how to specify active window for a series of screen captures in python

Question

I am trying to write a script that does various things to a mesh object from within a loop, and updates the 3D window each time, based on this script. This would be for explanatory and instructive purposes.

I would like to trigger a screen capture (to PNG) of only the 3D window each time as well.

I'm experimenting with this:

bpy.ops.screen.screenshot(filepath=path, full=False)

which I found in the documentation.

I have to include ...blah.png in the path name in order to get a PNG, or else it writes a .blend file each time. That's OK I guess.

But with full=False so far I don't seem to have good control getting my mouse-hover to tell the already-running-script which window I want to be active in order for the script to capture it.

Q: Is there some way I can just explicitly specify in the script which window should be captured?

(I made this GIF by hand from 34 manual screen shots, I'd like to automate this kind of thing)

Answer 1

To clear up some misunderstandings:

There are no get and set methods to modify the context, and mostly not for other purposes either. It's simply not the Python way of coding. ob.attr is your getter, and ob.attr = 123 the setter. Magic methods can intercept get and set operations to customize object behavior, but that's advanced stuff.

There's also a programmatic way to get and set any attribute, but you only ever need it if the attribute name is dynamic or not always present: hasattr(ob, "attr"), getattr(ob, "attr"), setattr(ob, "attr", 123).

All immediate members of bpy.context are read-only. You can't modify anything here. You can do something like bpy.context.window.screen = bpy.data.screens["Default"] however. screen is not a direct context attribute and editable. On the other hand, bpy.context.screen is read-only. bpy.context.window_manager.windows[#].screen is editable again.

To run an operator in a custom context means, that you construct a Python dictionary with context member names as keys, and datablock references as values. You do not modify the actual context:

ob = bpy.context.scene.object_bases["Cube"]
ctx = {"selected_bases": [ob]} # dict to store custom context
bpy.ops.object.delete(ctx) # run operator with custom context

Above code deletes the object Cube, even if completely different objects (or rather object bases) are selected without changing the selection temporarily.

It also prints a bunch of PyContext warnings to console, because the delete operator expects a couple more context members. We did not provide them in above code, we only set selected_bases. A nice, although limited trick is to run an operator with an empty context to figure out (some of the) context members:

bpy.ops.object.delete({})

It's sometimes easier to derive the context from the actual context, and only modify the necessary dictionary keys:

ctx = bpy.context.copy()
ctx["selected_bases"] = [bpy.context.scene.object_bases["Cube"]]
bpy.ops.object.delete(ctx)

Above code should not cause any PyContext warnings.

We can apply this to the screenshot operator now:

context = bpy.context
for area in context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        ctx = {
            "window": context.window, # current window, could also copy context
            "area": area, # our 3D View (the first found only actually)
            "region": None # just to suppress PyContext warning, doesn't seem to have any effect
        }
        bpy.ops.screen.screenshot(ctx, filepath="...", full=False)
        break # limit to first 3D View (optional)

Don't ever rely on the area index, it's not a stable property.

---

If you want an screenshot of a certain region (exactly as seen on screen), you can do the following:

import bpy
import bgl

context = bpy.context

def screenshot_region(region):
    x = region.x
    y = region.y
    width = region.width
    height = region.height
    
    buf = bgl.Buffer(bgl.GL_FLOAT, width * height * 4)
    bgl.glReadPixels(x, y, width, height, bgl.GL_RGBA, bgl.GL_FLOAT, buf)
    img = bpy.data.images.new("Screenshot", width, height, alpha=True)
    img.pixels[:] = buf

for area in context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        for region in area.regions:
            if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                screenshot_region(region)
                break

It creates an image datablock with the screenshot. You may wanna save it using Image.save_as(), which will use the scene's render settings. Or use struct.pack() to create some sort of bitmap file directly.

If you want to take a series of screenshots, you could do the following:

                scene = context.scene
                frame_orig = scene.frame_current

                for frame in range(scene.frame_start, scene.frame_end + 1):
                    scene.frame_set(frame)
                    bpy.ops.wm.redraw_timer(type='DRAW_WIN_SWAP', iterations=1)
                    screenshot_region(region)

                scene.frame_set(frame_orig)

Also see Can I redraw during the script?.

Here's a more sophisticated example:

import bpy
import bgl

context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene

def screenshot_region(region):
    x = region.x
    y = region.y
    width = region.width
    height = region.height
    
    view_settings(area.spaces.active)
    bpy.ops.wm.redraw_timer(type='DRAW_WIN_SWAP', iterations=1)
    
    buf = bgl.Buffer(bgl.GL_FLOAT, width * height * 4)
    bgl.glReadPixels(x, y, width, height, bgl.GL_RGBA, bgl.GL_FLOAT, buf)
    img = bpy.data.images.new("Screenshot", width, height, alpha=True)
    img.pixels[:] = buf
    
    view_settings(area.spaces.active, True)
    
def view_settings(view3d, revert=False):
    pref = context.user_preferences.view
    if not revert:    
        view_settings.ob_info = pref.show_object_info
        view_settings.view_name = pref.show_view_name
        view_settings.mini_axis = pref.show_mini_axis
        #view_settings.only_render = view3d.show_only_render
        view_settings.manipulator = view3d.show_manipulator
        
        pref.show_object_info = False
        pref.show_view_name = False
        pref.show_mini_axis = False
        #view3d.show_only_render = False
        view3d.show_manipulator = False
    else:        
        pref.show_object_info = view_settings.ob_info
        pref.show_view_name = view_settings.view_name
        pref.show_mini_axis = view_settings.mini_axis
        #view3d.show_only_render = view_settings.only_render
        view3d.show_manipulator = view_settings.manipulator

    
for area in context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        for region in area.regions:
            if region.type == 'WINDOW':
                for frame in range(scene.frame_start, scene.frame_end + 1):
                    scene.frame_set(frame)
                    screenshot_region(region)
                break

---

Related reads:

• bpy.ops - Keyword and positional arguments / Context Overriding
• Blender context
• Using Operators / Poll-fail
• poll() failed, context incorrect? - Example: bpy.ops.view3d.background_image_add()