Blender On The Pandora

[BenTolputt]

OK, I was browsing through the UMPC Software thread which outlines applications that people would like to see ported to the Pandora console and I noticed some ridicule about porting Blender.

While I hadn't really put much thought into a Blender port (aside from a quick "that'd be kinda cool"); the actual fervour with which someone actually derided the idea got me thinking. The results of my thoughts are presented below for further ridicule

I've been in development for ten years now, a not insignificant percentage of this time with people from the graphics & "creative" industries. There was one guy I knew in the graphics industry who had one of those gaming keyboards with an add one section making game related keys easy to access (z-board, I think it was) who was an absolute MASTER in Maya with this thing through customised hot keys and his use of a small Wacom tablet.

Recalling this guy's ability to use his program of choice through a better inout interface got me thinking how cool it would be to have the same on Pandora. Just yesterday I was browsing through some new concept art threads on one of the art forums I visit regularly where one guy showed some stuff he sketched on the DS (using an app called "Colors" I think it was). Now with the Pandora console, there is an opportunity here to see what can be done with the extended controls we have available.

Think about it, instead of just a mouse & keyboard, we have a keyboard, dual analogue controls, a directional pad, two shoulder buttons, four "action" buttons, and a touch screen for input. And all this when the Blender development team are restructuring the source code to have customisable input options. This strikes me as an fortunate coincidence that could (should?) be taken advantage of...

The opportunities that arise are no insignificant. Just a few I can see are:

• Portable 3D Asset Development: The benefits of being able to develop 3D graphics assets on the go are the same as for being able to develop 2D graphics assets, documents, etc. It would be cool to do something other than just play games on my 4+ flights to/from the other side of the Australian continent!
• Co-operative Graphics Development: Pandora has built-in WiFi, Blender has a built-in "Verse" software component for the co-operative development of assets in the Blender application. Put the two together and you could be editing assets in the cafe ono your Pandora whilst working with artists back in the office (or on the other side of the world for that matter). Hell, an ad-hoc / mesh network would allow for "moshing" with other artists anywhere you meet up (yeah, I know that is tenuous given the low level of Pandoras world-wide, but a cool thought nonetheless).
• New / Innovative Graphics Editing: Given the input interfaces, there could be new / innovative methods of creating / editing 3D content as artists get grips with the Pandora unit. There are a few things I think would be cool given the input options, but I'm sure smarter &/or more creative people than I could really come up with interesting workflows given the options Pandora has.
• Built-in Indie Game Development: Blender comes with a built-in game engine & game development tools. Port Blender to Pandora and the game engine comes along with it. The idea of building / editing indie games whilst on the handset is something I think could grab the imaginations of enough homebrew/indie developers to actually make the thing a success!

Of course, there are downsides to the idea that bear mentioning. The ones I can think of are as follows:

• Graphics Card Limitations: Of course, while Blender only uses OpenGL as it's graphics library, I've never tried it on low-end cards. While there is (currently) nothing too advanced in the way it uses OpenGL for the interface, I bet there would probably be features that need to be tweaked &/or worked around in order to get it working on the Pandora's GPU.
• Memory Limitiations: Blender, whilst nowhere near the worst thing I have used in terms of memory consumption, is not a "lean, mean, memory conservative machine". With only 128MB of memory usable for the device (including the underlying OS), there are features in the current Blender that simply could not be used. For example, the fluids & particle simulations would probably just have to be scrapped for a Pandora port.
• Critical Mass Issues: Like everything in IT, there needs to be a critical mass of users before a project "takes off" in terms of development & "global visibility". With only 3000 Pandora units worldwide (and given the small percentage of these owned by an "artist"), it is unlikely that "Pandora-Blender" would be taking the world by storm anytime soon. On the other hand, Blender got a MAJOR boost by the open projects embarked on using the application ("Elephant's Dream", "Peach" aka "Big Buck Bunny", "Apricot" aka "Big Buck Bunny the Game", etc). Perhaps a "Pandora-Blender" would be the kind of project that raises interest in Pandora beyond the inde/homebrew/emulator crowd...
• Storage Issues: Pandora is an "SD Card" machine with limited (no?) storage in the device itself. This is a "Good Thing" in my mind, but poses an interesting dilemma when considering applications with the purpose of opening, editing, and saving files (be theyn 3D assets, spreadsheets, or chat-logs). My experience with SD cards is they're fine for the "read-only" or "write rarely" case, not so good for the "write often" which is lilkely for ANY application where you want to save the results of your work. Soemthing to consider when talking about the Pandora as UMPC (regardless of Blender portage).

