Syphon for Python

Python wrapper for the Syphon GPU texture sharing framework. This library was created to support both the Metal backend and the deprecated OpenGL backend. It requires macOS 11 or above.

The implementation is based on PyObjC to wrap the Syphon framework directly from Python. This approach eliminates native wrapper and allows Python developers to extend the library as needed.

State of Development

• Syphon Server Discovery
• Metal Server
• Metal Client
• OpenGL Server
• OpenGL Client
• Syphon Client On Frame Callback

Usage

To install syphon-python it is recommended to use a prebuilt binary from PyPi:

pip install syphon-python

To run all the examples, please also install Numpy and OpenCV:

pip install numpy opencv-python

The following code snippet is a basic example showing how to share numpy images as MTLTexture with a SyphonMetalServer. There are more examples in examples.

import time

import numpy as np

import syphon
from syphon.utils.numpy import copy_image_to_mtl_texture
from syphon.utils.raw import create_mtl_texture

# create server and texture
server = syphon.SyphonMetalServer("Demo")
texture = create_mtl_texture(server.device, 512, 512)

# create texture data
texture_data = np.zeros((512, 512, 4), dtype=np.uint8)
texture_data[:, :, 0] = 255  # fill red
texture_data[:, :, 3] = 255  # fill alpha

while True:
    # copy texture data to texture and publish frame
    copy_image_to_mtl_texture(texture_data, texture)
    server.publish_frame_texture(texture)
    time.sleep(1)

server.stop()

Development

To develop or manually install the library, use the following commands to set up the local repository.

Installation

# clone the repository and it's submodules
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/cansik/syphon-python.git

# install dependencies
pip install -r dev-requirements.txt
pip install -r requirements.txt

# for some examples the following dependencies are needed
pip install numpy
pip install opencv-python

Build

Build the Syphon framework on your machine:

python setup.py build

Distribute

Create a wheel package (also runs build automatically)

python setup.py bdist_wheel

Generate Documentation

# create documentation into "./docs
python setup.py doc

# launch pdoc webserver
python setup.py doc --launch

About

MIT License - Copyright (c) 2024 Florian Bruggisser