Any royal road to Bezier curves...?

[Terry Hancock]

On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 23:33:36 -0500
"Warren Francis" <just_another_guy287 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'm fairly new to Python (2-3 months) and I'm trying to
> figure out a simple  way to implement Bezier curves...  So
> far I've tried the following:
> 
> http://runten.tripod.com/NURBS/
> ...which won't work because the only compiled binaries are
> for Windows 2000,  python 2.1.  I'm on Windows XP (for
> now), using Python 2.4.  I downloaded  the source
> distribution, but the header files aren't included, so I'm
> not  sure how to compile it.

NURBS are not actually Bezier curves, AFAIK, they are a
superset of some kind (which means they're probably better
to use, but harder to implement).

> It appears there's some bezier functionality in the python
> that comes  Blender... but I'm not savvy enough yet to try
> and extract whatever makes  beziers work there, to make it
> work in my general-purpose Python programs.

Not a specific recommendation, and I don't know if it's
any more comprehensible, but you will find that Skencil also
implements Bezier curves (in 2D).  Skencil is mostly in
Python, but uses a lot of C, so I don't know if it handles
beziers in Python or C (I'm still learning my way around the
code, myself).

Inkscape, of course, does too, but in C.
http://www.inkscape.org

> Basically, I'd like to specify a curved path of an object
> through space.  3D  space would be wonderful, but I could
> jimmy-rig something if I could just  get 2D...  Are bezier
> curves really what I want after all?

Or NURBS, yeah, probably.


-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com