Load texture image from existing Image object in Python

Question

I'm working on Python script to apply textures to objects. I need to load an image that was created using PIL via img_from_array = Image.fromarray(ARRAY). Is it possible?

Answer 1

EDIT: From a comment on the answer, it is clear that one more step is needed. EDIT 2: From another comment, there's apparently a better pil_to_image function.

Since you are starting from a PIL image, you need to convert the image to a Blender image. To do that, see this answer from which I take this function and modified it according to comments on this answer.

def pil_to_image(pil_image, name='NewImage', alpha=False):
    '''
    PIL image pixels is 2D array of byte tuple (when mode is 'RGB', 'RGBA') or byte (when mode is 'L')
    bpy image pixels is flat array of normalized values in RGBA order
    '''
    now = time.time()
    # setup PIL image conversion
    width = pil_image.width
    height = pil_image.height
    byte_to_normalized = 1.0 / 255.0
    # create new image
    bpy_image = bpy.data.images.new(name, width=width, height=height, alpha=alpha)
# convert Image 'L' to 'RGBA', normalize then flatten 
bpy_image.pixels.foreach_set((np.asarray(pil_image.convert('RGBA'),
                                         dtype=np.float32)
                              * byte_to_normalized).ravel())
bpy_image.pack()
print("pil_to_image completed in",time.time() - now,"s")
return bpy_image

Once you've done that, the key is that images are stored in bpy.data.images and that you use them in texture images by assigning the image to a field in the texture.

Given your comment and the above function you need something like

bpy_image = pil_to_image(img_from_array, name=WHATEVER_NAME_YOU_WANT)

to perform that conversion

Here's an example that adds the image created above to the active object. It's a bit of overkill, as it creates the material. It assumes the object has no materials yet, so the new material will go into slot 0 and be applied to the entire object by default. It also assumes you want to be able to map UV coordinates for the texture.

If you have an existing material you need to add an image texture and link it to the shader.

object = bpy.context.active_object
material = bpy.data.materials.new(name=MATERIAL_NAME)
object.data.materials.append(material)
material.use_nodes = True
tree = material.node_tree
nodes = tree.nodes
texcord = nodes.new('ShaderNodeTexCoord')
mapping = nodes.new('ShaderNodeMapping')
teximage = nodes.new("ShaderNodeTexImage")
bsdf = nodes["Principled BSDF"]
tree.links.new(texcord.outputs[2], mapping.inputs[0])
tree.links.new(mapping.outputs[0], teximage.inputs[0])
tree.links.new(teximage.outputs[0], bsdf.inputs[0])
teximage.image = bpy_image