[Opensim-users] Blender as an Opensim client for scene editing

[Toni Alatalo]

Hi,

this is a very early minimal experiment so nothing usable yet, but 
perhaps an interesting idea for users and I'm interested in getting 
feedback on the idea. Blender as a client using LibOMV, a two way live 
connection between Blender and Opensim .. you can move a prim in a 
viewer and it moves in Blender(*), or move an object in Blender and it 
moves immediately on the sim so the same movement is visible for other 
viewers too.

A screenshot and more info, and the blend with the setup and source, at 
http://playsign.fi/engine/BlenderOMV . Was planning to take a video, but 
fraps captures only a single window and didn't have time anymore to test 
other tools, so just a still now which is a bit boring.

Had thought for a long time whether this would work, so was happy to be 
able to test it a bit today :) .. dunno if anything actually useful 
could be made like this, perhaps, at least for basic scene editing 
(placing objects with nicer tools). We'll be probably thinking about 
this and other ways to integrate with Blender, perhaps on the viewer 
side, when work on Realxtend continues in August (in July the team is on 
holiday).

~Toni

(*) On Blender side the change shows only after you activate the window 
triggering a redraw, a well known limitation of old Blender for network 
synching. This will be fixed with the upcoming 2.5 version with the 
rewritten internal event system, later this year. From Blender to 
Opensim the sync is immediate, shows at the same time in Hippo as you 
move the mouse in Blender.