In doing some research for the multi-touch table I’m building, I found some Blender 3D in action using an Arduino micro-controller. Since the Arduino can be programmed with python, it’s easy to interface the board with Blender, which opens up endless possibilities for creating hardware interaction with Blender 3D.
I’m currently using an Arduino with my multi-touch table to control the IR Sensor Matrix, but I started brainstorming for other ideas on how to implement the Arduino board into my project. Simply controlling an array of inferred sensors seemed like such a small task, I figured I should look into ways to utilize it more. Since the table is being designed to allow developers to create multi-touch functionality with Blender (which I’ll cover later), I searched the internet and found this:
Blender with the Arduino: http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1177789589/9
This is truly awesome and something I will look more into later in the project. Some possibilities of this include using a Nintendo Wii controller with the Blender Game Engine, even with accelerometer support. The controller has already had great success with interfacing with the Arduino.
I’ll be talking about multi-touch with Blender 3D very soon, so stay tuned.
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Tom |
I’ve got ZERO experience with programming of any kind, so you tell me if this would be possible.
For Jurassic Park they built “dino input devices” that were essentially stop motion armatures with sensors to allow some of the team to animate the CGI dinos that way. I’ve been trying to find information on this topic for some time with little luck.
So, do you think that the arduino could be used in such a setup? It would allow those unfamiliar with blender or computer animation to rough in animations that could be later refined.
BrianH |
Absolutely. The Arduino is a micro-controller, which is basically a small computer. I’m pretty sure with a little work you could create an animatronic controlled by an Arduino. You could probably write a script that would export an armature animation from Blender that programs the Arduino to match the animation’s movements.
zunze |
Hi,
It is good to see that I’m not the only one interrested in Blender+multitouching. Here is a brief description of my activity.
My first attempt was to use pytuio (to get the multi-touch table event) in a Blender python script. But the performance was not that good and it was rather hard to test if the touches are “on over” 3d object of the scene.
This lead me to the second approach in which I made an unofficial Blender version that is available there: http://forge.lifl.fr/PIRVI/wiki/MTUtils/blenderTUIO
(The sourcecode is opensource I was just to lazy to package it properly so ask me if you want it).
As you said, this permit to make multi-touch (and wiimote with wiiTUIO) application in the Game Engine in a really easy way and with very good performance.
The next task for me will be to experience with multi-touch outside of the game-engine. For this I’m playing into the 2.5 blender version but this is a still work in progress.
Regards,
Damien.