blender-image-editing

Blender headless 3D mesh export for STL, OBJ, 3MF, and AMF formats with version-compatible fallbacks. Covers the current wm.obj_export / wm.stl_export operators (Blender 4.0+), legacy export_scene.obj / export_mesh.stl fallbacks, 3MF via the threemf add-on, and AMF via operator probing. Use when exporting geometry to print-ready or CAD-exchange formats from background scripts, CI pipelines, or render farms. See ../_shared/compat-matrix.md for the full version-compat table.

Blender headless compositor node tree setup for post-processing rendered images. Covers enabling compositing (scene.use_nodes, scene.render.use_compositing), creating and connecting compositor nodes (Nodes.new, NodeLinks.new), and configuring blur, rotate, translate, scale, alpha-over, and file-output nodes. Includes version-compatible patterns for CompositorNodeOutputFile directory field. Use when applying post-process effects to renders, compositing overlays, chaining image operations in a node graph, or writing compositor output directly to disk. For rendering the scene, see blender-rendering. For direct pixel edits, see blender-image-editing. See ../_shared/compat-matrix.md for compositor version-compat details.

Blender headless execution fundamentals for background automation scripts. Covers CLI invocation (--background, --factory-startup, --python, --addons), sys.argv argument parsing, scene bootstrapping, namespace overview (bpy.data, bpy.ops, bpy.types, bpy.context, bpy.props, bpy.app.handlers), and operator safety rules (poll() failures, Context.temp_override, why to prefer BMesh and datablock APIs over edit-mode operator chains). Use when writing any Blender script intended for background/headless execution, CI pipelines, render farms, or batch automation.

Blender headless image datablock manipulation: load, create, read/write pixels, resize, and save images without rendering a 3D scene. Covers bpy.data.images.load, bpy.data.images.new, Image.pixels (flat RGBA buffer), Image.scale, Image.save, Image.save_render, render image_settings for format config, and bpy.app.handlers.render_complete for batch callback-driven multi-render sequences. Use when processing image files in batch (resize, color transform, format convert), generating procedural images programmatically, or orchestrating multi-shot renders with per-render callbacks. For compositor-based post-processing, see blender-compositing.

Blender headless geometry creation and BMesh topology editing. Covers creating mesh datablocks from Python data (bpy.data.meshes.new, Mesh.from_pydata), wrapping meshes in objects and linking to scenes, and editing topology with BMesh (extrude_face_region, translate, triangulate). Use when creating procedural geometry, building meshes from vertex/face lists, or editing mesh topology in a background script without a GUI. For modifiers and depsgraph bake, see blender-modifiers. For repair (remove_doubles, holes_fill), see blender-mesh-repair.