MPipe — Documentation

Requires Blender 5.1 or later.

1. In Blender, open Edit > Preferences > Get Extensions.

2. Click the dropdown arrow at the top right of the window and choose Install from Disk…

3. Select MPipe-1.0.0.zip. Blender asks for one permission, files: MPipe creates your project folders and reads and writes the pipeline files inside them. It never accesses the network.

4. The extension installs and enables itself. Go back to the 3D viewport and press N to open the sidebar: MPipe has its own tab, named MPipe.

To update later, install the newer zip the same way; it replaces the previous version. Uninstalling removes the add-on only — your projects, their pipeline.json and every file MPipe created stay on disk and remain readable without it.

Open Edit > Preferences > Add-ons > MPipe. Only the first field really needs your attention; everything below it is the template used when you create a new project, and existing projects are never affected by a change here.

Outside any project, the panel shows No active project and offers three ways forward: New Project, Open Project, or one of your recent projects.

New Project asks for a folder, a project name and a short project code, then creates the folder tree and writes a pipeline.json at its root. That file is what makes the folder a project.

From then on, MPipe finds the project by itself: open any .blend saved anywhere inside that folder and it walks up the parent folders until it meets the pipeline.json. If it ever looks lost, Refresh Context re-runs the detection.

Everything lives in one panel, in the 3D viewport sidebar under the MPipe tab. Six module buttons at the top switch what the panel shows, and most modules are split further into tabs.

The File module works on the .blend you have open. Its three tabs answer three questions: which versions exist, is this file named correctly, and is it clean enough to publish.

Locks are released when you close Blender, and they follow you if you change your Artist Name while a file is open. Working alone, the lock costs nothing and you can ignore it entirely.

An asset has a working file you edit and published versions everyone else uses. The rule that keeps a project intact is simple: shots link publishes, never working files.

New Shot creates the shot folder and its first file, with the scene already set to the project fps, resolution and frame range, and the template collections created.

The shot list shows every shot with its status and thumbnail. Open Shot loads its latest file, Edit Shot changes the status and the note, Capture Thumbnail refreshes the preview from the viewport.

Four statuses are available: Not Started, WIP, Review and Done.

Status and note are stored in a sidecar JSON file inside the shot folder, not in the central pipeline.json. Two people editing two different shots never write to the same file, which is what makes this safe on a shared or synced drive.

MPipe prepares renders; it never launches them. There is no queue, no background job and no render farm — you press F12 yourself, as always.

Run Validation in the File module checks the open file. Each check returns pass, warning or error; where a safe automatic correction exists, a Fix Issue button appears next to it. A publish carrying a blocking error is refused.

Each check is configured per project, under validation.checks in the pipeline.json, using its id as the key. Set enabled to false to switch it off, severity to "ERROR" or "WARNING" to decide whether a failure blocks a publish, and add any other key to override a parameter:

You can add your own checks. In the pipeline_hooks/ folder at the project root, you can put .py files in it, each exposing an MPIPE_CHECKS list. Every entry needs an id and a check function taking (context, params) and returning (passed, message); label, description, severity, fix, applies and params are optional. Your checks then sit beside the built-in ones, configurable from the pipeline.json in exactly the same way. A hook that fails to load is reported as a warning and never prevents the other checks from running.

Batch operations and purging touch many files at once. Run them when nobody else is mid-save, and keep a backup of a project you cannot afford to lose.

Under Project > Dashboard, press Refresh Dashboard to scan the project. It is a read-only overview, useful with a team and just as useful when the only person you are tracking is yourself.

One readable file at the project root holds every convention. MPipe writes it when the project is created and updates it when you save a render preset; you can also edit it in any text editor. Unknown keys are tolerated, so a file written by a newer version still opens.

Everything MPipe stores is relative to this file, so the project folder can be moved, copied to another drive or mounted at a different path on each machine and still work.