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Announcing:

enter image description here

For a long time now .blend hosted on pasteall.org have been disappearing, after 5 months. Although good answers and questions shouldn't need .blend files, they can be extremely useful to demonstrate concepts or offer complex setups that aren't relevant to the actual answer. The goal of stack exchange is to build a knowledge base that is easily searchable and efficient to use. Having a part of our knowledge base expire and disapear goes against this philosophy.

Blend-exchange, a new blend hosting site just for blender.stackexchange solves this issue by permanently storing .blend files.

  • Permanent file storage
  • Open source
  • Totaly free, no email accounts
  • Run by a community member, me
  • Support up to 30MB files

Note: It is still under development (αlpha), please treat it gently

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  • $\begingroup$ What's the file size limit? $\endgroup$
    – user7952
    Feb 26, 2015 at 10:10
  • $\begingroup$ @SixthOfFour I I'm targeting it for about 20-30-MB, mostly interested to wee what people need, it is currently 50MB $\endgroup$
    – GiantCowFilms
    Feb 26, 2015 at 14:16
  • $\begingroup$ This is a very good idea, especially the permanent storage. I've sometimes been annoyed when old questions get popped to the front page, and included .blends no longer exist. $\endgroup$
    – user7952
    Feb 26, 2015 at 22:19
  • $\begingroup$ @SixthOfFour that why I made this... $\endgroup$
    – GiantCowFilms
    Feb 26, 2015 at 22:41
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    $\begingroup$ Of course. I just wanted to express my appreciation. ;) $\endgroup$
    – user7952
    Feb 26, 2015 at 22:54
  • $\begingroup$ Your appreciation is much appreciated! ;D its nice to see people using tools I spent hours making! $\endgroup$
    – GiantCowFilms
    Feb 26, 2015 at 23:05
  • $\begingroup$ Can I upload a file to an answer? When I give it the url of the answer it says that it is invalid. $\endgroup$
    – PGmath
    Jun 9, 2015 at 1:21
  • $\begingroup$ @PGmath Always give the question URL, not the answer URL, even if it is an answer... its to difficult to support both sadly, for various reasons. The URL is only used to check that the blend is used on this site. And it is pretty easy to tell from the question whether the blend is used or not. $\endgroup$
    – GiantCowFilms
    Jun 9, 2015 at 1:22
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks man, sorry for my ignorance. It's pretty slick btw! $\endgroup$
    – PGmath
    Jun 9, 2015 at 1:26
  • $\begingroup$ No problem... usually means there is some UX issue that needs to be fixed :D ... I'll see what I can do! Thanks :D $\endgroup$
    – GiantCowFilms
    Jun 9, 2015 at 2:07
  • $\begingroup$ @PGmath Okay, I pushed a change that give a more descriptive error when an answer url is provided. Thanks for the feedback! $\endgroup$
    – GiantCowFilms
    Jun 9, 2015 at 2:29
  • $\begingroup$ Who has admin control on BSE? Each SE site seems to get some control over a custom layout, would it be possible to add a button and script link to the style layout of BSE? $\endgroup$
    – sambler
    Jun 29, 2018 at 8:47
  • $\begingroup$ @sambler The SE staff has admin control. When we graduated from beta, they had a professional designer come in, converse with the community, and then create a design (see discussion here: blender.meta.stackexchange.com/q/969 and here blender.meta.stackexchange.com/q/782). $\endgroup$
    – GiantCowFilms
    Jun 29, 2018 at 16:32
  • $\begingroup$ Blend exchange seem to not support uploading up to date Blend files. I get an error it's not supported when trying to upload a Blender 3.2.1 file. $\endgroup$
    – Christoph Werner
    Aug 31, 2022 at 8:52
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    $\begingroup$ @ChristophWerner The issue has been fully fixed. It makes sense this would impact only compressed files, because the issue is they changed the compression algorithm, so my previous validation was not able to uncompress newer files. $\endgroup$
    – GiantCowFilms
    Sep 3, 2022 at 20:43

3 Answers 3

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Here is a userscript which allows for blendfiles to be uploaded to Blend-Exchange from the editor on blender.stackexchange. Written by @GiantCowFilms and myself and based on the kbd script.

