Rendering¶

Rendering is the art of converting a 3d model to a good looking 2d picture or video.

Blender can be used for world-class rendering. It is completely free and can be obtained from blender

Once blender is installed a scene can be exported to blender directly by pressing the cute blender icon:

present

Animations

When an animation is running then pressing the blender button will export the animation. Otherwise it will export the view.

The Base Scene¶

The Blender model starts with the blender base model that is included with DAVE.

By default this is a file called “base ocean.blend” which is located in the highest resource path.

The base scene contains

the sea,
the sky,
a material called “Cable” which is used for exported cables and
a material called “Ocean” which is used for exported waves

It is possible to start with another base scene. This can be changed by either:

passing another file-name as argument to the create_blend or create_blend_and_open functions
changing the BLENDER_BASE_SCENE variable (defined in settings.py)

Assets¶

All visuals are exported to Blender. All visuals in DAVE are either .obj or .stl files.

During the export DAVE looks for a file with the same name but with the .blend extension. If such a file is found through the resources system then that file is imported. If such a file is not found then the .obj or .stl is used.

This means that for a workflow with a nicely rendered result it is advised to

create your visuals in blender
apply all transforms by hitting A (select all) and then Ctrl+A –> All Transforms
keep the high resolution blender file with shaders, textures, etc. somewhere in a resource path
export a lower resolution .obj for use in DAVE. Use Y forward and Z up during export.

Blog

Blog post : meshing with blender

Blender tutorial¶

The blender tutorial from the official blender website.