History

v1.0.0 (28 April 2023)

  • Mesh2Input (Project export from Blender handled by the Blender plugin Mesh2Input/mesh2input.py):

    • Upgraded to support Blender versions >= 2.80.0

    • Improved organization and modularization of the Blender plugin

    • Re-design the parameters, appearance, and in-app documentation of the Export menu to be less prone to erroneous input

      • Source type can be defined by a single drop down menu

      • Source properties (point source position or plane wave direction) obtained from Objects in the Blender Scene (separate manual input not required).

      • Support for referencing the HRTFs when calculated for point sources

      • Option for referencing the HRTF to a source placed in the origin of coordinates

      • Option to calculate HRIRs from single-sided HRTF spectra

      • More flexible selection of the simulated frequencies

      • Support of multiple evaluation grids in a single text field

      • Support of custom definitions of materials (defining the boundary conditions)

      • Options for parallelization moved from the Export menu to NumCalc (see below)

      • Clean up: Undocumented and unfinished options for the near-field calculation and frequency-dependent meshes removed

    • Support of frequency-dependent boundary conditions

    • Support for the custom evaluation grids and material data being located outside the Mesh2HRTF directory

    • Improved detection and display of errors in the user input.

  • NumCalc:

    • NumCalc/manage_numcalc.py added: a NumCalc manager for automatic parallelization of frequency steps

    • Bugfix: for NC.inp without “END”, NumCalc throws an error and aborts the execution preventing an infinite loop

    • New command line parameters: istart and iend select the range of frequencies for the simulation to ease the parallelization

    • New command line parameter: nitermax controls the maximum number of iterations

    • New command line parameter: estimate_ram provides an a-priori estimation of the RAM consumption per frequency step

    • Default number of maximum iterations reduced to 250

    • Minor bug fixes and stability improvements

  • Output2HRTF:
    • New Python API for processing NumCalc output and save HRTF and HRIR as SOFA files

      • Installable via pip

      • Full online documentation

      • Added function to generate a project report and notify in case of issues and/or errors that occurred during the NumCalc simulation

      • Added flexible plot function for quick inspection of the results

      • Added Python tools to read and generate custom evaluation grids

      • Added function to merge results from multiple sources (e.g. left and right ear) into a single SOFA file

      • Added function to write boundary conditions to material files

    • Improved structure of the output data (SOFA files, project reports, exports, and plots):

      • Data stored in a separate folder Output2HRTF

      • Data named according to the evaluation grids and object meshes

      • Data for multiple evaluation grids stored in separate files

      • Frequencies in SOFA files stored as decimal numbers

  • General:

    • Testing: NumCalc and the Python-based parts of Mesh2HRTF (Project export, and the Python-based part of Output2HRTF) are automatically tested using pytest to improve and monitor the code quality. The Matlab/Octave API is tested manually.

    • Unified names of functions across the programming languages

    • Project Wiki migrated to Github and updated

v0.5.0 (July 2022)

  • preparation for the upgrade to Mesh2HRTF 1.x

  • license changed to the EUPL 1.2

  • this is the last Mesh2HRTF version supporting Blender versions up to 2.79

v0.4.0

  • new directory structure

v0.3.2

  • big fix and improvements in PreProcessing/MeshGrading (ticket #25, commit r38)

  • bug fix in ExportMesh2HRTF.py (Tickets #13, #15, and #23 on sourcefourge)

  • fixed a bug Output2HRTF_Main.m. Now the low frequency HRTF should at 0 dB if using reciprocal simulation and if setting reference = true in Output2HRTF.m, which is auto-generated when exporting from blender.

v0.3.1

  • bug fix in NumCalc

v0.3.0

  • New directory structure

  • Pascal-case naming of the files

  • Small bugfixes in the scripts

v0.2.0 (2018)

  • Mesh2Input:

    • MaterialAssignment.py: A Python script that can be loaded into Blender to center the head mesh in the coordinate system

    • MeshCentering.py: A Python script that can be loaded into Blender to automatically assign the materials ‘Skin’, ‘Left ear’, and ‘Right ear’

    • export_mesh2hrtf.py: Bug fix to correctly export data for calculating the left ear, right ear and both ears.

    • EvaluationGrids (Matlab):

      • Arbitrary user defined spatial grids can now be generated (see the code in demo.m)

      • ‘User’ in ‘Mesh2Input/Data/Evaluation Grids’ renamed to ‘Custom’ because ‘User’ is a reserved variable in Blender/Python

      • Evaluation grids can be plotted with the Matlab code

  • NumCalc: MS VS Solution added to compile NumCalc on Windows.

  • Output2HRTF:

    • Output2HRTF_Main.m: Added optional referencing of HRTFs if calculated reciprocally to achieve that the low frequency magnitude of the HRTFs is 0 dB. This is done by dividing the complex pressure by the area of the ear elements (radiating element), compensating for the velocity of the radiating element, and by a division of the complex pressure with the pressure of a point source in the origin of coordinates. (export_mesh2hrtf.py writes the area of the radiating elements, and the flag for referencing to Output2HRTF.m)

    • Output2HRTF_Main.m: Big fix to correctly export SOFA files with data for the left ear, right ear, and both ears.

  • Mesh-grading tool moved to Mesh2Input

v0.1.3 (2015)

  • mesh-grading plugin for Open Flipper added

  • Output: various bug fixes

  • Output: Paraview scripts added

  • NumCalc: Dissolve tiny clusters and add their elements to next bigger cluster. This seems to enhance the stability of the MLFMM.

v0.1.2 (2015)

  • initial commit and release via SourceForge

v0.1.1 (2014) * initial version by Harald Ziegelwanger, Piotr Majdak, and Wolfgang Kreuzer

Mesh2HRTF Developers

Mesh2HRTF is currently maintained and developed by * Piotr Majdak (Conceptualization, Maintainence), * Fabian Brinkmann (Python & Matlab API, Blender Export, Testing, Documentation), * Wolfang Kreuzer (NumCalc, Documentation), * Katharina Pollack (Matlab API, Documentation)

Contributors

The following persons contributed to Mesh2HRTF (in reverse chronological order):

  • Tim Wennemann (2023): Update for CenterHead and AssignMaterial scripts

  • Jeffrey Thomsen (2022): Testing and documentation

  • Sergejs Dombrovskis (2022): Initial NumCalc manager version, documentation and tutorials

  • Johan Pauwels (2022): various

  • Timon Palm (2021): Hybrid mesh grading tool

  • Sebastian Koch (2021): Hybrid meh grading tool

  • Junaid Khan (2020): Bugfixes and restructuring

  • Oliver Weissbarth (2020): Update of the OpenFlipper mesh grading plug-in

  • Slim Ghorbal (2019): Improved Blender export

  • Robert Pelzer (2018): Blender AddOns for head centering and material assignment

  • Michael Kalcher (2016): various

  • Harald Ziegelwanger (2013-2015): Initial development of Mesh2HRTF

      1. Chen (until 2012): Initial development of NumCalc

Involved Institutions

  • Acoustics Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria

  • Audio Communication Group, Technical University of Berlin, Germany.

  • Computer Graphics Group, Technical University of Berlin, Germany.

  • University of Applied Sciences, Technikum Wien, Austria.

  • Imperial College London, United Kingdom.

  • Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

  • Mimi Hearing Technologies, Berlin, Germany.