Update: I got the basics working! see the last code block
I’m inspired by this guy to make a camera mover for VR for Blender:
I would like to move a camera via python in realtime , without playing the timeline. I would like to update it every time the screen refreshes or more than that. Is there:
A) a way to make a app.handler.on_window_redraw() ,
2) a way to kick of a python script asynchronously so the Blender UI doesn’t have to wait on the script to complete?
Here is my test code that will break the GUI - you have to CTRL+C on a mac/linux or close the gui on windows (or just wait 5 minutes )
import bpy
# select camera
import time
import math
camera = bpy.data.objects['Camera']
i = 0
while i < 100000:
x= time.time()
print(going on and on...)
camera.location =(math.sin(10*x),camera.location[1], camera.location[2])
i +=1
I want a stream similar to websockets to change the location of the object.
I could do a client -server , but this also freezes blender.
I need a stream of information - location and rotation - to be handled by blender.
Do I need to go into C++ and modify source/ submit a patch for this?
I was thinking about doing python Popen, but it just does command line parameters and I’m stuck with 2 open blender apps trying to communicate with eachother - which is another problem I have that I do not know if python can solve.
Edit1:
I found modal timer operators. https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/15670/send-instructions-to-blender-from-external-application
and got the basics working here - the camera updates in realtime without freezing :
import bpy
import os.path
import time
import math
class ModalTimerOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
"""Operator which runs its self from a timer"""
bl_idname = "wm.modal_timer_operator"
bl_label = "Modal Timer Operator"
_timer = None
def modal(self, context, event):
if event.type == 'TIMER':
camera = bpy.data.objects['Camera']
x= time.time()
camera.location =(math.sin(10*x),camera.location[1], camera.location[2])
return {'PASS_THROUGH'}
def execute(self, context):
wm = context.window_manager
self._timer = wm.event_timer_add(.01, context.window)
wm.modal_handler_add(self)
return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}
def cancel(self, context):
wm = context.window_manager
wm.event_timer_remove(self._timer)
print('timer removed')
def register():
bpy.utils.register_class(ModalTimerOperator)
def unregister():
bpy.utils.unregister_class(ModalTimerOperator)
if __name__ == "__main__":
register()
# test call
bpy.ops.wm.modal_timer_operator()
Now I would like to communicate through some sort of message passing - ZeroMQ I heard is what leap motion uses .
Perhaps I don’t have to ?
this prints out data to python, I just have to read it in my code.
It looks like I will need pip :
So once I get a steamVR headset , and intstall PIP, this thing should read location/rotation of the headset.
I might use a wii remote until I can get ahold of a headset - it will give rotation data I think
I was thinking about serial - can I get serial data r/w ?
I want to get basics working first - so the internal pyopenvr will do for now.
Next iteration:
- Location / Rotation coming from somewhere
