Install BUI

You need CPython 3.11 or newer. Wheels are published for Windows, Linux and macOS, so there’s nothing to compile.

pip install blenderui

That one package gives you all four Python APIs: tkinter syntax, Qt syntax, the Blender components and Dear ImGui.

Check that it worked:

python -c "import blenderui; print(blenderui.__version__)"

The crate is on crates.io as blenderui:

cargo add blenderui

Or add it to Cargo.toml by hand:

[dependencies]
blenderui = "0.1"

The first build compiles BUI’s C kit for you, so you need:

• Rust 1.88 or newer (the workspace uses edition 2024).
• CMake and a C compiler. On Windows, the default Rust target uses MSVC, so install the Visual Studio Build Tools.
• On Linux, the X11 headers: libx11-dev (Debian, Ubuntu) or libX11-devel (Fedora). No GL headers are needed.

Try the bundled examples from a clone of the repository:

cd bindings/rust
cargo run --release --example hello

You need Node.js 18 or newer, or Bun. For React:

npm install @blender-ui/react react
# or
bun add @blender-ui/react react

For the DOM-like API without React:

npm install @blender-ui/native

To build the addon from a clone (Linux, or to hack on BUI), you need what the Rust crate needs: Rust, CMake and a C compiler.

cd bindings
npm install        # links the two packages (npm workspaces)
npm run build      # builds the native addon in release mode

Build from source with CMake. You need CMake 3.20 or newer and a C11 / C++20 compiler (MSVC, GCC or MinGW-w64, or Clang). On Linux, also the X11 headers.

git clone https://github.com/ppmpreetham/BUI && cd BUI
cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build -j 2
ctest --test-dir build            # optional: run the test suites

To use the kit in your own CMake project, add BUI as a subdirectory and link bui::kit:

add_subdirectory(BUI)
target_link_libraries(myapp PRIVATE bui::kit)

Then #include "BUI_kit.h". The hello-world is examples/kit_hello.c; build it with -DBUI_BUILD_EXAMPLES=ON.

BUI runs the real Dear ImGui (1.93), so existing ImGui code compiles unchanged. Pick your language:

• Python comes with pip install blenderui. Import it as blenderui.imgui. The very first wheels (0.1.0) were published before it; if the import fails, upgrade with pip install -U blenderui.
• C++: build BUI with CMake (see the C tab) and link bui::imgui. You include imgui.h and imgui_impl_bui.h. The CMake option BUI_BUILD_IMGUI is on whenever a C++ compiler is present.
• C: the same build gives you cimgui.h and cimgui_impl_bui.h (CMake target bui_cimgui).
• Rust: add the blenderui-imgui crate. It isn’t on crates.io yet (only blenderui is), so take it from the repository as a git dependency:

[dependencies]
blenderui-imgui = { git = "https://github.com/ppmpreetham/BUI" }

Want ImGui’s widgets to be Blender’s widgets? Build with -DBUI_IMGUI_BLENDER_WIDGETS=ON in CMake, or enable the blender-widgets feature of blenderui-imgui in Rust. The rest of the ImGui API is unchanged.