

Typical bundle artifacts for recipe quick:

• hero.png from real Eevee preview rendering
• workbench.png from real Blender Workbench rendering

Live sessions persist:

• session.json as the mutable head
• immutable bundle directories
• trajectory.json as append-only command-to-preview history

Viewer side:

• cli-hub previews inspect <bundle-or-session>
• cli-hub previews html <bundle-or-session> -o page.html
• cli-hub previews watch <session-dir> --open
• cli-hub previews open <bundle-or-session>

Session

Session management commands.

Examples

Create a New Project

Create a new Blender scene project file.

cli-anything-blender scene new -o myscene.blend-cli.json
# Or with JSON output for programmatic use
cli-anything-blender --json scene new -o myscene.blend-cli.json

Interactive REPL Session

Start an interactive session with undo/redo support.

cli-anything-blender
# Enter commands interactively
# Use 'help' to see available commands
# Use 'undo' and 'redo' for history navigation

State Management

The CLI maintains session state with:

• Undo/Redo: Up to 50 levels of history
• Project persistence: Save/load project state as JSON
• Session tracking: Track modifications and changes

Output Formats

All commands support dual output modes:

• Human-readable (default): Tables, colors, formatted text
• Machine-readable (--json flag): Structured JSON for agent consumption

# Human output
cli-anything-blender --project scene.blend-cli.json scene info

# JSON output for agents
cli-anything-blender --json --project scene.blend-cli.json scene info

Preview Workflow

Use Blender previews when the agent needs truthful visual checkpoints:

# List preview recipes
cli-anything-blender --project scene.blend-cli.json preview recipes

# Capture a real preview bundle
cli-anything-blender --json --project scene.blend-cli.json preview capture --recipe quick

# Start a live preview loop
cli-anything-blender --json --project scene.blend-cli.json preview live start --recipe quick --mode poll --source-poll-ms 500

# Query current live head without rendering
cli-anything-blender --json --project scene.blend-cli.json preview live status --recipe quick

For agents, preview capture --json returns bundle metadata plus artifact file paths. preview live status --json returns session metadata plus a compact trajectory_summary.

For AI Agents

When using this CLI programmatically:

1. Always use --json flag for parseable output
2. Check return codes - 0 for success, non-zero for errors
3. Parse stderr for error messages on failure
4. MANDATORY: Use absolute paths for all file operations (rendering, project files). Relative paths are prone to failure in background execution.
5. Use preview capture or preview live ... for visual verification instead of inferring scene quality from JSON alone
6. Read returned artifact paths such as hero.png and workbench.png; the JSON payload references files, it does not inline image bytes
7. Treat _bundle_dir as one snapshot only; for stable live history, use _session_dir plus _trajectory_path
8. Use cli-hub previews ... only to inspect/open existing previews; preview generation itself always happens through cli-anything-blender preview ...

More Information

• Full documentation: See README.md in the package
• Test coverage: See TEST.md in the package
• Methodology: See HARNESS.md in the cli-anything-plugin

Version

1.0.0