Python 3D Software Collection

Derived from a number of PyWeek entries, provides buttons, list-controls, layout tools, file dialogs, and other assorted "GUI" bits for use with Pygame-based games.

XML-editing GUI for tweaking Yafray data-files. Appears to call out to the Yafray renderer in order to provide various views within the application.

Full-featured tool with a rather non-standard interface (for those accustomed to main-line tools such as 3DSMax or Maya). Provides a free-software 3D Modeling/animation tool. Python scripting is extensive. Supports VRML97 output via a Python plug-in.

Kiva and Chaco were, at one point, part of SciPy, but they appear to have been dropped at some point. The CVS repository is still available.

Uses Twisted for networking and PyOpenGL for graphics

Interactive molecular graphics modelling platform. Seems to be cross-platform. Quite good according to Steve Ludtke.

The Python Computer Graphics Kit is a collection of Python modules that contain the basic types and functions to be able to create 3D computer graphics images. The kit mainly focuses on Pixar's RenderMan interface, but some modules can also be used for OpenGL programs or non-RenderMan compliant renderers like POV-Ray, for example.

Focussed on the needs of those creating Visual effects tools/toolchains. RIB (renderman) format support, Maya importers, image handling, UI controls.

Large, popular 3D engine which apparently provides Python bindings of some sort. Lots of nice features in the core engine.

A simplified interface to OpenGL and GLUT, but still very low-level, you're basically working with minimal wrappers around the OpenGL calls.

Utility library for loading .3ds files generated by the original 3DStudio and lots of other programs. Includes code for rendering the loaded models using PyOpenGL.

Interface to the 2D, 3D, and audio features of the Direct-X library from Microsoft. Includes support for loading .x meshes. Provides access to HLSL shaders and the like.

The project has been "frozen" for a very long time.

Project appears to be trying to create a generic 3D CAD system, the various demonstration scripts all appear to be in Python.

Extends Pyglet with convenient abstractions for commonly used advanced OpenGL features (GLSL, FBOs, etc.)

Attempts to provide a Tkinter-like 2D GUI using the cross-platform GLUT API. CVS repository seems to have been largely cleaned out and then the project abandoned.

glumpy is a fast-OpenGL based numpy visualization based on top of PyOpenGL and IPython (for interactive sessions) that allows for the fast vizualization of numpy arrays (mainly two dimensional). It had been designed with efficiency in mind and if you want to have a sense of what's going on in your simulation while it is running, then maybe glumpy can help you.

C++ engine with fairly extensive list of features and fairly high-quality screenshots. Python binding apparently "somewhere around the net", though other sources suggest that it's a built-in scripting API. Uses OpenGL or Direct3D for its rendering back-end. Has content loaders for e.g. Quake BSPs.

Write a simple Python script to output code for standard LEGO modellers. Appears to just do textual generation (i.e. doesn't model/display the code).

Apparently abandoned (inactive) project with a python binding marked experimental in early 2000

Game-focused 2D graphics engine providing accelerated operations for PyGame sprite-based games. Sprites are to 2D graphics engines as scenegraphs are to 3D graphics engine, (retained-mode method of drawing figures).

Produces models of humans by deforming a mesh with Python scripting API.

MayaVi is a free, easy to use scientific data visualizer. It provides a Tkinter GUI

Poetic form raytracer (short, elegant) that includes translations to a number of languages, has a shed-skin version that is many times faster than the pure-Python implementation. Reads in model definition files and kicks out image files. A radiosity/global-illumination renderer.

New project originally based on wxPython, now trying to generalise their API for use with other PyOpenGL-hosting GUI libraries.

Molecular viewer and editor using PyOpenGL.

Uses Panda or Ogre for rendering, Twisted for networking, ODE for physics. Server infrastructure with "portal" modelling to limit area-of-interest.

Built on top of VTK, TK/PMW GUI. Seems to be intended primarily for use by scientists who need to see time-dependent changes in datasets across the entire globe based on Lat/Long coordinate-indexed data-sets.

Currently Windows only, with support for other platforms planned. C++ engine with bindings to TCL/Tk and Lua currently.

OGRE is a fairly advanced Game-style engine. The Python binding has been resurrected and is now under active development and has apparently covered the bulk of the OGRE API.

ODE is an open source, high performance library for simulating rigid body dynamics. Has advanced joint types and integrated collision detection with friction. ODE is useful for simulating vehicles, objects in virtual reality environments and virtual creatures. Used in games, tools and simulations. Python binding is apparently quite usable.

