[Radiance-general] Blender

[Kirk Thibault]

Jack,

See Thomas's comments below.  ;-)

I too see Blender as being a powerful complement to Radiance because  
of the Python API, giving the Radiance end-user of Blender the  
ability to extend Blender to suit the needs of Radiance.  It appears  
that Thomas has some pretty impressive goals for integrating Blender  
and Radiance even more tightly than I was imagining, but his ideas  
fit exactly my personal opinion of what I picture Radiance to be - a  
collection of tools that one can link together in endless  
combinations to achieve the specific task at hand.  The open and  
Python-scriptable nature of Blender makes this a natural extension of  
the Radiance model.

Blender's modeling metaphor and control layout takes a little getting  
used to but it is customizable, so if you are used to using the left  
or right or middle mouse button to do certain things, etc. all that  
is configurable.  I am not a CAD user, so I cannot compare the two to  
your level of detail, however, it is fairly robust as a modeler,  
supporting NURBS and Subd's, etc.  I suppose it depends on what you  
are looking for it to do.  It may be that Blender is a middle step in  
workflow that demands the precision of CAD and the flexibility to  
condition that CAD output into something more Radiance friendly and  
customizable.  As Thomas mentioned, it would make the perfect "set  
up" tool - complex modeling in CAD, scene set-up, lighting and  
material selection, etc. in Blender and tweaking, crunching and  
analysis with Radiance's computing and analysis tools.  You can;t  
beat the price.

I use Lightwave and Blender, mostly because I like trying the same  
thing in different ways to see how each app handles my solutions.

Good luck!

kirk


On Feb 20, 2006, at 5:02 PM, Thomas Bleicher wrote:

>
> On 20.02.2006, at 21:17, Jack de Valpine wrote:
>
>> While you guys (Thomas and Kirk) are on the topic. Would you mind
>> sharing your opinions on the capabilities of Blender as a modeling
>> tool and exporting to Radiance? How would you compare it to something
>> like Autocad (if you have the experience).
>
> I would not recommend Blender to people new to 3D graphics. It's
> interface is and will ever be very 'unique'. Now there are good
> guides available (even for download, see "Blender 2.3 Guide" at
>
> http://www.blender.org/cms/Documentation.628.0.html
>
> ) to help you get over the first shock but Blender keeps changing
> and the documentation unfortunately not or not as fast (some
> features presented in the Guide are not available in the current
> 2.41 version or have been moved or renamed).
>
> Compared to $$$$ software like 3D Studio MAX you see and feel that
> it's a community project. Some features that could be considered
> essential are not available or very limited (i.e. solid modeling).
> Integration or exchange with other commercial applications (AutoCAD)
> is on the basis of community maintained Python scripts.
>
> Now, why bother with Blender?
>
> Compared to other open source 3D apps it _is_ very powerful and
> has a lot of feature: 3D editing, animation, rendering, sequence
> (video) editing, game engine and others.
>
> Blender can deal with large data sets and it has import/export
> to DXF, OBJ and a lot of other formats. The support may be basic
> sometimes but even commercial applications may only provide a
> small subset of the DXF format.
>
> The GUI is "dated" by todays standards but very flexible. You
> can subdivide and define your layout as you like and store it
> for later access (one layout for editing, one for export, etc.).
>
> The big advantage from my point of view is the Python scripting
> API. Blender makes nearly the complete OpenGL commands available
> for scripts which can be used to present and display arbitrary
> data to the user (like I do in the GUI toolkit/brad interface
> with 3D graphs). You have to do a lot of programming to get
> something suitable for complex tasks but I have done it and we
> now can built on this with future Radiance export scripts.
>
> Whenever Blender's own features are not enough you can use the
> Python Standard Library and other Python modules to extend the
> functionality (database access, networking, PDF output etc.).
>
>
> WRT Radiance I think Blender has some features that make it
> a perfect scene setup tool:
>
> - separate entities for object instances and object data
>   (data = *.rad file; instance = "!xform ..." of this file)
>
> - hierarchical object relations
>   (nested "!xform ..." commands in Radiance)
>
> - multiple scenes in one file with shared data
>   (scene "building", scene "office day", scene "office night")
>
> - different object types for objects(mesh), camera, lamps
>
> - DXF import, grid/object snap and numeric input for editing
>
>
> Some day in the (near) future I hope to be able to:
>
>  1) load polygon data from DXF into Blender
>  2) assign materials from library to polygon objects
>  3) add lamps as desired, assign luminaire data to lamps
>     get lampdata (*.ies, *.ltd) from network db or local files
>  4) define viewpoints and animation for walkthroughs
>  5) define fields/grids for rtrace calculations
>  6) set up object animation (i.e. moveable blinds)
>  7) set up sky settings and animations
>     based on gensky, gendaylit or HDR images
>  8) set preprocess options like mkillum etc.
>  9) check scene setup in rvu
> 10) export to manually editable Radiance scene input for
>     rad, ranimate, make or our own control scripts
> 11) upload export to render daemon on BIG server
> 12) follow render process in process monitor while editing
> 13) load images and rtrace results for visualization/evaluation
> 14) combine
>      * scene images (rpict or Blender)
>      * scene stats (materials, number and type of lamps, etc)
>      * rtrace results (table, graphs)
>      * evaluation (graphs again, falsecolor, contour images)
>     to project reports
> 15) export scene to alternate "nice picture" renderer like
>     YafRay for visualization if Radiance is not enough
> 16) die late, health, happy and rich ;)
>
>
> At least that was the plan.
>
> Thomas
>
>
>
>
>
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