What are your thoughts?

--BenT

 

[plopperz]

I'd like to have it just for something to fiddle around with.
All I can think is, why not? It wouldn't hurt the Pandora to have it.

 

[PoisonedV]

You already know my thoughts, seeing as how I am the 'big meany poo' you talked about up there.

 

[BenTolputt]

QUOTE
...big meany poo...
Not exactly how I said it... I mentioned someone ridiculed the notion (which you did), but made no judgements on the opinion or the poster.

That said, people reading this thread may not have read or might not recall your particular thoughts, so please repeat them here where they can be discussed outside the "application wish list" thread.

--BenT

 

[Chip]

You're missing the number one reason why Blender and similarly complex programs are impractical on Pandora - screen size. Screen resolution is the only minimum system requirement that Pandora doesn't meet (the recommended rez is 1920x1200!), and when you take into account the near-microscopic dot pitch of the Pandora display, it goes even farther into the realm of improbable. Here is one of the screenshots from the Blender site squished down to 800x480:

Now, as limiting as that is, try to imagine that image on the Pandora's screen, which is about half that size (depending on your monitor). Better yet, here it is again at approximately Pandora dimensions (3.6"x2.2"):

While I have no personal experience with 3D modeling, those screenshots certainly indicate that there are a lot of tools and options that the user needs to access to create much of anything. There simply isn't enough room to fit it all on the Pandora's display. Imagine you're trying to work on that second image with a stylus. You would be constantly zooming in and out to select the correct point. You would have to close all but the most important tool windows. The window that was open would have to be significantly larger to accommodate legible text, which would shrink your workspace even more.

It's a nice thought, but I don't see how anybody could get any real 3D work done with Pandora's small screen. And that's not even taking all the other cons into account.

 

[plopperz]

Didn't somebody say that they had it running fine on their N800?
There must be a version designed for mobiles and lower resolution screens.

EDIT: Yup, there's one for Windows Mobile.

 

[yosh64]

hey

Ya know ya can zoom in on all the tabs in Blender , and when it comes to modelling or whatever alot is done with shortcut keys and such which I guess would have to be remapped.

But yea, I'm sure it would be possible to port, but not sure how practical it would be to use.

edit
Just out of interest I quickly fired up blender and resized the window to something around the physical size of the pandora screen, and it is quite usable. You can actually drag (scroll through) the menus by pressing the middle button. It's a little tricky to model with the small screen, but still quite usable.

cyas

 

[BenTolputt]

Whilst you have a good point - you do exaggerate it somewhat with your choice of screenshot. Blender has the (often used) capability of moving between different layouts, not to mention that all panels have zoom & pan capabilities. The screenshot you show has animation curves, an editing window, material properties, and the track/key view all in the same shot. Whilst making for a nice screenshot - it is not a useful layout when actually editing a scene/object.

For example, a more applicable screenshot would be:

Which when resized comes out looking like:

The buttons are more accessible (though still not perfect), and the screen divided evenly between editing & controls. A more applicable screenshot for editing purposes is:

This is because, in general, when editing the button panels are minimized/hidden and one uses hotkeys and/or the "pop-up" menu.

Another important thing to recall is that (as I mentioned), Blender is currently refactoring the code base to allow for customised layout & input interfaces. As such, you could simply have an editing window for the primary interface (with the optional "advanced button panels" to slide in/out from the side) and (depending on the task at hand) have common operations tied to the accessible shoulder pads & action buttons (X/Y/A/B). Combined with a pop-up menu (as shown) and the touchscreen - I think it could be useful, though by no means more powerful than the desktop!