GLEWpy aims to bring advanced OpenGL extensions to Python. This will allow the Python OpenGL developer to use features such as fragment and vertex shaders and image processing on the GPU. It serves as a compliment to PyOpenGL and toolkits such as GLUT and SDL (PyGame).

Built directly on top of PyOpenGL, OpenGLContext is a retained-mode rendering engine which demonstrates many of the most basic features desired by those building scenegraph engines. It is written primarily to provide a source of sample and testing code for the PyOpenGL library, but represents a fairly complete rendering engine.

Large C++ rendering engine with what looks to be a fairly large user base. Rendering quality is rather good judging from the screenshots. Uses OpenGL for it's rendering back-end. Rather minimal homepage for the Python wrapper.

C++ engine with Python bindings. Goals are to be: fast, powerful, easy to program, flexible, modifiable, long-lived, platform agnostic, and reprogrammable on the fly. Focus of the project is on the Python interface.

Pivy is a Coin binding for Python. Coin is a high-level 3D graphics library with a C++ Application Programming Interface. Coin uses scene-graph data structures to render real-time graphics suitable for all kinds of scientific and engineering visualization applications. Can be extended with PyOpenGL. Includes loaders for a number of common formats, including VRML97.

Interactive molecular and particle visualization Various visualization, plotting, and analysis tools for pre- and post-processing of molecular dynamics simulation data. Tools can be used via the command-line, Python scripting, or Tk GUIs.

Written with PyGame and PyOpenGL, doesn't seem to use the 3D effect for anything other than warping the 2D board. Seems to use textures for the individual tiles.

Textual generator for producing POVRay files from Python code. Written as a recipe in the Python cookbook. Includes sample code for a few scenes. All of the sample code I can see uses something akin to "immediate mode" in that it renders directly to the file, rather than creating a graph first and then rendering out to the file.

Project uses SSG via C++, not at the moment scriptable using Python, but has been in the past and plans to be in the future.

Appears to be focused on the production of scenes for use in university-level classes.

Provides a very simple API to render directly into a (Py)OpenGL context

Callback driven framework for generating Cg shaders.

Commonly used library for providing a PyOpenGL rendering context. Includes sprite-based animations, media playback, image loading, text-rendering, rich "surface" mechanism for compositing (non-hardware-accellerated, however), text rendering and the like. OpenGLContext provides a full PyGame context.

Collection of modules for use in writing games with PyGame, includes an OpenGL accelerated 2D drawing library, a scenegraph-based sprite engine, and some extensions to PyGame's drawing commands.

Pyglet is a Python-coded library which uses ctypes to produce a portable GUI/multimedia layer that lets you write games in an OpenGL-implemented engine. It includes full bindings for a C-style OpenGL library with most extensions. Pyglet is under active development, with new frequent new features and releases.

GLFW is a (C?) library which provides a cross-platform abstraction for system-level events such as window creation, mouse and keyboard interaction. PyGLFW is a binding for GLFW for Python.

Large research project written in C++ with Python either embedded in or embedding the engine. Focus appears to be on the creation of a single API usable across all platforms (at the C++ level).

2D Game development platform based on a C++ SDL sprite platform (not Pygame). Kyra includes toolchains for isometric art and the like.

Provides rich and simple interface for digital media manipulation( wav, mp3, ogg, avi, divx, dvd, cdda etc ). It includes parsing, demutiplexing, multiplexing, encoding and decoding. Cross platform.

PyMOL is a molecular graphics system with an embedded Python interpreter designed for real-time visualization and rapid generation of high-quality molecular graphics images and animations. Can also edit PDB files.

PyOpenGL provides access to the common immediate-mode libraries associated with OpenGL. It is a large SWIG-based wrapper available on most platforms in source or binary format.

SIP-based wrapper to a C++ class library providing 3D graphing of functions, data-sets and the like.

Provides simple mechanisms for generating stimuli for psychology experiments with bitmap and text manipulations. The primary goals are to provide for the busy scientist tools to control timing and windowing and a simple set of pre-packaged stimuli.

Cloud-based game engine under active development, targeting deployment in the near-term future.

This is the standard module used in Python for working with bitmapped images (JPEG, PNG, BMP, etceteras). Many of the 3D engines described here rely on PIL for their image-decoding (and encoding) operations.

Big old project that apparently has a (relatively new?) Python binding

Large AI/robotics project, lots of scientific tools where the visualisation component is just a small part of the total.

Project appears to have become moribund.

Game-focused 2D user interface library which can use OpenGL as its backend to provide acceleration using 3D hardware.

