Blender and its many instruments

An one hour introduction to Blender as a research tool

Mike Pan July 2010 today

• Morning: – Blender and its many instruments (Mike Pan) – Blender Game Engine for protein motion (Monica Zoppè) – Expanding Blender with Python (Vincenzo Di Somma)

• Afternoon – We move to the computer lab – Come with questions and we will try to answer them • or – See how we used Blender for our project • or – Step-by-step introductory tutorial on Blender basics me

• Studied in Vancouver, Canada

• Started using Blender 7 years ago

• Worked for 2 years at my university on a marine visualization project

• Came to CNR this year to work on a biochemical visualization project what is blender

• A complete 3D modeling and animation software package – like Autodesk Maya | Softimage | 3ds Max • Has a built-in game engine – Suitable for making interactive applications • Has built-in physics solvers for fluid, rigid body, soft body, etc – But these are tailored towards visual appeal, not physical accuracy • Has a very powerful scripting interface using Python – Makes automation possible, and extends the ability of Blender

• Open-source; cross-platform; light-weight; 32/64bit

Blender as an art-making tool gallery

http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/gallery/art-gallery/ Blender as a research tool applications

• Using Blender to visualize data from the FDS (Fire Dynamics Simulator) – The 3D visualization of flames and smoke from simulated fires can be profitably used for fire risk communication to civilians, fire training, and generally in all those situations in which the correctness of the visualization of the risk is mandatory.

Collaboration between The Corpo Nazionale dei Vigili del Fuoco, the Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell Innovazione dell Universita del Salento, and Politecnico di Torino.

• Improving tunnel and road safety through simulations – The [institute] develops and builds up a driving simulator to show students the effects of poor or wrong road-design. Amongst other reasons the ISAC decided to use Blender to realize this project because of the build-in game-engine

Institute of Road and Traffic Engineering Aachen (Institut für Straßenwesen Aachen) applications

• Creating immersive worlds using the Blender Game Engine – Extending the traditional keyboard and mouse interface, this experimental game usesae hardware called VarioPort and it provides raw physiological data from different channels such as ECG, EDA and a respiration belt. Face recognition is done using a simple webcam. Python is used to interface between the sensors and Blender

Centre for Knowledge and Innovation Research, Helsinki School of Economics

• Visualizing cosmic rays – Cosmic Sensation is an exhibit that translates the cosmic particles detected by sensor installations to realtime graphics and sound, and then projected onto a dome screen.

Cosmic Sensation - Radboud University Nijmegen and the Dutch Academic Year Award Foundation, Netherlands why visualize? why visualize? artist driven workflow

Realtime (24+ frames per second)

Game 3D scene Game Logic

Non-realtime

Image or 3D scene Render Video data driven workflow

Realtime (24+ frames per second)

Game 3D scene Game Logic

Non-realtime

Image or 3D scene Render Video game logic in blender

Sensor1

Action

Sensor2 python

• Blender has very complete Python language support. • API* allows access to all part of your blender scene • API* allows access to nearly all part of the Blender application • Python is the ‘glue’ that will hold together your project • Python is an extremly easy to learn language, designed with readability and minimalism in mind.

API = Application Programming Interface case study – marine visualization

• Started at University of British Columbia, Canada in 2008, as a 2 year long project

• A realtime underwater visualization using Blender’s game engine that is driven by real scientific data.

• Two deliverables:

– A 5 minutes CG documentary film

– A realtime interactive application demo marine visualization – the good

• Blender sits at the perfect layer of abstraction for quickly producing visualizations - not too generalized, not too specific. Perfect for experimenting.

• Advanced scripting support

• Integration

• Modeling, animation, scripting, running the game is all in one interface marine visualization - problems

• For the realtime application, no game engine can process the amount of object we need fast enough (Thousands of fishes)

• Used many video-game industry tricks to trade-off quality for performance • Inherit bias in visualization

• Any data representation requires interpretation, which introduces bias case study - bioblender new in 2.5

• Blender 2.5 is a complete re-write of Blender 2.4x • Much more intuitive user interface • Upgraded tools and features • Multithreaded code kernel and computing engine • New Python API • Beta version is available today • The final version is to be released by the end of summer

This is a good time to start using Blender! blender ecosystem

• Still relatively small, but growing fast

• Very actively developed and maintained

• About 50 up-to-date English books and videos in circulation

– At least 5 more coming by the end of 2010

• Huge amount of internet resources

• Annual Blender Conference in the Netherland in October

– 3 days, 200+ attendees, 40+ talks Thank You.