Skybrush Studio

Skybrush Studio is a drone show designer suite that operates either in standalone mode (as a scripting language) or integrates with popular 3D animation software via plugins.

Skybrush Studio for Blender #

Skybrush Studio for Blender is a plugin for Blender, an open-source 3D animation software tool that enables you to start designing drone shows without leaving Blender.

Features #

• Build your show around a storyboard consisting of static or dynamic formations and automatically planned transitions between them

• Transitions designed by Skybrush Studio are guaranteed to be collision-free if the source and target formations are sparse enough

• Add multi-phase takeoff or smart return to home to everyone’s own position

• Import external animation and light effect snippets in simple CSV formats

• Generate QR codes or sample external SVG files for a drone show with a few clicks

• Use parametric light effects to control the colors of the drone based on their positions or distances from other meshes in the scene

• Real-time safety checks for velocity, altitude and proximity constraints in every frame

• Draw charts of velocities, altitudes and nearest-neighbor distances in Skybrush Viewer by sending the trajectories directly from the Blender plugin, or as a flight validation report in .pdf format for flight authorities.

• Export the show in various formats compatible with Skybrush Live and other drone show software

System Requirements #

Please refer to Blender’s system requirements – Skybrush Studio itself requires no additional resources. Internet connection is required for transition planning as the planning algorithm runs online in our servers so we can tweak the algorithm without having to update the plugin code. Contact us if you need to work offline regularly.

Documentation #

The documentation is available in HTML format on our documentation site.

Limitations #

The plugin relies on Skybrush Studio Server as its backend for transition planning and export operations. The community version talks to our public server, which is shared between all users and is resource limited. If you work with large drone fleets, we ask you to purchase a license for Skybrush Studio Server to get a local copy with unlimited features.

Download Blender Plugin #

Skybrush Scripting Language #

Skyscript is our by-geeks-for-geeks tool for drone show design, based on the popular Python programming language. If you already know and like Python, you can create shows programmatically in Skyscript and render them into various output formats. See the following code snippet as an example for the start of a show in Skyscript:

# Create the drone swarm; grid spacing is in meters
takeoff_grid = create_2d_grid(shape=(5, 4), spacing=4)
drones = create_drone_swarm(start_from=takeoff_grid)

# Takeoff procedure
drones.takeoff()
drones.hold_position_for(5)

# First scene: morph to sphere
sphere = create_sphere(center=Pos3D(z=50, y=50), radius=20, n=20)
drones.morph_to(sphere)
...

You can then convert Skyscript into Skybrush show files from the command line or by setting up an appropriate shortcut in your favourite text editor:

$ skybrush render show.sky

Download Skyscript Tool #

The compiler for our scripting language is currently in a closed beta stage. Contact us if you are interested in a sneak peek.

Plugins for Other Animation Software #

We provide scripts for exporting trajectories of objects from 3ds Max and Cinema 4D in CSV format. Exported CSV files can then be uploaded to our converter tool in your Skybrush account to convert them into .skyc show files. You can download these scripts after registering an account.