RE: [Visualpython-users] Future directions

[David S. <dsc...@cm...>]

> >> > rendering.  If VPython were able to take a snapshot in povray format,
> >> > that would be cool.
>
> Actually it would be pretty easy to write such a routine
> yourself. Probably
> the only tricky thing is converting -convex- to -blob-.  By writing your
> own routine you could specify textures, instead of having everything
> default to RedPlastic, etc.

Good idea!  The only caveat is that there isn't currently an easy way to
enumerate the objects in a scene, so the user program would have to keep
track of all its objects.  This could be very easily added, though -- we had
this capability in the prototype -- and then Povray output could be
implemented in Python.  I like it.

You could use optional user attributes to control the material:

for object in scene.objects:
    if hasattr(object,"material"):
        material = object.material
    else:
        # xxx I don't know Povray syntax:
        material = "material { color %s } " % str(object.color)

(I don't think convex can be converted to blob - it has to be converted to
triangles using a convex hull algorithm.  That could be done in Python by
basically copying the code from convex.cpp in cvisual)

Dave