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drawtonomy vs Blender Driving Scenario Creator

Blender Driving Scenario Creator

Section titled “Blender Driving Scenario Creator”

The Blender Driving Scenario Creator (BDSC) by Johannes Schmitz is an open-source Blender add-on for creating OpenDRIVE and OpenSCENARIO scenarios, including 3D models.

What BDSC covers, per its README:

  • Road geometry tools with clothoid / Hermite solvers.
  • Junction tooling: a junction area tool and a junction connection tool, plus direct junctions for on-ramps and off-ramps.
  • OpenDRIVE export using analytical road primitives.
  • OpenSCENARIO export for scenarios laid on the map.
  • 3D mesh export to .fbx, .gltf, and .osgb.
  • Runs inside Blender, so the 3D viewport, scene graph, asset library, and rendering are available.
  • Licensed under GPL-3.0.

If your work already involves Blender, BDSC offers analytical OpenDRIVE geometry and full 3D authoring in one place.

Where drawtonomy might fit alongside it

Section titled “Where drawtonomy might fit alongside it”

drawtonomy is a 2D browser whiteboard, and 2D drawing and editing is where it stays — it does not do analytical road geometry and has no 3D editing viewport or mesh export. It does have a 3D preview for watching a scenario play back (Chase / BEV / Driver cameras, esmini-synced), but that view is read-only: no shape editing, no terrain, and no 3D export of its own (video export stays 2D). Its OpenDRIVE export can emit <junction>/<connection> primitives and <signal> signs, though junction accuracy is only strong when carrying an imported .xodr through unedited; building new junction geometry from hand-drawn lanes is still low-precision.

A few small things drawtonomy can add alongside BDSC:

  • Browser-only, no install — useful for quick figures from a machine that doesn’t have Blender installed.
  • 2D top-down view that paper / slide figures often want directly, without going through a 3D viewport.
  • .drawtonomy.svg as a re-editable figure source for documentation.

The two tools occupy different positions: BDSC for 3D scenario authoring with proper road geometry; drawtonomy for 2D authoring plus in-browser playback — you draw the scene, add actions and triggers, and run the storyboard on esmini-WASM to a PASS / FAIL verdict, as well as producing figures.

In the same ASAM ecosystem

Section titled “In the same ASAM ecosystem”

BDSC and drawtonomy both target ASAM OpenDRIVE and OpenSCENARIO, and both can produce output for esmini. The open-source ASAM tooling community is small, and BDSC is one of its more substantial contributions. drawtonomy is a much smaller contribution in the same ecosystem — neither tool exists in isolation, and both benefit from the broader work happening in OpenSCENARIO / OpenDRIVE tooling.

Section titled “Related reading”