A template project demonstrating the use of the Povray raytracer

Manuals and Assignments

• ###Installing and Configuring

  Guide for Installing and Configuring the software

  This short document describes how to get the required software (mainly, this Python package), configure it and run one of the included examples on the Bioinformatics computer network. At the bottom of the document is a section on how to do this on your own computer.

• ###Basic usage of PyPovray

  Basic Povray Simulation Example

  This document describes the most basic usage of the povray_simulation Python package that is provided for this course. This library is used to render (draw) objects and create images, animations and simulations using the Povray ray-tracer (http://www.povray.org).

• ###Pypovray Simulating - Part One

  Creating Simulations with pypovray; a simple animation

  Now that we have played a bit with positioning objects in 3D space, the next step will be animating objects in 3D space.

• ###Pypovray Simulating - Part Two

  Creating Simulations with pypovray; visualizing molecules

  In Development - manual and assignments for creating animations using complex molecules loaded from PDB files

• ###Povray Objects and Styling

  Povray Objects, Styling and other modifiers

  A summary showing an incomplete list of Povray objects that can be created using the pypovray project, how to apply different styles to these objects and some more advanced topics such as scaling, moving and rotating these objects. Most sections link to the official Povray documentation and other useful sources found online.

• ###PyPovray FAQ

  PyPovray Frequently Asked Questions

  A list of known issues with workarounds. Work in progress.

The pypovray project functions as a translation layer between Python- and Povray-code as shown in the images below, where:

• the pypovray library from this repository is used to configure the project (render settings, file locations) as well as PDB-file rendering and
• the Vapory library is used to translate the Scene constructed in Python code to actual Povray code.

These code snippets show a single Sphere object placed in a Scene combined with a Camera and LightSource:

Summary

To perform a clean install and use the template (NOTE: see the installation manual for a complete guide):

• Download the project using the Downloads link in the left-menu
• Extract the downloaded ZIP file
  • Open a terminal and go to the extracted folder
• Create a new Python virtual environment virtualenv pypovray_venv
  • Activate the venv: source pypovray_venv/bin/activate
• Install the required packages: pip install -r requirements.txt

The template.py and simulation.py scripts both produce movies taking six seconds (they an be looped). Running python template.py will create the output GIF movie file such as the one shown below.

The template_pdb.py file demonstrates the rendering of space-filled molecules originating from PDB files. The current version positions a molecule and rotates them on all axes resulting in the following output:

The simulation.py file has multiple arguments to render either an MP4 or GIF movie file or a single frame by supplying a timepoint (in seconds): python simulation.py --time 3.14 --mp4. Use -h to see its help. Demonstrating the output of simulation.py (low-quality GIF file):

The images/ folder contains the output images after running the files; these will be emptied at the next run. Note that when creating an MP4 file the program will fail if a file with the same name already exists, this is the default ffmpeg behaviour.