website/index/index_body.part

<!-- $Id: index_body.part,v 1.10 2005/04/29 00:50:31 paultcochrane Exp $ -->

<h1>Pyvisi - The Python Visualisation Interface</h1>
  
<hr class="top" />

<h2>Introduction</h2>

<p> 
Pyvisi is intended to be a generic, 
<a href="http://www.python.org">Python</a>-language-based generic
interface to many packages used in scientific visualisation. The idea is
that the user writes one set of code to plot a set of data (say), and then
can choose to use one of many "backends" or 
<a href="renderers.html">"renderer modules"</a> to actually 
perform the task of visualising the data.  For instance, one could use 
<a href="http://www.vtk.org">vtk</a> to visualise certain
kinds of three-dimensional data, but then for very high quality output, one
might wish to use <a href="http://www.povray.org">PovRay</a>, 
or <a href="http://www.renderman.org">Renderman</a> for the same data. 
With pyvisi, one
would have to change one line of code (that specifying the underlying
renderer for the visualisation) in order to use the relevant package. The
interface then goes off and handles all of the messy internal details about
dealing with that particular engine, leaving a consistent interface for the
user. It is intended that the software will have a good overall structure,
and API, in order that developers can reasonably easily add new backends to
the interface, and these can just be imported as modules in the usual way in
Python. The code is written in Python, and is therefore platform
independent, however, it is likely that it will run better on
Unix/Linux-based operating systems.  
</p>
<p>
The current version of pyvisi is: 0.1-pre-alpha-3, so it's still in its
infancy, however, the gnuplot renderer module has several features and is
quite usable.
</p>

1	cochrane	337	<!-- $Id: index_body.part,v 1.10 2005/04/29 00:50:31 paultcochrane Exp $ -->
2
3			<h1>Pyvisi - The Python Visualisation Interface</h1>
4
5			<hr class="top" />
6
7			<h2>Introduction</h2>
8
9			<p>
10			Pyvisi is intended to be a generic,
11			<a href="http://www.python.org">Python</a>-language-based generic
12			interface to many packages used in scientific visualisation. The idea is
13			that the user writes one set of code to plot a set of data (say), and then
14			can choose to use one of many "backends" or
15			<a href="renderers.html">"renderer modules"</a> to actually
16			perform the task of visualising the data. For instance, one could use
17			<a href="http://www.vtk.org">vtk</a> to visualise certain
18			kinds of three-dimensional data, but then for very high quality output, one
19			might wish to use <a href="http://www.povray.org">PovRay</a>,
20			or <a href="http://www.renderman.org">Renderman</a> for the same data.
21			With pyvisi, one
22			would have to change one line of code (that specifying the underlying
23			renderer for the visualisation) in order to use the relevant package. The
24			interface then goes off and handles all of the messy internal details about
25			dealing with that particular engine, leaving a consistent interface for the
26			user. It is intended that the software will have a good overall structure,
27			and API, in order that developers can reasonably easily add new backends to
28			the interface, and these can just be imported as modules in the usual way in
29			Python. The code is written in Python, and is therefore platform
30			independent, however, it is likely that it will run better on
31			Unix/Linux-based operating systems.
32			</p>
33			<p>
34			The current version of pyvisi is: 0.1-pre-alpha-3, so it's still in its
35			infancy, however, the gnuplot renderer module has several features and is
36			quite usable.
37			</p>
38