Is it possible to create image data from a base64 encoded PNG?

Question

I have a base64 encoded PNG image, and I want to load this into an image. I could write a simple PNG decoder and read every pixel, but this would be very inefficient as this would be done on a per-pixel-basis through Python.

Is there a way to feed bpy.types.Image with the entire raw string of a PNG that doesn't come from disk?

Answer 1

This seems to work.

def image_from_data(img_name, data):
   # Create image, width and height are dummy values
   img = bpy.data.images.new(img_name, 8, 8)

   # Set packed file data
   img.pack(data=data, data_len=len(data))

   # Switch to file source so it uses the packed file
   img.source = 'FILE'
   
   return img

You can also change the packed data afterwards with another .pack() call; use .reload() in that case to refresh after the change.