# How can I change blender´s 2.78 splash screen?

I´m following this guide: https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Building_Blender/Windows/msvc/CMake and so I got all the files for blender and I´m ready to change the splash screen on Blender 2.78a

But on the 2.78 dependencies, there´s no file "datatoc.py", instead there´s a "ctodata.py" file. So when I run the python command:

python ctodata.py splash.png


I get error: Traceback (most recent call last): File "ctodata.py", line 44, in data = fpin.read().rsplit("{")[-1].split("}")[0] File "C:\Python\Python35\lib\encodings\cp1252.py", line 23, in decode return codecs.charmap_decode(input,self.errors,decoding_table)[0] UnicodeDecodeError: 'charmap' codec can't decode byte 0x9d in position 968: char acter maps to

Could someone help me out on how to change the splash screen on Blender 2.78a, please? Thanks.

• ctodata.py cannot work. You need datatoc.py . The last version with datatoc.py included is 2.76b. Try grab it from there. The source code files of older versions can be found here: download.blender.org/source - I don't know the reason why it is not longer included. It should, you still need it. Could be by accident. Or intended for unknown reasons. Maybe somebody could ask the developers here. – Tiles Nov 14 '16 at 9:44
• Hm, i just found the commit where it was deleted. But no explanation why it was removed. Just that it is unused developer.blender.org/… – Tiles Nov 14 '16 at 10:12
• @Tiles - Just a guess. It might got removed because Blender was "rebranded" and "repackaged" several times in the past by some people who then sold it to unaware customers. – metaphor_set Nov 14 '16 at 10:19
• @metaphor_set, everything is possible, but this makes imho no sense. And would be illegal against the gnu gpl 2 and 3, which forbids obfuscations. Blender is open source. And so people should be able to modify the source code. Including splash screen and icons. And it's also really easy to grab the datatoc.py file from previous versions. So i still wonder why it was removed. - I haven't compiled newer versions yet though. Is there a new way to create the icons and splash screen c files now? Is it now done internally without the datatoc.py file? – Tiles Nov 14 '16 at 10:29
• @Tiles - Oh, it does make sense. At least to people who don't care about what the GNU General Public license says. Have a seat, take a look: blender.org/press/re-branding-blender – metaphor_set Nov 14 '16 at 11:58