Object Set Show Empty Image Only Axis Aligned

Blender empties can carry an image, and show_empty_image_only_axis_aligned is the flag that hides that image unless the view is looking straight down an axis at it. Object Set Show Empty Image Only Axis Aligned is the setter for that flag. In an avatar pipeline you're rarely animating empties by hand - this is a refinement for the niche case where an empty is standing in for a billboard, a reference, or a sprite you only want to see head-on.

How it works

Another auto-generated setter from bpy.types.Object's properties: it runs setattr(object, "show_empty_image_only_axis_aligned", value) in the embedded bpy instance and returns the same BPY_OBJ. The value input is a BOOLEAN with default false. When true, the empty's image disappears as soon as the viewport rotates away from axis-aligned; swing back square-on and it reappears.

This flag interacts with its two siblings - show_empty_image_orthographic and show_empty_image_perspective - which separately gate whether the image shows in orthographic vs. perspective views. So the full logic is: the image shows only if (a) the current view type is enabled, and (b) the view is axis-aligned when this flag is on. If you enable all three, you're telling Blender "only ever show this image dead-on, in both view types." That's the setup for a face-on reference card or a sprite that must never be seen at an angle.

The inputs

• BPY_OBJ - an empty object, typically from an Object_ empty_add node.
• value - boolean, default false.

Output: the same BPY_OBJ for chaining.

Install & gotchas

Part of the Avatar Graph pack:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/avatechai/avatar-graph-comfyui
cd avatar-graph-comfyui && python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Or ComfyUI Manager → "Avatar Graph". Pack-level gotchas: bpy==3.6.0 requires Python 3.10 (no wheel for 3.11+, so the pack won't import on newer runtimes - conda python=3.10 per the README). First launch auto-downloads the ~2.5 GB SAM ViT-H model and mediapipe landmarker files.

Honest framing: this is one of the pack's most niche setters. If you're not using image-carrying empties at all, skip it entirely - the default false keeps images visible from any angle, which is what you want for the vast majority of avatar graphs. The flags that matter to the workflow are the parenting, naming, and transform setters; these empty-image view flags are for when you specifically use an empty as a reference or sprite. As always, viewport-only, wire it after creation, and the live preview needs --enable-cors-header.