
Real-time 3D visualization of geospatial data with Blender - based2
https://github.com/ptabriz/FOSS4G_workshop
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valine
This is very cool. After a quick skim I noticed this relies on Blender's ops
api. Using bpy.ops is generally considered a bad practice because a lot of the
bpy.ops operators depend on the state of the UI - things like which objects
are selected and which object interaction mode is active. The alternative to
bpy.ops is to write scripts that manipulate the datablocks directly. Using
bpy.ops can save a lot of time as it maps more cleanly to the GUI, but if you
use it too much things can spiral out of control. Its just something to be
aware of.

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th0ma5
The fact the scripting seems to be on top of the GUI state rather than the
underlying scene graph is what turns me off to Blender scripting.

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valine
You can access the underlying datablocks. The blender python api basically
give you access to everything, so it's up to you if you want a script that's
lower level or simply fires off GUI events.

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ingenieroariel
This is quite interesting, does anyone know if Blender can work with particles
too or is it only 3d polygons?

Also, if the original poster is reading this: I am at foss4g with a 360 gopro
camera rig, perhaps we can go shoot some high fps immersive video of old
Harvard buildings and brainstorm about how to get that into Blender

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wlesieutre
It can do particles:
[https://docs.blender.org/manual/ko/dev/physics/particles/int...](https://docs.blender.org/manual/ko/dev/physics/particles/introduction.html)

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ingenieroariel
Could Blender be used as a lidar point cloud annotation tool?

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blensor
Sorry for the self advertisement, but I think that it fits really well.

If you are thinking about creating annotated point clouds you could use our
software (also based on blender):

[http://www.blensor.org/](http://www.blensor.org/)

It virtually scans scenes and can store the id of the scanned object for each
individual point in the point cloud.

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jcims
I'm envisioning this as a source for streams of synthetic point cloud data.

Any idea if it can simulate specific Velodyne products? Just wondering if it
could be used to compare efficacy of one of the pucks vs the larger kit for a
specific use case. E.g. hang a virtual LIDAR off a virtual UAV and fly over a
simulated environment.

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blensor
This was the reason why we initially started this project. This was back when
the HDL-64E cost around $72k. It supports the LIDAR with 64 and 32 lasers, but
it also has a generic mode where you can set an arbitrary configuration of
lasers (albeit a bit crude)

But it is now also used by other researchers to create synthetic point clouds
for deep learning.

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stuntkite
My girlfriend and I have been working on a startup for the last year to do
realtime 3D geospatial vis on the web and mobile with a focus on AR.

This is a really cool approach! I maybe have to fork to add in support for our
data mixing platform.

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throwaway2016a
I had no idea Blender could even do this. Very cool.

Although like using blender from the UI, reading through the code I feel like
there is probably a large learning curve here.

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Tistel
I have been doing blender scripting for work for the past few days only. You
can pick it up pretty quick because it has a nice feature: there is a
scripting screen/mode and as you do the manual mouse/keyboard steps with the
normal UI there is a little window that prints out the equivalent python. So
when you want to do a script for task X you just do it once manually and cut
and past the commands into your script. Then you have to bang it into shape. I
have been really impressed with blender.

~~~
Qantourisc
I don't think it's the equivalent, I suspect it's the exact code being ran.

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alexkowel
It's cool they used Blend4Web engine to show the model on the internet.
Really, WebGL is the future of interactive 3D.

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annerajb
Hmm this seems really useful for rendering lidar data points in a 3d mesh/map.

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sanjeetsuhag
This is amazing. Blender truly has infinite potential.

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Boothroid
Very nice.

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s73ver_
I'm really glad they went into the detail they did on the landing page on
Github. But, not knowing exactly what kind of diagrams/visualizations can be
done, it took quite a while to find an example of what they were talking
about. The very first thing I should have seen there should be examples of
output that can be produced.

