Quickstart

To use plantgl, run ipython as follows:

ipython --gui=qt

Warning The option --gui=qt is mandatory to display correctly into the plantgl viewer.

Import all modules:

from openalea.plantgl.all import *

Scene creation

The different PlantGL primitives are assembled into a scene graph object. To create such an object:

scene = Scene()

Create a shape

Some primitives can be instantiated with material properties. For example, a red cylinder:

c = Cylinder(1, 10)
color = Material(Color3(255,0,0),0,Color3(0,0,0),Color3(0,0,0),1,0)
shape = Shape(c, color)

See also: tutorial.md

Visualize the scene

This form can be added to the scene using the Viewer:

scene.add(shape)
Viewer.display(scene)

Output

The actual view can be saved into PNG format. Background color and grid can be set as follows:

Viewer.frameGL.setBgColor(255,255,200)
Viewer.grids.setXYPlane(True)
Viewer.grids.setYZPlane(False)
Viewer.grids.setXZPlane(False)
Viewer.frameGL.saveImage("_images/result.png")

{ width=”50%” }

Applying Algorithms

Several algorithms can be applied to the scene. For example, to calculate the scene bounding box:

bbc = BBoxComputer()
scene.apply(bbc)
boundingbox = bbc.result

Turtle Geometry

To easily assemble different shapes in an iterative way, turtle geometry was introduced in PlantGL. To use it, create a turtle object that will record the various drawing actions to produce a final representation. For example, to produce a torus:

turtle = PglTurtle()
for i in range(12):
    turtle.left(30).F(1)
scene = turtle.getScene()
Viewer.display(scene)

{ width=”40%” }