About

The basic idea is to parse the Ableton Live project file(.als) and create a .json file with a track structure. Then you can use data from this file to create a track visualization.

Use blendals_parser to get song.json file from Ableton Live project file.

Installation

Use python version that is used by targeted Blender version. You can find it in Blender's Scripting window.

python3.11 -m venv venv
. venv/Scripts/activate
poetry install

Running code in Blender

Install Blendals Addon

Find path to Blender executable. Fo Steam version it will be something like <path to Steam>/steamapps/common/Blender/blender.exe.

export BLENDER=<path to Blender>/blender.exe
$BLENDER

Add project root to Script Directories, so Blendals addon can be loaded directly from a project folder.

You can find Script Directories here: Edit > Preferences > File Paths.

Restart Blender and activate addon. You should see the Blendas panel on the sidebar of the 3D View main window.

Making changes to Addon

Make changes to code and reload scripts in Blender. To do this click on Blender icon in Menu and System > Reload Scripts. You can right-click on this menu and add it to Quick Favourits for quick access with Q button.

Add python dependency

Poetry is used to manage project's dependencies.

For example, we want to add dacite ass a dependency. Run:

. venv/Scripts/activate
poetry add dacite

But addon is executed in Blender environment, so the previous step was to resolve dependencies conflicts and to track all dependencies with Poetry. The next step is to make a package available in Blender environment. We copy dependencies into addons/dependencies folder, and it is added into sys.path.

poetry export -f requirements.txt --output requirements.txt
pip install -r requirements.txt -t ./addons/dependencies

Repeat this if you update dependencies and restart Blender.

Blender modules autocomplete in PyCharm

Run this in Blender python console to get path to modules:

>>> import bpy
>>> bpy.__path__

It should be something like this <path to blender>/Blender/4.0/3scripts/modules/bpy. Add <path to blender>/Blender/4.0/3scripts/modules as Content Root to your PyCharm project.

Workflow

1. Use blendals_parser to get song.json file from Ableton Live project file. You can find prepared files in song_example folder.

2. Use Blendals side panel to parse song.json.

3. Empty objects for a song and each MIDI track were created. Track information is saved in an empty object to generate animation later.

4. You can view/edit song's properties on Object Properties tab. These properties are used to generate animation.

5. Select track and click "Apply Scale Animation". You can see animation applied to Scale properties.

6. Right click on Scale X, Copy as New Driver. Now select Cube, right click on Cube's Scale X property and Paste Driver.