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Usage & UI Guide

How the add-on works inside Blender's NLA Editor. For setup, see the main README.

This guide covers BlendAnything 1.0.0, tested on Blender 4.5.4 LTS.

Workflow

  1. Import BVH — N-panel → Neural Blend → Import BVH. Creates a tracked NLA strip and retains the original filepath so model-native BVH channels can be reused later. The panel stays available with an empty scene, so the importer doubles as a new-scene entry point.
  2. Arrange strips — lay clips on NLA tracks. The active strip (last LMB-clicked) is the reference; the rest are targets.
  3. Configure per strip — set the skeleton and relative strength (see below).
  4. Run — Neural Blend → Run Neural Blend. Strips export as BVH, POST to the server, and the result imports back automatically into Neural Blending Outputs — without freezing Blender's main thread.

Existing BVH imports can be linked explicitly from the per-strip Skeleton panel. The client never searches the filesystem for same-named BVH files.

Modes

Mode Selection Behaviour
Blend 2+ strips Active strip is the reference; the others are targets.
Retarget 2 strips Target motion is applied to the active reference skeleton.
Retarget → Target Only 1 strip Active strip becomes Target 1. Pick a Reference Skeleton (e.g. Skunk); the target motion is applied to it with no reference strip.

Panels

Neural Blend (N-panel → Neural Blend)

Element Purpose
Import BVH Creates a tracked NLA strip with skeleton + strength defaults
Strip names Shows the reference/source strip and all target strips
Run Neural Blend Exports strips as BVH, POSTs, imports the result
Server URL Editable endpoint with a connection-test (globe) button

With Retarget → Target Only, the active strip becomes Target 1 and the selected dataset profile is shown as the reference.

Relative Strength (N-panel → Strip)

Per-strip weight envelope written to the strip's built-in influence F-curve, so Blender's own "Show Strip Curves" overlay visualises it. The server normalizes overlapping reference/target strengths per frame.

  • Linked Crossfade (default, two-strip case) — select two strips with an edge overlap, choose Smooth or Linear, then Apply Linked Crossfade to write complementary fade-out/fade-in curves across the overlap.
  • Independent — manual per-strip control. With exactly two strips selected, the Neural Blend panel shows a live plot of the normalized target alpha target / (reference + target).

Strength profiles

Profile Parameters Description
Constant Value Flat influence for the whole strip
Linear Peak · Floor · Start · End Trapezoidal ramp, linear interpolation
Smooth Peak · Floor · Fade In · Fade Out Trapezoid with configurable ease slopes

Start/End (Linear) and Fade In/Out (Smooth) are 0–1 fractions of strip duration; if their sum exceeds 1 they are scaled down proportionally.

Smooth — advanced:

Parameter Range Description
Floor 0 – 1 Influence at strip boundaries (replaces the hard zero)
Shape Smooth / Ease In / Ease Out / Ease In-Out Fade-segment interpolation
Overshoot −1 – 1 Nudges Bezier handles beyond peak for bounce/anticipation (Smooth shape only)

Quick presets: ↗ In · ↘ Out · ~ Ease · 1.0 · 0.5 · 0.0 — they respect the active profile and don't force a switch unless required.

DDIM Inversion policy (advanced)

Policy Behaviour
Never Generation starts from fresh random noise.
On Same Skeleton (default) DDIM when an active control shares the reference/output skeleton. Cross-skeleton: reference is inverted and SLERPed toward Gaussian target noise.
Always Inversion even across skeletons — compatible reference regions use inverted noise, incompatible target regions stay Gaussian (mix.py aligned-noise behaviour).

When the policy enables inversion, the server also uses DDIM sampling and transition SLERP; otherwise it keeps the configured sampler and a normal Gaussian transition. Same-skeleton matching uses the dataset-qualified character identity and accepts policy identifiers from earlier add-on versions.

Server model catalog (advanced)

Refreshing queries the server's neural_motion_blending/save/ directory; each folder containing exactly one model*.pt appears by folder name. Load Selected Model swaps the server pipeline to that checkpoint.

Skeleton (N-panel → Strip)

See skeletons.md for skeleton selection, face-orientation joints, and custom / out-of-distribution skeletons.