OpenGL in Python with Snow Leopard?

Question

I'm interested in playing around with OpenGL in Python. I've used OpenGL in C++ and Objective-C, but I don't have much experience in Python. I'm wondering if there's a good tutorial that works in Snow Leopard. I'd prefer to stay in 64-bit mode if possible, since I've heard 32-bit programs require loading a lot of extra 32-bit libraries.

I've already tried a PyOpenGL/wxPython tutorial. When I ran the code, it crashed with this message:

ImportError: /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/Extras/lib/python/wx-2.8-mac-unicode/wx/_core_.so: no appropriate 64-bit architecture (see "man python" for running in 32-bit mode)

It looks like there's a bug in wxPython that prevents it from working on a 64-bit system.

I also looked at Pyglet, but they have a similar issue. They provide a work-around (setting Python to 32-bit mode), but it doesn't look like they're going to fix it.

Finally, I looked at PyGLUT, but I think it's only for Windows.

Are there any other libraries that would let me access OpenGL and draw on the screen? Again, I'd prefer to stay in 64-bit mode, but if nothing works, I'll switch to 32-bit and try wxPython or Pyglet again.

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Edit: I've also tried PyGame. It depends on SDL which is broken in SL. I thought about trying to use Cocoa through PyObjc, but the Xcode Python application templates have been removed.

Answer 1

You could try pygame. Pygame is a python wrapper around SDL. According to their website they have Max OS X binaries. Here is a simple example of using pygame with OpenGL. Once you are able to create the window and handle events most OpenGL programming is just like it would be in C or C++, but with some added python goodness. For OpenGL a great tutorial is NeHe.

Answer 2

There's probably no good reason to avoid 32-bit mode. Unless your Python programs need to larger address space, of course.

Answer 3

Also when programing with OpenGL in python remember that Python datastructures can be rather slow when it comes to requirements for 3D graphics. PyGL developers for example recommend using ctypes for operations that concern graphics, since that way you can get enough performance for some complicated geometry with bareable FPS.

Answer 4

I've used PyOpenGL 3.0.0 quite successfully on Snow Leopard. It uses ctypes, so it should be making 64-bit calls if those libraries are available (and Snow Leopard's Python includes a 64-bit version). I haven't used the wxPython stuff with PyOpenGL so that's where you might be running into problems, but PyOpenGL also includes GLUT, which both run fine.