We are proud to announce the release of Skybrush Studio for Blender 3.9.0, adding acceleration validation to the real-time safety warnings. The PDF-based validation plots also contain a new plot type for predicted drift from the trajectory during a show.
Since it has been a while since we blogged about the new features in the Blender plugin, the summary below contains highlights not only from the most recent version but also from earlier versions that you might have missed if you are not following the changelog closely.
Acceleration validation #
The safety panel now contains a new setting for the maximumm allowed acceleration of drones in any direction during the show. Drones above the maximum acceleration will be marked with purple markers in the 3D view. Being above the maximum acceleration threshold is a more subtle (but nevertheless equally dangerous) problem in shows, especially when drones are accelerating suddenly or for longer periods. The acceleration limit might also be breached while moving along a circle or spiral with a small radius. In these formations, the velocity vector of the drone has a constant magnitude, but its direction changes constantly, resulting in high acceleration in all directions. In all such cases, drones may fall behind or drift away from their programmed trajectories if the position controller of the drone is programmed to keep the commanded acceleration within safe limits. The newly introduced real-time safety warning feature lets you spot these issues easily while playing a show, preventing possible mid-air crashes.
The accelerations are calculated from the velocities of the drones, which are in turn based on the positions in successive frames. Due to how Blender works, we are not allowed to move between frames during the validation of a single frame, therefore the add-on maintains a cache of position and velocity information for recently visited frames instead. This means that the velocity and acceleration vaidation feature works only if you are playing through the slow frame-by-frame or scrubbing on the timeline slowly. You can read more about this limitation in the documentation.
Validation report #
The Export validation report pro feature got revised and enhanced in several ways.
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The nearest neighbor plot now differentiates between drones below and above the minimum navigation altitude and highlights the absolute minimum distance between drones only above the minimum navigation altitude.
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A new drift plot is added to visualize the consequences of maximum velocity and/or acceleration breaches.
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The overall flight statistics and validation report also got updated with the more sophisticated nearest neighbor calculation and the new automated drift validation check.
Predicted drift #
As mentioned above, there is a new validation plot type that visualizes the predicted maximum potential drift from the ideal show trajectories based on the maximum velocity and maximum acceleration thresholds, using a simplified, integrated simulation of drone dynamics and motion behind the scenes.
Many mid-air crashes in drone shows are the consequences of bad show design, not taking into account velocity and acceleration limits properly. These limit breaches usually also remain invisible during virtual playback of the shows, as it is very hard for the eye to differentiate between low and high speed and acceleration on a screen. Show players are also “idealistic simulators” in the sense that they show the expected, ideal trajectories, not the realistic ones. The new drift plot fills exactly this gap and plots the difference between ideal and real trajectory positions.
The new drift plot is available to pro users only.
Hint: if you are is interested in the true, real drift during a show, visualize the
SHOW.HDist and SHOW.VDist ArduCopter log entries, also introduced by Skybrush.
More safety validation improvements #
The safety panel gained a new setting for the minimum navigation altitude of drones. This is the altitude above which the drones are allowed to move horizontally; below this altitude the safety validator considers it unsafe to move the drones horizontally, and you will see warnings if this happens. This can be used to ensure a perfectly vertical takeoff and landing if you are planning these show segments manually.
Since version 3.5.0 there is an option to calculate individual proximity warnings for all drones at a given frame. This is a computationally expensive calculation, therefore you have to press a dedicated button on the current frame to activate this validation.
Proximity warnings are now restricted to drones above the minimum navigation altitude, so you are free to use a dense takeoff grid as long as you ensure that the drones take off in stages (and note that our automatic takeoff procedure takes care of this for you).
Exporting cameras to .skyc #
There is a new option in the .skyc export dialog to include Blender cameras
to the resulting Skybrush show file. Cameras are fully supported by
Skybrush Viewer: you can select a
camera from the dropdown list on the top of the main screen in Viewer to switch
to what the camera would see during the show.
Complex takeoff grids #
Skybrush Studio for Blender supports more complex takeoff grid definitions since version 3.7.0, allowing users to setup different values for row and column spacing.
Translations #
We have added basic support for translations, through a proper Weblate translation page for Skybrush Studio for Blender.
Providing feedback #
As always, feel free to contact us on Discord for feedback, bug reports, feature requests and ideas. If you would like to report an issue and you know which component of Skybrush is the source of the problem, you can also open an issue in the issue tracker of the corresponding repository on Github.