Procedural Drone Show — v1.0

Blender 4.5+ drone show builder with real-time parameter preview, modal operators,

optimised safety check, and collapsible side-panel sections.

Real-time viewport preview

Dragging any formation or altitude slider immediately repositions and recolours

drone spheres in the viewport — no button press required.  Works for all built-in

formations (Grid, Circle, Helix, Line, Heart) as well as LED colour changes.

Modal Build & Transition operators

**Build Show** and **Transition To Target** now run as modal operations.  A live

progress counter (`Building… 42 / 200`) appears in the 3-D View header, and

pressing **Esc** safely cancels the operation without leaving a broken state.

Faster safety check (single-pass)

The safety check now visits each frame exactly once, collecting all drone

positions in one `frame_set` call, instead of the previous nested loop that

called `sample_object_location` twice per frame pair.  Results are cached in the

panel so you can inspect them without re-running.

Collapsible sub-panels

The single box has been split into seven independently collapsible sections:

*Fleet & Geometry*, *Formations*, *SVG / Curves*, *Assignment*, *LED*, *Safety*,

*Compile / Export*.

What it produces

- `show_bundle.json` — compiled generic show package with sampled positions,

  velocities, accelerations, and RGB values.

- One CSV per drone with time and position/colour samples.

- `mavsdk_offboard_runner.py` — companion Python script that connects to one

  MAVSDK system per drone and streams position setpoints in Offboard mode.

Important limitation

This is a prototype exporter, not a vendor-certified or flight-authority-approved

show compiler.  It is best suited for PX4 SITL, lab tests, and custom

companion-computer pipelines.

Suggested workflow

1. Build and animate the show in Blender (use the real-time preview to tune

   formation parameters instantly).

2. Run **Safety Check** and review the cached results in the panel.

3. Run **Compile Show Bundle**.

4. Copy the compiled folder to the machine running MAVSDK.

5. Adapt UDP ports, coordinate frames, arming checks, and failsafes before any

   real-world use.