[Edu-sig] re: intro

[Kirby Urner]

At 05:38 PM 6/12/2003 +1000, Simon Burton wrote:

>One thing i'd like is to be able to view scenes via pyopengl but then get 
>HiQ renders from povray.
>I think kirby has done some stuff here, but can't quite work out where 
>he's at.
>
>just released pypov today:
>
>http://arrowtheory.com/software/python/pypov/index.html
>
>it's a super light weight wrapper over povray files... the goal is to
>enable code to be OpenGLed or Povrayed (the matrix math for this
>is a PITA). Once again, Maestro Kirby has done something here i think.

Yeah, but I just carve out a very small API for doing a
specific kind of rendering.  I implement points, edges
and faces (as spheres, cylinders and polygons) and that's
it.  There's only the one class, in charge of writing the
Povray file, and these three core methods, which expect
vector arguments (i.e. coordinates).  I give minor control
over camera position on initialization.

The useful thing about this small API is I can use it
with VRML (1.0 and 2.0) and some other output formats with
no modifications (the output is different of course, but
the API is the same).  You'd think I'd have done an OpenGL
version by now, but I haven't.

>ah, so Shaun showed me some VPython stuff and lo! someone has written a povray
>backend - so i'll be checking that out ... and no doubt finding reasons 
>for using
>my own code instead  ;-} (the great thing about python is re-inventing the 
>wheel is
>usually pretty trivial)
>
>Thanks!
>
>Simon.

I look forward to playing with your code.  The Python + Povray
synergy is a good one.  Being able to draft in real time with
an OpenGL window, then get a high definition still (or succession
of stills) is a great way to go.  Friends of mine do that real
time stuff using Delphi and/or Java (don't even need Java3D),
e.g. check SpringDance.  http://www.shapeofspace.org/springdance/

Kirby