Re: [Visualpython-users] Images in VPython

[Jonathan B. <jbr...@ea...>]

On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 16:27, Joel Kahn wrote:
> First: a member of the Python Edu-Sig group sent me a
> bug fix for my image-to-object script. The way I
> originally wrote it, bitmaps with less than 24 bits
> per pixel may not work. If you insert this line . . .
> 
> Picture = Picture.convert("RGB")
> 
> . . . after the "Image.open" command, your bitmap data
> will be in the right format to be handled properly by
> both PIL and VPython.
> 
> Second: Jonathan's summary of the texture-mapping
> prospects was educational, even though much of it was
> beyond my level of expertise. One point that did come
> through clearly was the need for powerful hardware to
> handle (let alone animate) any significant number of
> detailed texture-matched objects. I think that this
> would be a good justification for a VPython-oriented
> cluster experiment. Does anybody have the time and the
> interest to join me in putting together some kind of
> grant proposal for a Beowulf project? I'm open to any
> relevant suggestions. . . .
> 
> Joel


Cluster?  No, I think that would be a bad idea for VPython.  Any recent
video card will be able to handle pretty much anything you can throw at
it from VPython.  A scene with several translucent and textured objects,
some using a source image of 1024x2048 pixels, can be rendered in only a
few ms on common PC hardware.  You really can't notice that it takes any
time at all, and the UI remains buttery-smooth.

Speed is not the problem.  Picking the right parts of a complex
environment (or completely reformulating the appearance of what you are
doing) to expose to client programs in Python is the hard part, and that
is what I would appreciate some feedback on.

-Jonathan