Opendesk On Demand

This repository contains code and experiments relating to parameterised configuration and in-browser customisation of Opendesk products.

You can view the published demos at https://opendesk-on-demand.firebaseapp.com/

Demo

Clone the repo, cd into the folder, run e.g.: python -m SimpleHTTPServer and open your browser at localhost:8000/demo.html. Play with the controls to see the model adapt. When ready, save and check the console output.

How it Works

Opendesk products are described using the winnow data format. We use winnow:

1. to describe the "world of possibilities" of a product family and its potential configuration options
2. to describe the specific choices and individual product configurations that customers and makers choose and manufacture (as per this specification pipeline)

In-browser customisation must therefore:

• present configuration options that are based on, or at least compatible with, a product's winnow options
• generate choice documents in the winnow format

The way we're proposing to do this is as follows:

1. ensure that any customisable parameters are added to / present in the product options
2. publish dynamic product configurations (see example) that:
   • have a 3D model exported as a .obj file that:
     • groups objects by layers #
     • can be loaded in browser by three.js
   • have a config.json file (see example) that:
     • exposes a subset of the product options as parameters
     • specifies the parameter aware transformation functions to apply to object geometry values by layers (i.e.: objects on different layers will have different transformation functions applied)
3. write a cross-language compiler that:
   • in Python:
     • parses the .obj and config.json#layers data
     • transforms it into a denormalised abstract-syntax-tree where each object node carries a copy of the transformations that should be applied to it (derived from the layers that the object is on)
   • in Javascript:
     • generates new .obj code by walking the AST and calculating actual object geometry values for a given configuration by applying the chosen parameter values to the transformation functions carried by any dynamic nodes
     • render the revised .obj string using THREE.OBJLoader.parse
4. control this using a controller UI built from the config.json#parameters

N.b.: in future, we can also consider writing the transformation functions in Python and transpiling to Javascript from Python, in order to support an an alternative 'no-webgl' Python server-side code-generation step that uses Blender to render images.