Minimal Blender Viewer

Preview Blender .blend and .blend1 files directly in Visual Studio Code.

Requirements

• Visual Studio Code 1.85.0 or newer.
• Blender installed on your computer. Blender is used to generate the 3D preview and is not included with this extension.

Setup

1. Install Blender if it is not already installed.
2. Open a .blend file in VS Code.
3. The extension attempts to find Blender automatically. If Blender is not found, open VS Code Settings (Ctrl+, on Windows/Linux or Cmd+, on macOS), search for Minimal Blender Viewer, and set Blender Path to the Blender executable.
4. Reopen the .blend file after changing the path.

You can also set the path in your VS Code settings.json. For example, on Windows:

{
  "minimalBlenderViewer.blenderPath": "C:\\Program Files\\Blender Foundation\\Blender 4.5\\blender.exe"
}

Replace this example with the actual path to your installed Blender executable. The version in the example is not a minimum version requirement.

Typical executable paths:

• Windows: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender <version>\blender.exe
• macOS: /Applications/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/Blender
• Linux: /usr/bin/blender (the location depends on how Blender was installed).

Leave Blender Path empty to use automatic detection.

Settings

Open VS Code Settings and search for Minimal Blender Viewer to configure the Blender path, preview cache, export options, grid, and wireframe display.

For preview, materials with a legacy MixRGB node directly connected to Principled Base Color are baked using the active UV map. The model appears first while its colors are prepared, with a small progress indicator. Completed previews are cached, so reopening an unchanged file reuses the result. Overlapping UVs or view-dependent shaders may not reproduce the original appearance accurately.

The extension hides VS Code's editor type selector in breadcrumbs by default, including for other editors. Set "breadcrumbs.showEditorType": true in VS Code settings to show it again.

Animations

Blender actions are exported as animation clips (disable with Export Animations). When a file contains animations, an Animations panel lists every clip and the first one starts playing: click a clip to play or stop it, or use Play All / Stop All. Several clips can play at the same time.

Levels of detail

Objects named with a Unity-style LOD suffix (Name_LOD0, Name_LOD1, …) are treated as levels of detail. When a file has two or more levels, the LOD button opens a panel that lists each level with its triangle count; click a level to show it and hide the others. LOD0 is shown first. With no LODs or a single one, the button is disabled.

Each level has an Export button that saves it as a .glb file. The export keeps the rig, animations and objects without a LOD suffix, and excludes the other levels. An existing destination is replaced only after the export succeeds.

Textures

The Textures button opens a panel that lists every image used by the model's materials, with a thumbnail, its resolution, and each material that uses it along with the slot (base color, normal, roughness, emissive, …). An image shared by several slots or materials is listed once. Click a texture to show a larger preview. Files without textures show the button disabled.

If a file opens in another editor, right-click its editor tab, select Reopen Editor With..., and choose Blender Preview.

Development

Open this repository folder in VS Code, select Run Blender Preview in Run and Debug, and press F5. The task opens an isolated Extension Development Host and attaches the debugger. Its settings and installed extensions are kept separately under .vscode-test/. Closing the preview window ends debugging after the reconnect attempts stop. Close the preview window after stopping debugging before starting another session.

On the first run, the preview profile is created with a minimal window and the standard VS Code shortcuts disabled. Existing profile settings and keybindings are preserved on later runs. The supplied shortcut list was generated from VS Code on Windows; additional shortcuts may exist on other versions or platforms.

The development window opens samples/suzanne.blend, a sample with two LODs, two animations and a packed texture. You can open your own .blend file as well. If Blender is not detected, set Minimal Blender Viewer: Blender Path in the development window's settings.

Saving a host-side JavaScript file or a viewer file in src/webview/ automatically restarts the extension host and reopens the preview in the same window; viewer changes are rebuilt first. Preview state such as the selected LOD and camera position resets. If a change has a syntax error, the current version stays running and VS Code shows the error. Changes to package.json require restarting F5. No VSIX installation is needed for this workflow.

Run npm test for the host-side behavior checks.

Publishing

Releases are published directly to the VS Code Marketplace by GitHub Actions using trusted publishing. Create and push a tag in the form vX.Y.Z that matches the version in package.json and points to a commit on main. The workflow checks and builds the extension before publishing; it does not upload release artifacts to GitHub.

The Marketplace publisher must have a trusted publishing policy for repository owner dummefil, repository minimal-blender-preview, and workflow publish.yml.