https://github.com/nalexandru/blendercompat

Windows 7 support for Blender 3.x and newer
https://github.com/nalexandru/blendercompat

blender windows-7

Last synced: 5 days ago
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Windows 7 support for Blender 3.x and newer

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/nalexandru/blendercompat
• Owner: nalexandru
• License: bsd-3-clause
• Created: 2021-07-04T15:54:19.000Z (over 3 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2024-12-10T22:13:39.000Z (12 days ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-12-18T12:06:27.984Z (5 days ago)
• Topics: blender, windows-7
• Language: C
• Homepage:
• Size: 53.7 KB
• Stars: 250
• Watchers: 13
• Forks: 23
• Open Issues: 12
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md
  • License: LICENSE

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README

        
# BlenderCompat

Windows 7 support for Blender 3.x and newer

## Description

This repository contains a compatibility DLL for running Blender 3.x on Windows 7 and a patch to modify the Blender source to use it. It does this by prepending `bcompat7` to the list of libraries so it uses the entry points in it instead of those in the system libraries.

### Addons

In order for addons that require `numpy` to work, you need to install the [Windows 7 May 2016 rollup (KB3125574)](https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB3125574).

## Binaries

Stable releases, compiled from the same commit as the official releases, are available on the [Releases](https://github.com/nalexandru/BlenderCompat/releases) page.

More recent builds, including pre-release versions, are provided by Loriem: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eufffe60fvtr9mz/AAA0YtogOoJTKggWtgAXRyXJa?dl=0

## Changes compared to the official release

* Reverted https://developer.blender.org/T97828 due to rendering issues on AMD Polaris GPUs (issues [#18](https://github.com/nalexandru/BlenderCompat/issues/18), [#19](https://github.com/nalexandru/BlenderCompat/issues/19))

## Building Blender for Windows 7

### Libraries

Starting with version 3.5 some static libraries were switched to shared. For version 4.1, two libraries need to be rebuilt: OpenEXR and OpenUSD. Both of them use CreateFile2 which is not present on Windows 7.

Before building Blender (after `make update`) you must build them. Clone their repositories, apply the patch found in this repo and run build.cmd.

The patches were made against version 3.2.2 of OpenEXR and version 24.03 of OpenUSD.

[OpenEXR repository](https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openexr)

[OpenUSD repository](https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenUSD)

Build Blender following these instructions: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Building_Blender/Windows with a small change.

Before running `make update`, copy `bcompat7.patch` into the blender source tree and run `git apply bcompat7.patch` (there will be some warnings about whitespace, they can be ignored) then continue with the guide.

To use the your own build of this compatibility DLL, overwrite the files in the `lib/win64_vc15/bcompat7` directory created after running `make update`.

## api-ms-win-core-path-l1-1-0.dll

In addition to this DLL, `api-ms-win-core-path-l1-1-0.dll` is required to run Blender because of Python. A version of this library for Windows 7 can be found here: https://github.com/nalexandru/api-ms-win-core-path-HACK