[Edu-sig] Panda3D looks cool so far...

[Andrew Harrington]

In Panda, I assume an enormous amount of work is embedded in the 
development of models, which is invisible in code like that below.  
Perhaps if you use a canned cast of characters, you can avoid most of 
that. 

The latest version talks about being the first version they are trying 
to have work with OS X, so they are working to plug that hole.

On licenses:
I am not an expert on licenses.  From what I heard on this list, it 
sounds like if we develop a major tutorial/learning system using Panda, 
we could not distribute it as part of the main Python distribution, but 
if there is an Ubuntu version, it sounds like we could distribute it 
separately in a reasonable fashion. 

It seems really stupid to have a license that says if you are in Cuba 
and downloading Panda, you are breaking the law.  In an ideal world I  
would prefer to use software that does not say that.  It is not clear 
why it should stop folks on Edu-Sig from developing a system calling for it.

I am not worried about the commercial Disney history.  The software 
seems to be given over to Carnegie Mellon without strings other than the 
export rules.

Comments appreciated.

Andy

kirby urner wrote:

>Just to give the flavor of 'Hello World' in the basic tutorial.  Don't
>worry, I won't be cutting and pasting a ton of stuff.  I figure if
>you're interested, you'll check into it yourself.  But yes, it's
>helping me get clear on some issues.
>
>Kirby
>
>====
>
># Author: Shao Zhang and Phil Saltzman
># Last Updated: 4/19/2005
>#
># This tutorial is intended as a initial panda scripting lesson going over
># display initialization, loading models, placing objects, and the scene graph.
>#
># Step 2: After initializing panda, we define a class called World. We put
># all of our code in a class to provide a convenient way to keep track of
># all of the variables our project will use, and in later tutorials to handle
># keyboard input.
># The code contained in the __init__ method is executed when we instantiate
># the class (at the end of this file).  Inside __init__ we will first change
># the background color of the window.  We then disable the mouse-based camera
># control and set the camera position.
>
>import direct.directbase.DirectStart  #Initialize Panda and create a window
>from pandac.PandaModules import *     #Contains most of Panda's modules
>from direct.gui.DirectGui import *    #Imports Gui objects we use for putting
>                                      #text on the screen
>import sys
>
>class World:                          #Our main class
>  def __init__(self):                 #The initialization method caused when a
>                                      #world object is created
>
>    #Create some text overlayed on our screen.
>    #We will use similar commands in all of our tutorials to create titles and
>    #instruction guides.
>    self.title = OnscreenText(
>      text="Panda3D: Tutorial 1 - Solar System",
>      style=1, fg=(1,1,1,1), pos=(0.8,-0.95), scale = .07)
>
>    #Make the background color black (R=0, B=0, G=0)
>    #instead of the default grey
>    base.setBackgroundColor(0, 0, 0)
>
>    #By default, the mouse controls the camera. Often, we disable that so that
>    #the camera can be placed manually (if we don't do this, our placement
>    #commands will be overridden by the mouse control)
>    base.disableMouse()
>
>    #Set the camera position (x, y, z)
>    camera.setPos ( 0, 0, 45 )
>
>    #Set the camera orientation (heading, pitch, roll) in degrees
>    camera.setHpr ( 0, -90, 0 )
>#end class world
>
>#Now that our class is defined, we create an instance of it.
>#Doing so calls the __init__ method set up above
>w = World()
>#As usual - run() must be called before anything can be shown on screen
>run()
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-- 
  Andrew N. Harrington
  Computer Science Department      Undergraduate Program Director
  Loyola University Chicago        http://www.cs.luc.edu/~anh
  512B Lewis Towers (office)       Office Phone: 312-915-7982
  Snail mail to Lewis Towers 416   Dept. Fax:    312-915-7998
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