An OpenDRIVE static scenario file importer for Blender

Import OpenDRIVE roads into Blender as 3D meshes. This repository is based on the libOpenDRIVE.

Quick Start

Assuming that you are using a Windows machine and Blender is installed and you are able to run the blender --python command from your command prompt/terminal:

• Create a python environment with python 3.8 and where pip install scenariogeneration is done.
• Run python odrgen.py. This will generate the junction.xodr file in the libOpenDRIVE directory using the scenariogeneration python package. Alternatively, you can also just place a .xodr file in the libOpenDRIVE directory directly.
• cd libOpenDRIVE and run workflow.bat. This will install the test-xodr executable in the build/Release directory that will be the one generating the mesh obj files.
• Make appropriate edits in the genobj.bat file according to the name of the .xodr file and run it. This will run the opendrive parser library executable (test-xodr.exe) for an xodr file and run the Blender python command to import the generated .obj files into Blender. It will also generate the .fbx files in the project directory. Here are some outputs:

Procedurally generated environments directly for CARLA simulator

Assuming you have Blender installed and you are able to run the blender --python command from your command prompt/terminal and have installed CARLA simulator from source (0.9.14) on Windows with python 3.8 (since for this python version, the python module is available via Pypi)

• Open a x64 command prompt. Run make launch to start the simulator. When the Unreal Editor opens, click the play button. If this isn't working, make sure your CARLA installation is correct.
• Open a new x64 command prompt.
• Create a python environment with Python 3.8 and ensure that import carla works. If it doesn't, install the python package directly using python -m pip install carla.
• As written in the quick start before, run python odrgen.py to generate OpenDRIVE .xodr files and genobj.bat to generate 3D meshes for the same road via Blender.
• Run carlaimport.bat.
• Check if map is imported into CARLA.

Here's a procedurally generated 3 way intersection generated in odrgen.py in Blender and CARLA:

A small additional feature

As an experiment, I added some GPT-4 API calls along with this pipeline to accept a more open range of inputs for generating roads, such as "generate a T intersection." Here is the video demo of this experiment - link to demo.

Further work

• You can further generate .xodr files using python by referring to the scenariogeneration library or by modifying the odrgen.py script.
• You can further generate the larger 3D scene beyond the road (road signs, trees, fences, buildings) using the Blender python API by modifying the import.py script.
• You can also manually import the map into CARLA. I wrote a step-by-step guide to do so here
• Once you have imported the map into CARLA, you can develop the python scripting using the CARLA python API or use the CARLA scenario runner to run traffic in the scene.