Hi,
Excellent GSoC topic !
I was working last month on testing Blender/Python installation on Aakash Tablet (india), using a modified version of Android…
And i had the same questions at the beginning (as my fellows had): what part of blender we should look at ?
Of course, modeling 3D object on small screen + the touch are not really … just a non-sens for a 3d artist !
but the BGE and the use of the Api can bring a lot of interests !
Not only for games, but for educational purposes, …e.g. for creating sciences animation based on Py codes !!!
Well, for information, the Aakash Tablet is a project of Indian Governement to promote computing over the country, the price is around 1.500Roupies (22Euros). Thousands of these small devices will be distributed to school childrens…
anyway, Blender is just the good tool even without the UI, maybe a minimal one should be fine ! and the portable devices is just at its beginning, no ? let’s see !
hope the best for your dev ! It will be awesome to communicate with blender on touch tablet !!!
bye
If this project is successful it will be a godsend. I think its the most important GSOC projects for blender out of all of them. I’m curious about game logic though. Is the plan to somehow use SL4A or PY4A remote procedure calls to talk back through JSON for game logic or can python run without the need for the PY4A project to go through rpc’s (ultimately java).
Maybe a better way to ask it is if python code is written in BGE, then compiled into and APK, does it rely on rpcs through java or no? It almost seems the Kivy version of python for android would be better for this with respect to being able to write python code for BGE/android/Player.
P.S.
You can try your simple files, but it is tricky. Save them to the phone as /sdcard/test.blend
Android’s Blender player doesn’t choose mode automatically, so you have manually select GLSL when saving the file. Also disable shadings notes except for “Lights” and “Shaders”.
So far the only problem is the lack of double-sided faces support, and the animation not playing all the times (I think it has to with the Logic Bricks I’m using).
vitorbalbio, I planning to support ARMv6, but I need to recompile all libraries first. Probably I will do it in a few weeks when port becomes more mature.
looks great!! I will later test it on my acer iconia a510. It also has a tegra 3 chip. Will it be possible to bundle those in one installation file later?
Alex you rock!