uz9/westcore-path-generator

A proof of concept 3D autonomous routing tool powered by React and 3JS.

WestCore Path Generator

A proof of concept 3D autonomous routing tool powered by React and 3JS.

🚧🚧 This project is not finished 🚧🚧

Trying it out

While there isn't any documentation for this project yet, you can see a live demo here.

Current Features

• 3D zoomable/pannable model of the field
• UI functionality
• Waypoint placement using the Enter Waypoint Creation button
• Realtime editing of waypoint data
• Waypoint drag movement, along with snapping to grid functionality (holding ALT)
• Waypoint serialization, with buttons for importing (takes from the importString parameter) and exporting (prints JSON string in console) a project \
• Cubic hermite curve generation between waypoints, along with an optional robot visualizer

westcore-path-generator's Issues

Cleanup Project

As soon as drag selection is finished all of the extraneous code needs to be removed from the project.

Combine all node data between UIManager and UIManagerRenderer

At the moment UIManager and UIManagerRenderer both have their own array of nodes. All data should instead flow through UIManagerRenderer, where UIManager is solely responsible for calling UIManagerRenderer functions when UI buttons are pressed.

Reduce amount of re-renders for a Node

Because of dependency requirements changing in real-time, a Node ends up re-rendering itself 6 times when initially clicked. This is obviously not ideal, and some of these dependencies should be bulk initialized in one pass if possible.

Stop using react-three-fiber?

While react-three-fiber has been spectacular for real-time updates of different components, sharing data between nested functional components has been absolutely painful and has caused the dependency flow to be incredibly convoluted. Switching to pure 3JS would allow more documentation to be available and a far better project structure. The biggest issue with migrating is losing the UI library as well as react-three-fiber/drei. Some of the things to be changed:

• Switch OrbitControls to be the 3JS variant
• Switch to 3JS render loop, removing all of the states and props
• Largest hassle: importing meshes without useGLTF
• Modifying mesh components in realtime
• Possibly losing realtime editing features without reloading everything

Add performance mode for low-power computers

Possible optimizations if the computer doesn't have a dedicated graphics card:

• LOD Models?
• Toggling shadows
• Shadowmap resolution

OrbitControls sometimes doesn't register click up

When dragging a node, sometimes the click-up event to re-enable OrbitControls is overridden and results in the camera panning wherever the mouse is pointing rather than when clicking.

Improve Scene Lighting

HemisphereLights + shadow capable materials perhaps?

Improve tangent placement for hermite curves?

While hermite curves are now implemented on the website, creating curves seems to be a bit of a hassle, unlike other projects that have used them. The Generic Cubic Hermite Spline Demo on codepen has a very promising way of dragging tangents, and seems to differ from what I'm using. You can see this in the comparison image I've attached:

Fix OrbitControls still triggering while dragging

Project uses "Node" and "Waypoint" interchangeably

There needs to be a strict name for what points on the field will be called, whether it be node or waypoint.

Allow markers to be unselected

There are primarily two scenarios where this can happen:

• You select the same marker again
• You click outside of a marker, whether it be the field or the sphere geometry

Prevent user from placing tangents inside of waypoints (and waypoints inside of waypoints)

The current collision system (or rather, lack of) allows the user to place waypoints inside of waypoints with no easy way to reverse the effect. There needs to be some kind of check to prevent the raycasts from hitting both the waypoint and field to hopefully solve this issue.

Selection Visualization

The user needs to have some sort of visual queue that the marker is currently selected.

Better field floor

To fix the issue of having multiple individual tiles to add click registers to, a temporary solution was to take one tile and scale it up to the size of the field. This is obviously not as ideal, as we primarily lose two features:

• The connectors of the tile are massive, and still count as placable locations for markers
• The field doesn't have any way of differentiating between grid spaces
• The tile for whatever reason is slightly raised and clipping into a few objects

Find a better way of structuring nodes

Migrate old MarkerManager/MarkerConnection code to use UI

• Implement a UI for viewing Marker properties
• Move MarkerConnection to the UI system
• Remove old MarkerManager/Marker files

Begin writing Unit Tests

Marker JSON Serialization

In order for the user to import and export different autonomous models, the markers need to have all of their data serialized.

Implement a better button system

Currently there isn't any documentation showing whether conditional formatting for buttons is possible, leading to the toggle buttons being hardcoded using Leva's obfuscated CSS classes:
https://github.com/BWHS-Robotics/westcore-path-generator/blob/ec0814c3bad9aaa5c3fd6f27ba386f588ff5786d/src/ui/UIManager.jsx#L170-L184
This issue will have to be postponed until either new documentation is released or my question on their repository is answered.