This talk will introduce a new, free toolchain for developing virtual

reality and web applications, based on Blender and XVR. Hopefully, it will raise some interest in the combined use of these two tools, in order to encourage further development in this direction. XVR is an integrated development environment for the rapid development of virtual reality applications, being developed at the PERCRO Lab of S. Anna University in Pisa. XVR content can be embedded in a variety of container applications, making it suitable to write content ranging from web-oriented presentations to more complex virtual reality installations involving advanced devices, such as real-time trackers, haptic interfaces, sensorized gloves and stereoscopic devices including head mounted displays. A brief overview of the wide range of industrial and academic projects carried out with Blender will be shown. Recent developments, have opened a new possibility of interaction between XVR and Blender. Currently, Blender static and animated meshes, and mesh hierarchies, complete with materials, can be exported to and imported from the native XVR format. What's more, with a recent addition named PyXVR, Blender users can also benefit from using Python as a scripting language for XVR in addition of XVR's own. This way, for example, XVR has access to the wide library of Python modules. Future developments will look into the possibility of exporting other parameters (e.g. for programmable shaders, procedural modeling, physical properties, environmental audio, etc.) and/or directly integrating with the game engine. XVR is free for non commercial purposes and is gaining wide acceptance among the Virtual Reality research institutions in Europe.

URL: www.vrmedia.it (the main XVR site)

wiki.vrmedia.it (a new wiki about XVR - you can find more information on Blender scripts and PyXVR here)

forums.vrmedia.it (XVR forums)