It's quite simple to use:

enter image description here

It's still in a bit of an alpha state, so come back for updates if you try it out now!

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    $\begingroup$ I have both this script and the kbd script installed, and they both respond to Ctrl Y. $\endgroup$
    – user7952
    Feb 26, 2015 at 21:14
  • $\begingroup$ @SixthOfFour I fixed that yesterday.. Are you using the latest version? $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3 Mod
    Feb 26, 2015 at 21:19
  • $\begingroup$ I installed it very early this morning by my time (which is UTC+1). I'm pretty sure the one I installed was marked "Initial commit". I'll try updating it later and report back. $\endgroup$
    – user7952
    Feb 26, 2015 at 21:24
  • $\begingroup$ @SixthOfFour Ah, well according to github I pushed it about 11 hours ago. Anyway, it should work now (just checked the source on github, it has the fix) $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3 Mod
    Feb 26, 2015 at 21:31
  • $\begingroup$ Just installed the update, and it no longer responds to Ctrl Y. However, it's only available when answering, not when posting a new question. Is that intentional? Also, isn't it quite pointless to have it active on meta? $\endgroup$
    – user7952
    Feb 26, 2015 at 21:36
  • $\begingroup$ @SixthOfFour Yes, not appearing in questions is a known limitation. The URL of the post is used to programatically detect .blends not being used on SE, and the url of the post can't be gotten when the post hasn't been posted yet. I didn't see a reason to disable it on meta, but if users find it pointless and annoying I'll be happy to change it ;) $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3 Mod
    Feb 26, 2015 at 22:10
  • $\begingroup$ I just browsed through the code, and I saw the comment about disabling it on new questions. And don't change it on my account. I'm not in the least annoyed by seeing it here. Very good work from what I can tell so far. :) $\endgroup$
    – user7952
    Feb 26, 2015 at 22:16
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Service Update 1:

Blend-Exchange has got a new feature in alpha:

Optional Accounts! Now you can view all your blends in one place, and hopefully soon be able to update and delete them. You can register here

Exit alpha soon?

Blend-Exchange has had no bug reports for weeks, and appears to be running without much hassle. However, new features like this login may still have bugs. As soon as this is done and tested, I want to move out to beta. Before I do this, I'd like to know what changes are needed/desired, since I prefer to add them now then later. Leave a comment below

UX concerns

There have been a few instances of new users having trouble with the service, please notify me by email or opening an issue in the github repo. I'd like to be able to make this site easy to use as possible, since we have visitors from all experience levels, nationalities and ages.

Update 1 on UX:

The url input is much much more forgiving, it now supports any of the below formats

  • http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/21800/undo-cursor-move
  • http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/21800/undo-cursor-move
  • http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/21800/
  • http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/21800/245
  • http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/21800/245
  • http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/21800/undo-cursor-move/21802#21802
  • http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/21800/undo-cursor-move/?abcd=efg
  • http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/21800/undo-cursor-move/?abcd=efg&hijk=lmn

Missing a format? please suggest it!

More feedback can help me make even more necessary changes

Service Update 1.5:

Bug fixes and improved login.

Better and more descriptive errors for the URLs.

Thanks, I look forward to you feedback!

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Since I just noticed that the request for permanent storage for Blend files was declined, I should note that I don't think it fair that GiantCowFilms ("GCF") bear the cost of permanent blend file hosting all by himself, either financially, or the time cost of maintaining the site. I propose that we explore what options are available for community support for these costs.

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  • $\begingroup$ At this point in time, Blend-Exchange costs me nothing, since it is using unused space on a server I am already renting to host my site, giantcowfilms.com. That being said, thanks for the support. I will look into funding from the community if the expenses increase significantly. $\endgroup$
    – GiantCowFilms
    Mar 5, 2016 at 14:53

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