[Edu-sig] Active Essays

[Arthur_Siegel@rsmi.com]

>The idea of using Jython with Java3D is just an
>idea (for me).  Nor have I done anything with Python + OpenGL
>(but plan to).


Kirby - 

I also encourage you to take another look at the VPython possibilities,
as I did yesterday.

As Dethe already mentioned, it now comes in an extremely small footprint
flavor - you can in fact (I believe) limit it to the install of the cvisual.dll

and you
have a well documented, good performance 3d rendering engine for Python.
Even has a pre-built add-on module for Povray output.  

The latest  challenge I set for myself with PyGeo is to  more clearly 
seperate the analytics from the rendering back-end (thanks to Steve Morris,
for the suggestion).  My way of learning to program.  Set a goal, find some 
brains to pick, and plod forward  Here Piddle seems a likely brain, to pick, 
as I believe it was structured for plug-in rendering.  There are a just a few 
fancier things I do with PyGeo using the OpenGL API  - most notable a 
Projection class - which from a 3d point of view is really just a form of
defined shadows, but which took a low-level manipulation of the matrix stack.
Haven't figured out a way to get it done with Lightflow, but since VPython
is open-source, worst case scenario I learn a little more about C extensions
and add what I need at the level.

Is this fun, or what?

ART