I'm not saying that "Pandora Blender" would be a replacement for "Desktop Blender", but an interesting, useful, & portable subset/add-on to it. Just like Outlook on Windows Mobile devices, and the applications on Blackberry units, the point isn't to replace but to complement and extend the existing platforms.

--BenT

 

[Game_over]

Here is where that magical word comes into play again.....

-----Optimization-------

This is the number one problem with peoples perceptions on here, with porting software to the Pandora. It's kinda common (but not so common) sense actually. All ports of something is optimized to get it to work on something. Therefore it should be common knowledge that of course the size won't work for it. The point of a port is to be able to utilize as much of the same functions and features, as possible on a completely different platform; it's almost never aesthetically.

Hope I didn't sound like an ass or anything, just see BenT's point and agree with his thoughts about it.

 

[hessiess]

one problem would be that absolutely everything is drawn with OpenGL, so the entire drawing code would need re-writin using OpenGL-ES. Also it is imposable to remap the keybord shortcuts without editing the source. I haven't looked into the code much, so don't know how hard this would be. also I expect that most of the features would be unusable on such a slow CPU, some are slow on a quad!.
Wouldn't porting a simpler application like wings be more advantages?

 

[Arialia]

I agree with you Bent

it would be very great to have a Pandora Blender.

Why? because actually it is a little difficult to make 3D models for small screens like DS,PSP, Pandora and others without using more quads/triangles as necessary.

Think more for Blender to make 3D models to Games Handseld or Phones, not for rendering of course ( uh why not? take a long time but .... )

also Pandora could use OGLES for rendering

So it will be fun with a second screen like NDS for artists , but Pandora has only one screen

 

[yosh64]

hey

I was just thinking that if you want a serious modelling program that takes full advantage of the pandora then I recon ya better off making a completly new package from scratch desgined specifically for the pandora.

I mean you don't need any special features, just the ability to make and texture some lowpoly models, and also animate in an easy way. Although this would be quite a task, it would mean it would be very usable.

Hmm, whether Blender can be reshaped in such a way I have no clue about.

BTW, personally I don't see how it would be easier to make lowpoly models on a smaller screen and what not, and really it's not so hard to control the amount of polygons of ya model, and if ya do add to many it's also not hard to manually reduce on such lowpoly things, hehe.

cyas

 

[BenTolputt]

OpenGL vs OpenGL ES
This depends on the OGL ES spec that gets implemented. If we're talking OGL ES 1.x - this will not be a big deal. Provided you don't use anything fancy, alot converts across without problems. OGL ES 2.x though requires that the application define the transformation pipeline and as such would require a little extra effort.

On the other hand, there are projects out there to do this for the application developer (such as DOGLESS).

Hard-coded Keyboard Shortcuts
As mentioned, the Blender developers are currently undertaking a major refactor of the GUI codebase in order to remove the hard-coded nature of hot-keys, mouse-clicks, and the like. The next (non-bugfix) version of Blender (2.50) is to include this. ALOT of developers (completely outside the GP2X community) are looking forward to this as Blender's interface is currently... a little different. We're hoping that once we can change the interface without having to dig into the guts of Blender, alot more friendly UI designs will come to the foreground. A nide side-effect would be that we can more easily plug-in Pandora's extra inputs as options

Wings Rewrite
Might be possible provided:

• SDL is converted prior to the Wings conversion (relatively likely)
• Erlang is converted prior to the Wings conversion (not quite so likely, being a language used most often for massively parallel applications on server hardware)

Graphics Editing Rewrite
I'm not sure if you have looked at the amount of code one would need to write to get even a basic model viewer working, but an editor takes quite a bit more effort than that. It would be (in my opinion), much easier to cut out the features not possible on the Pandora from Blender than it would be to create a new app from scratch.

