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.
• CMF Importer loads Carbon Mesh Format geometry, LODs, UVs, packed or unpacked tangent frames, morphs, weights, and skeletons. CMF animation curves are readable by the library, but creating Blender Actions from them is still pending.
• 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. It also assembles a ship hull from a pre-compiled SOF bundle: the right mesh areas, with the right textures on them.

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

Browsing, downloading, GR2/CMF import, and ship assembly are pure Python for Blender 4.0 and newer. No Node.js, granny2.dll, WASM, or converter program is required. The add-on asks the hosted CarbonEngineJS service to compose SOF/DNA and downloads the resolved EVE resources directly.

What it does not do yet

The format libraries are readers only. CMF animation curves are not yet turned into Blender Actions, and the CMF importer currently accepts triangle-list geometry with one selected skeleton. Carbon's shaders cannot be reproduced exactly in Blender, so generated materials are a deliberate approximation.

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 download:

• CarbonEngineJS Blender Tools 0.7.1 — EVE resource browsing and ship loading, with GR2 and CMF importers.

The readers can also be installed without Blender:

pip install carbon-cmf carbon-gr2 carbon-gsf

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.

Import a CMF

1. Open File > Import > Carbon Mesh Format (.cmf).
2. Choose a file and select Import Carbon CMF.

The importer uses the same Blender mesh, morph, skinning, and armature builders as GR2. Additional CMF LODs follow the existing Skip LOD meshes preference. Meshless CMFs are accepted and create an armature when they contain a skeleton. CMF animation channels are preserved by the reader but do not create Blender Actions yet. The current Blender projection imports triangle-list geometry and one selected skeleton; it reports unsupported topology or multi-skeleton mesh bindings instead of silently constructing the wrong scene.

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.

Build a ship from DNA

EVE ships are described by SOF/DNA, not by a single file. The hosted CarbonEngineJS service performs that composition so Blender does not reimplement it.

1. In the CarbonEngineJS sidebar tab, type a DNA such as cf1_t1:caldarinavy:caldari and select Build DNA.

The add-on requests the built document, downloads its geometry and textures, and stores them in its validated cache. The refresh button beside Build DNA forces a fresh request.

Assemble Existing Bundle remains available for an existing bundle folder, bundle.json, or bare document.json.

The add-on imports the hull geometry through the GR2 importer, maps each Tr2MeshArea onto the geometry index groups it names, and builds one material per area. Anything the bundle does not contain is downloaded through the resource browser, so a bare document still works when the index is loaded.

Use your own shader as the material

Set the Shader library preference to a .blend containing a node group named for the effect family—QuadV5 covers quadv5.fx, quadheatv5.fx, and quadglassv5.fx. When it is present, the add-on appends that group and drives it with the document's own values: each SOF texture parameter is linked to the same-named group input, every Mtl1-4 diffuse/fresnel/gloss constant is set from the build, and the group's Albedo output replaces the Principled base color. A few common authored spellings are accepted as aliases.

This is how faction colors and the paint mask actually show up: Carbon selects four materials per area from the faction record, and a group with a material mask can blend them the way the real shader does. Without a shader library the add-on falls back to the Principled approximation below.

Why materials are approximate

EVE's res:/graphics/effect/... shaders are compiled Carbon effects. Blender cannot run them, so equal shading is not possible here and the add-on does not pretend otherwise:

• AlbedoMap, RoughnessMap, NormalMap, and GlowMap are connected to the matching Principled BSDF inputs, with sRGB or non-color set per map.
• Carbon-only maps—MaterialMap, PaintMaskMap, DirtMap, the pattern masks, and any parameter this version does not know—are still loaded as labelled, unconnected image nodes so nothing is lost.
• Every effect path, shader option, and constant parameter is written to the material as a carbon_sof_* custom property.
• Transparent areas blend, decal areas clip, and depth-only clones are skipped because they repeat an area that already has a material.

Faction colors, patterns, heat glow, and the rest of Carbon's per-material shading are therefore visible as data, not as shading.

Technical reference

• Author: CarbonengineJS — https://github.com/orgs/carbonenginejs/
• Blender 4.0+; integration tested with Blender 5.0.
• Release bundles include the carbon_cmf, carbon_granny, carbon_gr2, and carbon_gsf libraries beside the Blender add-on. The same libraries can be installed independently from packages/.
• The GR2 reader supports 32/64-bit little-endian Granny files, reflected type graphs, uncompressed/Oodle1/BitKnit2 sections, known curve encodings, packed tangent frames, and morphs. GSF state documents use the separate GSF reader.
• Authored normals and tangent frames are preserved as mesh data; the missing normal fallback uses a 30-degree smoothing angle.
• Cached EVE payloads use this add-on's own layout, ccp/builds/<build>/indexes/, alongside a ResFiles/<shard>/ store that follows the same content-addressed convention tools-core uses. The index layout is not tools-core's and never was: tools-core keys its sidecars by target (targets/<target>/builds/…), changed on 2026-08-15, and this add-on reaches it only over the HTTP service. 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.
• SOF bundles are read as carbon.sof-bundle version 1 manifests wrapping a carbon.document version 1 graph; a newer document or bundle version is refused rather than partly understood.
• Blender loads EVE's DXT and BC5/ATI2 DDS payloads natively but not its BC7 ones (DX10 header, dxgiFormat 98), verified on Blender 5.0. The add-on's pure-Python decoder translates unsupported payloads and reconstructs BC5 normal Z; a texture Blender still cannot read is reported per area.
• Mesh-area routing counts geometry index groups across imported objects in file order, which is how Carbon numbers the groups of one geometry resource.
• DNA builds use the hosted CarbonEngineJS service. The add-on validates the DNA characters and never composes SOF itself. A DNA the service cannot build is reported with its own message.

Reader API:

from carbon_cmf import read_cmf
from carbon_gr2 import inspect, read_gr2, read_gr2_as_cmf
from carbon_gsf import is_gsf, read_gsf

summary = inspect("model.gr2")
model = read_gr2("model.gr2")
interchange = read_gr2_as_cmf("model.gr2")
native_interchange = read_cmf("model.cmf")
state = read_gsf("character.gsf")

The former nested reader path remains as a compatibility shim in the Blender add-on; new non-Blender code should import the standalone packages directly.

SOF bundle API:

from carbon_eve_resources.sof_document import load_sof_bundle

bundle = load_sof_bundle("cf1_t1")
mesh = bundle.assembly.primary_mesh
areas = [(area.name, area.slot_indices, area.shader) for area in mesh.areas]

Build and test:

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

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.

CarbonEngine and Fenris Creations (CCP Games) formats and behavior are used for interoperability; source and algorithm provenance is recorded in NOTICE. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Fenris Creations (CCP Games).