[Robotics] Summary of my work on Blender for Robotics

[Séverin Lemaignan]

Thanks for all these valuable details.

> - Neither COLLADA 1.5 nor Blender 2.5 are completely stable enough to do
> this.

Hum... not good.

> - I believe that if we really want the full physics and kinematics
> support, then an extra C++ developer may be needed to work on this.

Currently, simulation scenario in MORSE are stored in standard .blend 
files. That's far from perfect (first because it's binary, making it 
cumbersome to track on control version system, then because it's not 
easy to share with other software packages).

As long as I know, there is still no good (ie, at least comprehensive) 
open-source library for Collada. One of the most promissing effort is 
the Assimp toolkit, but developpers there don't seem to be very 
interested in supporting kinematics/physics  either.

> Grouping and Linking/Appending
> ==============================
> In Blender 2.4x a "trick" was used to link objects in the scene that can
> be moved. In 2.5 this is No Longer Possible! The only way to get a
> decent working scene, is by Appending the objects. Saving such files is

It's something we use a lot in MORSE. I let Gilberto comment on the way 
he does that in Blender 2.5.

> View Menu + Snapping
> ====================
> I have made a script that provides easy to use controls that may be
> handy when composing a simulation scene. It is described in the wiki
> http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Robotics:Scripts/viewPanel. It also
> has a "snap" or "drop on ground" function with visual support and can be
> installed as an add-on.

Could you add some screenshots/examples on the wiki?

> Others
> ======
> - Packing Logic Bricks: I have been testing how to save Logic Bricks in
> a config file (using the standard configparser Python class) and
> reloading them. This could come in handy when COLLADA files would be
> used for the objects.

Interesting. I didn't know it was actually possible to store logic brick 
in Python.

Thanks for these efforts!

Séverin
-- 
           Séverin Lemaignan - severin.lemaignan at laas.fr
   [00]    PhD student on Cognitive Robotics
  /|__|\   LAAS-CNRS - RIS group / Technische Uni München - IAS group
    ''     +33561337844 / +498928917780
           http://www.laas.fr/~slemaign