This is my first post at this site. I’m just starting to get into blender, and open source 3d in general. I’m a software engineer who is setting out on a private consulting biz (gave my two weeks notice yesterday!), and I’m also planning to contribute to blender – I’m going to write a basic match-mover (like Maya Live) for blender. So that’s who I am.
I’m very excited by blender, and plan to use it in my work (3d programming and consulting, architectural renderings, impact studies, machine vision), and I’m also very interested in other 3d open source initiatives. One that has me massively geeked is openCASCADE.org – an LGPL toolkit for CAD/CAM, and at first glance it looks very mature and powerful.
Some questions:
Does anyone have any experience with it?
How do the modelling capabilities of Blender compare with open CASCADE?
welcome to elYsiun. Glad to hear you’re writing a matchmover. It’s dangerous to say “I’m doing…” on this forum though, people will hang you if you give up
never heard of cascade before, but you can’t compare blender to a Cad/Cam program at the moment, although some people are writing a cad script so you can use blender for cad.
Heh, good point, though that’s part of the plan – if I start telling people about it, I have to do it
I actually have working point-tracker code and a functioning matchmover. A bit of a hack, written for a particular project I have on the go, but it works.
Integrating it into Blender is quite another matter. Blender is marvellous, but the interface is a bit eccentric, so it the learning curve for a developer just coming on board is steepish. And of course, finding time is always a challenge.
I know that CAD and presentation-oriented like blender software are different species. I am really interested in possible cross-pollination between different open source projects, though, and was wondering if there were opportunities to borrow certain functionalities from open CASCADE, which seems to have state of the art modelling capabilities.
Foof. Sorry if I got any hopes up about a marriage blender and openCASCADE, but I downloaded the code for openCASCADE, and it is HUGE – 14,600 source files. So integration is unrealistic, I think. Blender is a lean tool, and openCASCADE is a behemoth. It’d be the marriage of a gazelle and an elephant.
There may be some features that are pillage-able, though, and I’m definitely going to keep my eye on openCASCADE developments
if i understand well, opencascade is a toolkit, not a full appl?
from the few shots i saw on the site, it looks very powerfull but blender surely doesn’t need all that. Cause it seems to cover an extremly large area… from modelling to other things as aerodynamism or other stuff like that.
However, I know of a few people who would really enjoy CAD functions. Could cascade be used to extend blender’s parametric modelling (maybe the wrong term for “modelling with functions”, i.e. NURBS ?)
Or could nurbana do the trick?
What do you think? I really like nurbs… unfortunately, Blender’s not very confortable with them… hope
Oh, BTW, i’m not trying to push anybody into the code… we all have alternate lives
Actually, the NURBS thing was part of the impetus for exploring the whole open CASCADE thing. I was aware that Blender is missing a few modelling functions (e.g., boolean operations on NURBS), and I thought maybe it would possible to plunder the open CASCADE code for the missing operations. It may still be a possibility, but depends a lot on how the open CASCADE code is structured (i.e., whether you could excise a small subset of functionality without dragging a ton of dependencies with it).
I’m also getting way ahead of myself, because I already have a blender project under way – the match-mover I mentioned in the original post. But even before that, I’m just trying to get familiar with the code base, and basic user operations. Gimme a month or two, and then I’ll be able to talk with a bit more authority, and less wild speculation, about adding CAD functionality to blender.
The project above has been on snooze for months as the originating team has been more active on this little gem: http://www.makehuman.org/
I’ve been slowly increasing my Python knowledge so as to be useful toward a marriage of Blender & CAD. Unfortunately, the bulk of my programming [read: scripting] experience is in AutoLISP – my background is primarily in architecture and field engineering.
Here’s my ICQ ID: ICQ# 237572847
Where are you based? What is your experience? Any ideas on how to build interest and momentum? I’ve considered going back to school and attempting to make this my Masters’ Thesis but I’m not sure if thats possible…
Welcome! Let me say any addtitions that you can make to Blender will be appreciated by all and that I too am very excited about the match mover that you are currently working on. Looking forward to see more from you on this.