Blender VR

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Blender VR is a software that allows Blender to render on Virtual Reality Devices and Virtual Reality Platforms.

Introduction

Blender VR is an open source, VR framework that is built on top of the Blender Game Engine (BGE). It is an adaptation of Blender Game Engine to support VR HMDs and external rendering modality engines. Blender VR allows the user to run BGE on any Virtual Reality architecture (N host – K screens). The software supports adaptive stereoscopy and communication protocols such as VRPN and OSC.

Blender VR and BGM are free, open source software that are available for download. The software is governed by the CeCILL license under French law and abides by all the rules pertaining to free distribution of software. The goal of the project is to offer a cross-platform solution for virtual reality applications that utilize the Blender environment to create quality interactive scenes.

Features

Blender is the first 3D tool that can integrate VR and a full stereographic pipeline into the regular 3D workflow. Blender VR is aimed at Video Walls, Oculus, CAVE and other VR display types. Anything created by the user using Blender is the sole property of the user. All the images, movie files or artwork created, including the ‘.blend’ files are the property of the user. Unlike other trial or educational versions of different software, Blender can be used commercially by artists, animators or studios to create their works.

The number of blenders running are equal to the number of screens in the virtual environment. This means that there can be several blender running on a single computer. there is SMART-I² that corresponds to all four screens (2 physical screens times 2, 1 stereoscopic on each screen) are rendered by the same computer.

Working with Blender VR

The interface of Blender VR is a GUI (Graphical User Interface) and is known as the console. The console is run by the user and the virtual environment is run by the blenderplayer. The console uses PySide but cannot import "bge" python module. the blenderplayer can import the module. The console allows the user to manually set the configuration file, simulation file and active screen set. All the relevant information is stored in the internal data store path and remains active across different running until it is changed via the GUI. The user can use the "run" feature to start/stop the simulation after defining all required parameters in the Blender VR console.

About the company

Blender VR is created and developed by LIMSI/CNRI in Orsay, France. The company encourages hackers and developers to setup a Development environment and then go deeper in the project source code to modify or enhance the software for their purposes.