Vapory 0.1.01

Installation

Vapory should work on any platform with Python 2.7+ or Python 3.

You first need to install POV-Ray. See here for the Windows binaries. For Linux/MacOS you must compile the source (tested on Ubuntu, it’s easy).

If you have PIP installed you can :

(sudo) pip install vapory

If you have neither setuptools nor ez_setup installed the command above will fail, is this case type this before installing:

(sudo) pip install ez_setup

Vapory can also be installed manually by unzipping the source code in one directory and typing in a terminal:

(sudo) python setup.py install

Getting started

In Vapory you create a scene, and then render it:

scene = Scene( camera = mycamera , # a Camera object
           objects= [light, sphere], # POV-Ray objects (items, lights)
           atmospheric = [fog], # Light-interacting objects
           included = ["colors.inc"]) # headers that POV-Ray may need

scene.render("my_scene.png", # output to a PNG image file
  width = 300, height=200, # in pixels. Determines the camera ratio.
  antialiasing = 0.01 # The nearer from zero, the more precise the image.
  quality=1) # quality=1 => no shadow/reflection, quality=10 is 'normal'

# passing 'ipython' as argument at the end of an IPython Notebook cell
# will display the picture in the IPython notebook.
scene.render('ipython', width=300, height=500)

# passing no 'file' arguments returns the rendered image as a RGB numpy array
image = scene.render(width=300, height=500)

Objects are defined by passing a list of arguments:

camera = Camera( 'location', [0,2,-3], 'look_at', [0,1,2] )

Keep in mind that this snippet will later be transformed into POV-Ray code by converting each argument to a string and placing them on different lines, to make a valid POV-Ray code

camera {
    location
    <0,1,0>
    look_at
    <0,0,0>
}

All the objects (Sphere, Box, Plane… with a few exceptions) work the same way. Therefore syntax of Vapory is the same as the syntax of POV-Ray. To learn how to use the different objects:

• Have a look at the scenes in the examples folder

• See the docstring of the different objects, which provides a basic example.

• See the online POV-Ray documentation which will give you all the possible uses of each object (there can be many !). This documentation is easily accessible from Vapory, just type `Sphere.help(), Plane.help() etc., it will open it in your browser.

• Finally, it is easy to find POV-Ray examples online and transcribe them back into Vapory.

class Camera(POVRayElement):
    """ Camera([type,]  'location', [x,y,z], 'look_at', [x,y,z]) """