Action Frame Range Sync Add-on

action_frame_range_sync.py

This is a python script that installs a helpful add-on. It is very natural to distrust any script that someone asks you to run on your computer.

Fortunately you can upload the file to ChatGPT at chatgpt.com and ask it what the script does and if it contains any nasty surprises.

I did that and it told me what the script does. It said this,

The core behavior is: whenever Blender’s dependency graph updates, it looks at the currently active object, gets its active Action, and—provided that object is not actively using an unmuted NLA track with strips—sets the scene’s frame_start and frame_end to that Action’s frame range. It then jumps the timeline to the Action’s first frame.

It also said this,

There are no obvious “nasty surprises” in the security sense. It does not read or write files, run shell commands, use the network, install anything, execute arbitrary code, access environment variables, delete Blender data, modify meshes/materials, or transmit information. The imports are only Blender’s own bpy API and its persistent handler decorator.

It then went on to say how the script could be improved. I would ignore its suggestions. The only valid point is that running this add-on would be a PITA if you were actually editing the animations but you wont be doing that. If you actually do use Blender to edit animations then I would disable this add-on after use.

Anyway, you don’t have to take my word for any of this, just send the file, or paste its contents into ChatGPT and ask it yourself.

Installing the add-on

Click Edit / Preferences… in the menu.

The Preferences window will be displayed.

You want Add-ons to be selected, its in the pane on the left of the Preferences… window.

Click the dropdown on the righthand corner and select: Install From Disk…

You will get a file open dialog. Navigate to the folder where you extracted the zip file and select action_frame_range_sync.py.

Make sure that Enable on Install is checked. The checkbox is on the top right.

Then click the Install from Disk button on the lower right of the dialog.

If all goes well then you should see it in your preferences window.

There is a dropdown arrow to the left of the add-on name. If you open it you can see info about it and an Uninstall button.

The tick box beside the arrow lets you disable the add-on.

If you use Blender for other projects, you can simply disable the add-on when you have finished viewing the Grunt animations. Disabling it does not uninstall it, so you can easily enable it again later