First Steps
When you have installed Phobos and activated it, you should configure it to best serve your needs. For this, open the Preferences once again (Edit->Preferences), switch to the Add-Ons section and navigate to Phobos (you might need to search for it), then expand its preferences menu.
You can not use '~' in Phobos paths, instead use the Blender button to find the path you need.
The User Preferences of Phobos handle the most important file paths and
logging settings.
Phobos can be configured to work with a model folder to provide a default directory where to put new models.
Phobos might set specific parameters (such as author name & email in Gazebo models) based on the information you provide here. If you leave it blank, a dummy name/email will be added instead.
In the future we might build upon the existing GIT integration and include things like git ID to use here. For now, the settings are not required to fill in.
Phobos comes with comprehensive logging functionality notifying you of what is currently being processed, warning about possible problems and pointing out errors in the model. You should thus make it a habit of paying attention to the logging output. The logging output is visible in the terminal or system console. To open the system console under windows go to Window->Toggle System Console.
You can specify a log file to which Phobos will write its logs. This will be only useful if you check the respective box.
WARNING: The log file gets never deleted by Phobos and can get quite bloated over time, so if use a log file you should check its size from time to time and clear it as needed.
Phobos can also write to terminal. In order to see this output you have to
start Blender from terminal. For system-installed Blender this should usually
work via the blender command. For Windows users the terminal can be run
from within Blender (in the Help dropdown of the top info bar).
You can choose the level of log messages you want to view, ranging from
ERROR to DEBUG. If you choose WARNING, for instance, Phobos will
only write out log messages of level WARNING and above, meaning that
INFO and DEBUG will be suppressed. So if you are having a lot of
problems with a model, you may want to set this to DEBUG to see all the
information that might be useful.
We recommend you keep your log level at
ERROR, as this will give you all the required information about your model and the operations you are using.
Most simulators stick to the loose Z-Up Y-Forward convention. However, some simulators may use other conventions when handling OBJs. In case you are developing for such a simulator you can adapt those settings here. Please see also the Meshes section under File Formats regarding this topic.
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