This is a python project that simulates the demolition of a radiotower by imploding a certain configuration of hinges.
The project has a manual mode (main_basic.py) and a genetic algorithm mode (main.py).
You may freely test these scripts on the models/radio_tower/radio_tower2_final.blend file.
To simulate the manual demolitions as depicted in the report, you can open any of the .blend files in the models/radio_tower/manual_demolitions folder.
You should see 5 .blend files. Each of these correspond to the 5 manual simulated demolitions in the report.
To start the simulation, go to the Demolition tab on the toolbar at the left on the scene window (next to Tool, View and Create).
If it isn't there, go to the scripting tab, open main_basic.py and click run script. The demolition tab should now be visible.
In the demolition tab, click the button Initialize. This will assign all the necessary physics properties to the objects in the scene.
After the script has finished running, and the button is no longer blue, click start. This will bake the physics for the next 100 frames and start the animation automatically when finished.
To view the output of the evaluation function, click Stop and go to Window -> Toggle System Console. This should show a console window with the radius, height, removed clusters and evaluation score printed on it.
The genetic algorithm is devoleped in the main.py file and should use the
model in the file models/radio_tower/radio_tower2_final.blend. Open the model
file in blender and go the scripting tab. There you should open the main.py
file and click the run script button. This will show you the demolition tab
in the scene window.
The demolition tab has 8 options/buttons. The first 4 options do not need to be changed. But you may wish to alter the configurations.
- Breaking threshold : this defines the breaking threshold of the hinges in the simulation.
- Substeps Per Frame : this defines the number of delta T time steps considered in each simulation frame. Higher values make the simulation more accurate but it also takes more time to compute.
- Solver Iterations : this defines the number of constraint solver iterations made per simulation step. Higher values make the simulation more accurate but it also takes more time to compute.
- Speed : this defines the speed up. 1 defines regular time, 2 defines a speed up of 2.
The second 4 buttons perform the following actions:
- Genetic algorithm : this button will run 10 generation of the genetic algorithm to see what is happening we advise you to open the Blender console.
- Genetic Round : this button will run a single generation of the genetic algorithm. to see what is happening we advise you to open the Blender console.
- Run best model : this button will compute the simulation of the best model in the current generation and thereafter start the simulation. Note that nothing will happen if you haven't executed at least one genetic round yet.
- Stop : this will stop the simulation and show the evaluation score in the terminal window. Pressing the 'Run best model' button again will continue the simulation.