Embroidery Importer

This is a Blender extension that allows you to import files to be used with embroidery machines as curves with optional geometry (thickness) via a bevel or geometry nodes. It also detects and displays the color of your threads.

License

This addon is free to use, including commercially, but if you find it useful please consider supporting my free and open source projects:

Credit and supported file types

This addon relies heavily on pyembroidery and should support the same file formats as that library. You can find the whole list of supported file types in the pyembroidery documentation.

Personally I've only tested it with .pes files which I've created using the Ink/Stitch addon for Inkscape. The pattern shown at the top of this page can be found on Github. Get the example.pes file here and the example.svg here (open using Inkscape with Ink/Stitch addon installed).

How to use

After installation you can find the importer in the file menu under File > Import > Embroidery Import.

Import settings

In the import dialog there are a few settings you can adjust:

Import jump wires

Whether to include jump wires in the imported object. Jump wires are lines that the machine creates when jumping to the next part of your pattern and which you normally remove manually. Not importing them leads to a cleaner look, but will not be completely accurate to the original pattern.

Create material

With this selected a material (using nodes) will be created for the imported object. This material will use the colors of the threads used in the embroidery file.

Create collection

With this enabled all generated curves for your import will be place in a single collection.

Thickness type

There are three options here:

No thickness (curve only)

This will use curves to draw your shape, but will not add any thickness to it. This is useful if you want to use the embroidery as a curve in your scene but not show the actual lines in renders.

Using geometry nodes

This will create a node setup that adds a thickness to the imported curves using a Curve to mesh node with a Curve circle as the profile

Using bevel

This will have a similar effect as the Using geometry nodes option, but will use the bevel property of the curve object to add thickness instead of a geometry node

Thread thickness

This value determines the thickness of the thread in the imported object. Not available when using the `No thickness (curve only) thickness type.

Info on the material and color

Each of the generated curves has a custom attribute called thread_index which corresponds to the color of the thread used in the embroidery file. These colors are all placed in a Color ramp in the material, which is then used to color the curves based on its thread_index attribute.