[Tutor] Difficulty Understanding Example Code for Blender Script

[Marc Tompkins]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 9:48 PM, Andrew Martin <amartin7211 at gmail.com>wrote:

> This code was part of a Blender script to build a 3d bar graph, so I don't
> know if understanding Blender is a prereq for understanding this code. The
> function is for the axis labels.
>
> def label(text,position,orientation='z'):
>     txt=Text3d.New('label')
>     txt.setText(text)
>     ob=Scene.GetCurrent().objects.new(txt)
>     ob.setLocation(*position)
>     if orientation=='x':
>         ob.setEuler(-pi/2.0,0,0)
>     elif orientation=='z':
>         ob.setEuler(0,0,pi/2.0)
>     print 'label %s at %s along %s' %(text,position,orientation)
>
>  I understand it for the most part except for the orientation part. I
> assume orientation is for the 3d text object, but how is it determined
> whether it is x or z?


I don't use Blender myself, so this will be a more generic, high-level
answer...

> def label(text,position,orientation='z'):
>
This definition specifies that label() takes two mandatory parameters - text
and position - and one optional parameter, orientation.  What makes
"orientation" optional is the fact that a default value is supplied:
"orientation='z'".  In other words, "orientation" is equal to "z" unless you
specify otherwise in your call to label().

Take a look at this section of the Python docs:
http://docs.python.org/tutorial/controlflow.html#more-on-defining-functions

Hope that helps...
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