Driver cockpit needed
Driver cockpit needed
Hi Folks,
I am developing remotely controlled vehicle which is equipped with on-board camera and can stream video over WLan. There is control application which shows received video and let the driver control the vehicle. Currently it is possible to drive around with vehicle from anywhere over the internet. In the future (hopefully near future) I am going to organize races with such remotely controlled cars.
For this project I need 3D model of the driver cockpit which looks better then the one I made myself :-) (screenshot is attached). What is necessary from the software point of view is:
- plane to display received video (placed as a texture on the plane)
- steering wheel which is rotated by the program as the user pushes the buttons or rotate attached wheel
- tachometer with rotated arrow to indicate the acceleration (0-100%). Something like this model but fitting in the overall style.
- message plane where different notifications are displayed
All these parts are presented in the attached screenshot (please note - I am not an artist :-) ).
I will be giving a talk about the project on the GStreamer conference this year and will definitely give a credits for the art work. The software is currently very unstable, but I will opensource it around the conference date.
So if someone has time and wish to contribute - please let me know. Then I can provide a little bit more technical details and requirements for the model.
Thank you and regards,
Andrey.
Andrey,
You might find a detailed console in one of these Blender models:
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/category/vehicles/
Thank you very much for the suggestion!
I just walk through relevant models and unfortunately did not found anything which might be useful for my purposes.
To be honest I am also doubt that it would be possible to find exactly what I need because it is not very typical. In particular such combination as tacho/video/message area is rare I guess. Also, most probably, modifications will be required and I just do not have required skills to do that with reasonable quality.
So I am still hope that maybe someone would respond to my request and would like to cooperate with me to create the driver panel I need.
Thank you once again,
Andrey.
I don't know if I have time, but I'd like to hear more of the tech details for the model that you want. Maybe once I see the specs I (or someone else) will feel confident we can do it.
Message from Andrey:
I am glad that you are interested. So here are requested details.
1. I am trying to reach the balance between complexity of the
graphics, software complexity and visual attractiveness. So it should
not be extremely realistic or perfect in all aspects. Otherwise I
would probably never finish the implementation :-) .
2. My application can deal with .obj files. So the result need to be
either .obj file or any other format which is easy to export in .obj.
I would prefer to have it in blender just for the case if it will
requires some minor tweaks later.
3. Currently my obj reader/renderer can not deal with textures. So it
would be nice if the model will looks good without textures. However,
I can add support for textures if necessary.
4. The model is rendered with OpenGL. So some restrictions need to be
taken in account. For example: limited number of light sources (out of
my head - 8), no shadows (I can implement simple shadows if necessary,
but am not keen to do it right now :-) ), etc.
5. As far as I know, .obj format does not contains light sources for
the model, so either simple set of lights should be used so that I can
then add them manually to the OpenGL scene or some sort of trick need
to be done to specify position and properties of the light sources (for
example placing some "placeholder" objects with well defined names to
indicate light positions, etc.)
6. On the model itself, there are four parts which are important for
the application:
* Video plane - simple plane which I will use to place the texture
with video frame on it.
* Steering - some object (does not need to look like a real
steering wheel) which will be rotated by the software when the user
does corresponding actions. It just should be grouped together as one
object. The software will calculate the bounding box and rotate it
around the middle point.
* Acceleration indicator (tacho) - again, it should not necessary
looks like a classical tacho. It just should indicate how much
acceleration is requested by the user (0-100%). The simplest way for
me to dynamically adjust the indicator would be either to have some
object to rotate (like an arrow in tacho) or some object to duplicate
(like a stripe of duplicated bars to grow up and down).
* Message area - a plane where messages will be displayed. This
plane is actually a background. The actual text will probably come a
little bit raised above this background. So from the software
perspective this plane will just indicate the coordinates where to
place the text messages.
All these elements could be seen on the screenshot I've attached
to my initial posting to this thread. If necessary, I can send
the blender and/or corresponding .obj file I am currently using
with all the graphical elements mentioned above
7. Precalculated normals are needed in .obj file. Blender can do it
during export.
8. For some reasons which I do not quite understand, I have some
problems with text message rendering if the model is not big enough
and correspondently not far away on Z axis. That is why my current
model has dimensions of about 3000 units in blender and positioned
far enough from the origin to be completely visible.
Well, I think this is all I can currently think about. Please let me
know if this information is enough for you to make a decision and of
course please feel free to ask further questions.
Regards,
Andrey.