OpenGLContext Documentation

This document collects OpenGLContext-specific documentation. The main PyOpenGL documentation collection includes links to both PyOpenGL and OpenGL documentation which will be of use to the OpenGLContext programmer as well.

OpenGLContext-Specific Documentation

There is little OpenGLContext-specific documentation at the moment. The most useful items are probably the rendering process description, and the pydoc-generated reference. The NeHe tutorial translations should be useful for beginning OpenGL programmers.

The Rendering Process -- The rendering algorithm(s), including the scenegraph traversal mechanism(s), used by OpenGLContext when rendering a scene
Using VRML97 -- Tutorial on using the (partial) VRML97 loader and the nodes it creates
OpenGLContext, ttfquery, and vrml pydoc -- Automatically generated documentation for the OpenGLContext , ttfquery and vrml packages
Structural Overview -- OpenGLContext's architecture and implementation
Rendering Text -- Overview of the Text and FontStyle scenegraph nodes, general notes regarding support of text in OpenGLContext
Using Numeric Python -- Overview of using Numeric Python within OpenGLContext (and PyOpenGL), with emphasis on the basics of Numeric Python, rather than PyOpenGL specifics.
NeHe Tutorial Translations -- OpenGLContext ports of NeHe's tutorials #1-8, with discussion of the differences between the original and the OpenGLContext version

1 -- Basic Context setup and operation
2 -- Drawing polygons with glBegin/glEnd and glVertex, introduces the Render customisation point
3 -- Adds colour to the previous tutorial
4 -- Adds glRotate-based rotation to previous, introduces the OnIdle customisation point
5 -- Draws "solids" (closed, multiple-face shapes)
6 -- Introduces texture-mapping, loading images with PIL and the OnInit customisation point
7 -- Shows mip-mapping and texture filtering, introduces the Lighting customisation point and the addEventHandler method
8 -- Shows simple blending (which is used for most OpenGL transparency), introduces the Background customisation point

OpenGL pydoc -- automatically generated documentation for the entire OpenGL package. Allows you to browse, for example, the extensions current supported (e.g. OpenGL.GL.ARB), and the functions wrapped

Sample Code (Where to Look)

The râison d'être (apologies for my rusty French) for OpenGLContext is to provide a platform for testing and sample code, so you'll find a lot of it lurking about in the project. In particular, you can find sample code for:

NURBs objects, including surfaces and curves, with trimming (scenegraph/nurbs.py)
Polygonal text

scenegraph/text/toolsfont.py (font rendering using OpenGL)
ttfquery package (font metadata and outline extraction)

Polygonal text using WGL (roughly derived from NeHe tutorial number 14) (scenegraph/tests/glprint.py)

GLU polygon tessellation (scenegraph/polygontessellator.py)
Polygon-sorting by screen depth (needed during transparent rendering passes)
Stencil-buffer-based shadow rendering (preliminary) (shadow sub-package)
Multi-texturing (tests/nehe6_multi.py)
Saving buffers to disk (screen capture) (tests/saveimage.py)
Select-buffer-based mouse interactions (tests/selectrendermode*.py)
Particle-systems (preliminary) (tests/particles_simple.py)
Generic node-rendering code, including background, light and viewpoint setup (rendervisitor.py)
Viewpoint manipulations (including Logo-like forward/backward/up/down/turn, and examine/orbit modes) (viewplatform*.py)
Various approaches to rendering simple geometry (tests/glarrayelement, tests/gldrawarrays, tests/gldrawarrays_string, tests/gldrawelements, tests/glinterleavedarrays, tests/glvertex)
Partial implementations of many VRML97 nodes, including IndexedFaceSet, IndexedLineSet, PointSet, Transform, Switch and Background (scenegraph package)
PIL-to-texture loading (texture.py)
Display-list management code (displaylist.py)