1. Introduction

The Python Computer Graphics Kit is a generic 3D package that can be useful in any domain where you have to deal with 3D data of any kind, be it for visualization, creating photorealistic images, Virtual Reality or even games.

At its lowest level, the package provides the basic functionality that is useful for writing your own tools that process 3D data. For example, the cgtypes module defines the fundamental types for Computer Graphics such as vectors and matrices, the ri module contains the complete RenderMan API to create RIB files, and so on. Chapter 4 documents all of these generic modules.

Using these relatively low level modules the second level provides the functionality to store a 3D scene in memory. This is the major part of the package and this actually turns the general purpose language Python into a specialized scripting language like MEL or MaxScript, for example.

Eventually, the package provides small tools that let you actually see your 3D scene. The two standard tools are for interactive rendering using OpenGL and for offline rendering using a RenderMan renderer.