Display triangles in 3D using Python

Question

Disclaimer: The context is a project I'm working on as part of my Master's degree. I guess it qualifies as homework.

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Introduction

(feel free to skip to the bottom line)

Curved 3D surfaces are commonly displayed as a large set of very small triangles. Each triangle has the following properties:

• 3 corners
• uniform color

Such that when they're all displayed together, you get the illusion of a smooth surface. This is similar to the way pixels of a uniform color are used to get the illusion of a smooth image.

My project involves generating and displaying all the triangles that make up a given surfaces. Assuming that I have code that generates a set of triangles, how can I display them?

The code that generates the set of triangles is in Python. I'd prefer to use Python to display the triangles, but I'm not picky.

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Bottom line

How can I display a triangle in 3D using Python, when the input is the coordinates of the 3 corners of the triangle.

Answer 1

Well, that depends, very much, like which OS you are using, do you need to be portable, etc.

But a generic answer is probably to use something like OpenGL, which is a portable API, and has Python bindings. http://pyopengl.sourceforge.net/

On Windows you can use Direct3D, but that isn't particularily portable, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is something special for OS X too.

Answer 2

EDIT: I misread your question. This is only for 2D:

You can use a wx.Canvas of wxpython or implement your application using pygame.

Answer 3

Here's an example integrating OpenGL with wxPython.

http://code.activestate.com/recipes/325392/