Basically a text editor with syntax highlighting Also has automatic insertion of common elements and property configuration. "In short WinPov for Linux"

Raytracer with what looks like a fairly extensive Python binding (with some limitations on the type of extending you can do with Python). Focus appears to be on "script" writing (similar to VPython) with nodes similar to those seen in any of the scenegraph engines.

Currently unmaintained, but has Python code for a lot of interesting tasks, such as rendering a subset of SVG in OpenGL and loading various 3D file formats. Appears to use wxPython as its GUI-hosting environment.

Provides a graphical interface for a particular modeling mechanism (CHILD) which simulates water flow patterns (such as streams and mudflows). Python interface to C++ visualization engine.

Academic focus on user-interface design. Uses OpenGL to render (2D) SVG graphics. Considered alpha quality.

Scientific Python is the first port-of-call for those wishing to use Python for any sort of scientific work. Among the large collection of code are numerous utilities which are useful when writing low-level 3D code. There is also some code for exporting VRML files (I believe version 1.0, however, not VRML97).

In summary, a conversion of ZOE to use PyGame for GUI operations instead of GLUT. PyOpenGL-based. Focus on wireframes and particle systems inherited from ZOE.

Appears to be an early project to produce a raytracer

Allows for creating animated graphics presentations using OpenGL and Python. This is AFAICT largely a research project, rather than an attempt to create a production-level tool. That said, may be suitable for various uses. This is not a PowerPoint application clone, it's a rendering engine for PowerPoint-style presentations (you must write code to generate presentations).

Built on top of PyOpenGL, Twisted and PyGame; a rather extensive-seeming engine for experimenting with OpenGL rendering.

Aims at providing a professional-level development platform for (GPL) 3D games. Impressive screenshots. Written in PyRex, uses Cal3D for character animation, ODE for physical simulation.

Focus on flexibility, clean design and ease of use (for coders). This is more properly a game engine, with a set of features apparently including, for instance, collision detection, physics simulation (using ODE), and a 3DSMax exporter. Rendering pipeline is GLSL-based with no legacy (fixed) pipeline.

At some point, had a Python binding, don't currently see any mention of it. This is a fairly large engine for creating games or game-like programs, includes a scenegraph engine, support for audio, UI, joysticks, that kind of thing.

Plugin to SketchUp which allows for Python scripting Under active development as of 2009-02

Utility library for loading .3ds files generated by the original 3DStudio and lots of other programs. Includes code for rendering the loaded models using PyOpenGL.

Fairly early project that seems to be focussing on ease-of-use for writing quick scripts to explore an idea. Integration with gstreamer and PyODE.

Originally part of OpenGLContext, TTFQuery builds on top of FontTools to provide a cross-platform mechanism which can read TTF Font files and extract from them the metrics required to render fonts in 3D (as is done in OpenGLContext). Also includes primitive font finding/matching code.

Lots of Python papers written about it. Molecular biology focus AFAICS. Quite good according to Steve Ludtke.

The Vision Egg is a high level interface between Python and OpenGL. In addition to methods for automatic generation of traditional visual stimuli such as sinusoidal gratings and random dot patterns, it has a number of functions for moving numeric data, images, movies, text, and 3D objects to and from your video card and allowing use of some of its features like perspective distortion. Written on top of PyOpenGL.

Vimes intends to provide tools to visualize molecules and materials, perform simple manipulations of the structures, input/output the structures to/from a variety of different file formats, and provide some tools for editing options for the input files for a some different applications..

Simple 3D scenegraph engine with focus on educational rendering. Large user community, novice friendly. Not really focused on cutting-edge rendering features or the like. Uses a simple C/C++ engine wrapped for use by Python.

VTK is a C++ retained-mode rendering engine with fairly complete Python bindings. It has quite a few mechanisms which attempt to make the process of visualising phenomena easier. Embeddable in wxPython.

PyOpenGL-based renderer for scientific data using scripting-friendly APIs.

Sub-collection of a larger set of Win32 scripting recipes which deals with CAD/CAM-related scripting. Scripts tend to be very short "Cookbook"-style snippets intended to be edited together to accomplish your task, rather than stand-alone products or processes. Licenses are not explicitly specified, but code is short enough and generic enough that likely could be considered fair use when using as a pattern in your code. Uses Mark Hammond's Win32 libraries for automation.

Not really a 3D library, just a library that tends to be used to host 3D contexts. OpenGLContext provides a full wxPython context built on the wxGLCanvas.

ZOE (formerly OGLE) is a very trivial OpenGL graphics engine, written entirely in Python. It's primary focus is rapid prototyping and experimentation, so it only supports the barest essentials, with focus on wire frames. Special emphasis is placed on particle systems (where non-interacting particles follow simple rules).