--BenT

 

[argor]

OpenGL vs OpenGL ES
This depends on the OGL ES spec that gets implemented. If we're talking OGL ES 1.x - this will not be a big deal. Provided you don't use anything fancy, alot converts across without problems. OGL ES 2.x though requires that the application define the transformation pipeline and as such would require a little extra effort.

On the other hand, there are projects out there to do this for the application developer (such as DOGLESS).

Hard-coded Keyboard Shortcuts
As mentioned, the Blender developers are currently undertaking a major refactor of the GUI codebase in order to remove the hard-coded nature of hot-keys, mouse-clicks, and the like. The next (non-bugfix) version of Blender (2.50) is to include this. ALOT of developers (completely outside the GP2X community) are looking forward to this as Blender's interface is currently... a little different. We're hoping that once we can change the interface without having to dig into the guts of Blender, alot more friendly UI designs will come to the foreground. A nide side-effect would be that we can more easily plug-in Pandora's extra inputs as options

Wings Rewrite
Might be possible provided:

• SDL is converted prior to the Wings conversion (relatively likely)
• Erlang is converted prior to the Wings conversion (not quite so likely, being a language used most often for massively parallel applications on server hardware)

Graphics Editing Rewrite
I'm not sure if you have looked at the amount of code one would need to write to get even a basic model viewer working, but an editor takes quite a bit more effort than that. It would be (in my opinion), much easier to cut out the features not possible on the Pandora from Blender than it would be to create a new app from scratch.

--BenT

both OGL ES 1.1 and . OGL ES 2 are implemented on the OMAP3530 that is in the pandora

 

[DBH]

I for one would welcome it on the Pandora I know others might think it pointless but if the mobile version was optimized for the Pandora then why not its pretty much the same as saying you want a version of GIMP on the device. It would definitely be handy if you wanted to render just a few simple quirky designs rather while out and about rather than having to wait until you get to your desktop pc!

 

[TaG]

I for one would welcome it on the Pandora I know others might think it pointless but if the mobile version was optimized for the Pandora then why not its pretty much the same as saying you want a version of GIMP on the device. It would definitely be handy if you wanted to render just a few simple quirky designs rather while out and about rather than having to wait until you get to your desktop pc!

+1. If someone writes it, optimized for processing, screen and controls, I will use it.

Now all we need is a dev to lead it. Someone with, say, 10 years + experience with significant knowledge of arty stuff. BenT, do you know anyone who might be interested?

 

[Karel Jansens]

I can't help but thinking that, with a little tweaking, this would be nice on the Pandora.

Obviously Teddy is not as powerful as Blender, but it's most likely much more fun.

(the "tweaking" refers to the use of the right mouse button, which the Pandora clearly lacks)

 

[DBH]

Ahh I remember teddy that's awesome yeah that would be great plus its only a web java app so that could be pretty likely to be ported!

 

[BenTolputt]

Dev to lead Port:
Heh, I've already tried motivating people on a project for the Pandora (setup website, tried cutting through fluff to actual implementation requirements, etc), but it's not really going anywhere.

If that project dries up (and sadly, it looks like it will), I'll talk to the Blender Devs about using Pandora as an interesting test case for the new UI code. If the project actually moves forward though, I'll not have the spare time.

I do have a "little history" with the top-gun in Blender (Ton Roosendaal), but it was a year or two ago so hopefully we can move past it Need to get a hold of the development tools to start playing with it first though... so waiting on that and the developer pre-order stuff to kick in.

Teddy
This would be an awesome little project for sure. Especially in a DS-like "draw & chat" program. Thing is you would not only need to port Java, but Java3D for it to work. That said, the "right click" issue is not a biggy, just map one of the shoulder buttons to it.

--BenT

 

[mrsnature]

nobody that's serious about 3d modelling/animation will want to use their pandora for the task... so i see blender as major overkill (with a lot of work to port). However, a simple little "3d sketch" sort of program i can see being fun for quite a few people.

Blender is not for people that just want a quick play around in 3d, but i can see its exactly these people who will want to do 3d modelling on their pandora!