VoxelScape LiDAR Simulator

LiDAR Sensor Simulation Blender Application Template

Requirements

• Blender 2.90
• AnimationNodes add-on 2.1.8

Installation

Animation Nodes

• Navigate to Edit > Preferences > Add-ons
• Click the Install button
• Select animation_nodes.zip and click Install Add-on
• Enable add-on by clicking the check box next to Node: Animation Nodes

VoxelScape Template

• Click on the Blender logo (top-left)
• Click on Install Application Template...
• Select VoxelScape.zip template and click the Install Template button

VoxelScape in Action

• Navigate to File > New and find and click the VoxelScape application template
• A simple scene of buildings and a lidar sensor will be loaded.
• In the right panel, the settings for the lidar sensor are available under AN > Viewport Inputs
• For live trials, make sure the Live/Animation button is checked to move the sensor and visualise live update.
• For prerecorded animations, make sure the Live/Animation button is un-checked.

Blender Stuff

• You can add and edit objects as usual using Blender's functionality.
• To have the object renderable by the lidar sensors do the following;
  • Set Pass Index to non-zero value. This is the object label.
  • Assign the object (or parts of the mesh) to a material. A list of material are included in the template file.

Exporting PointClouds

• To export pointcloud, labels, intensity and bounding box files, open a teminal and use the follwing command.

  $ ./Blender -b ~/Downloads/VoxelScape/blender_file.blend --python-text render -- --export_path ~/tmp/lc/

• For help use -h

Animation Nodes

For more on how animation nodes work, please check the repo.

Change Log

• 2021/09/28: Initial Commit