CarbonEngineJS Blender Tools

These add-ons help you get EVE Online assets into Blender:

• GR2 Importer loads EVE's Granny 2 geometry, including meshes, UVs, normals, skeletons, weights, morphs, and embedded animations.
• EVE Resource Browser finds, downloads, validates, and previews the actual EVE files, so you do not have to work out CCP's index and download system.

You still need to find what you want inside EVE's res:/ folder structure— sorry, we cannot save you from that part yet. <3

Everything is pure Python for Blender 4.0 and newer. No Node.js, granny2.dll, or converter program is required.

The source tree also contains a tested, pure-Python client boundary for the optional local tools-core Node service. It is not enabled by the current Blender UI or required by the released GR2 importer/resource browser; Node distribution and exact-build SOF bootstrap must be completed first.

What it does not do yet

These tools do not build a complete EVE ship. For now, they retrieve and load the individual model files. Full SOF/DNA ship assembly—including choosing variants and referenced parts and assigning materials and textures—will come later.

Install

1. Download the zip for the tool you want using the links below. Do not unzip it.
2. In Blender, open Edit > Preferences > Add-ons.
3. Choose Install from Disk, select the zip, then enable the add-on.

Current downloads:

• GR2 Importer 0.1.3 — import Granny GR2 files.
• EVE Resource Browser 0.2.3 — browse and download EVE resources.

Do not install GitHub's tools-blender-main.zip; it is the repository source, not a Blender add-on package.

Import a GR2

1. Open File > Import > Granny GR2 (.gr2).
2. Choose a file and select Import Granny GR2.

The defaults suit most EVE models. Import options are grouped into Transform, Geometry, Rigging, and Animation; their persistent defaults are in the add-on's preferences.

A GR2 alone is not a complete character. Characters also need their resource metadata, materials, textures, and often GSF data; character assembly will be a separate tool.

Browse EVE resources

1. In the 3D View, press N and open the CarbonEngineJS tab.
2. Accept CCP Games' EVE content-creation terms.
3. Select Load Resources.

The browser starts at res:/dx9/model/ship/. Double-click folders to open them, select an image to preview it, or double-click a GR2 to download and import it when the GR2 add-on is enabled. Search and the Low/Medium switches help control the file list.

The latest index is downloaded only when needed. Refresh can check for a new build at most once every 12 hours per cache; repeated clicks reuse the last checked build. Downloaded files are size- and MD5-validated. Preferences show cache locations and downloaded totals, and provide Clear Cache.

You must accept the live EVE Online Content Creation Terms of Use before the browser accesses indexes or resources. The accepted revision and time are stored in Blender preferences. See EVE-CREATOR-LICENSE.md for the bundled notice.

Technical reference

• Author: CarbonengineJS — https://github.com/orgs/carbonenginejs/
• Blender 4.0+; integration tested with Blender 5.0.
• Each folder under addons/ is a self-contained add-on.
• The GR2 reader supports 32/64-bit little-endian Granny files, reflected type graphs, uncompressed/Oodle1/BitKnit2 sections, known format-gr2 curve encodings, packed tangent frames, morphs, and GSF projection.
• Authored normals and tangent frames are preserved as mesh data; the missing normal fallback uses a 30-degree smoothing angle.
• Cached EVE payloads follow the tools-core layout under ccp/builds/<build>/indexes/ and ResFiles/<shard>/. Clear Cache keeps indexes, the 12-hour check marker, and files copied into Downloads.
• Existing installs retain the carbonenginejs/tool-core cache directory as the shared v1 on-disk location; the directory name is not the package name.

Reader API:

from io_scene_carbon_gr2.gr2 import inspect, is_gsf, read_gr2, read_gsf

summary = inspect("model.gr2")
model = read_gr2("model.gr2")
state = read_gsf("character.gsf")

Build and test:

py -3 scripts/build_addon.py
py -3 -m unittest discover -s tests -v

Optional JavaScript-reader parity tests use GR2_PARITY_SAMPLE and FORMAT_GR2_ROOT; see tests/test_parity_optional.py.

License

MIT. The BitKnit2 decoder is a Python port of CarbonEngineJS's MIT clean-room implementation and has been validated byte-exact against the available GR2 codec corpus. See LICENSE, NOTICE, and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md. EVE content remains subject to CCP Games' separate terms in EVE-CREATOR-LICENSE.md.