Description

This projects features a 3D Rendering Engine that I have written using Python3 and Pygame (simple 2D graphics drawing library). It allows for the manipulation of points in 3 dimensional space. It was designed with the future use of creating a simple 3D game, and the code is written so that it is easy to utilize and understand from a high level perspective.

Github Repository

The Github repository can be found here

What does this project feature?

  • Render custom objects by vertices, poly lines (edges), and faces
  • Load and view .obj 3D files
  • Lighting/light source implementation
  • Perspective camera view
  • Object rotations and translations

Project Images

Rendering 3d object by vertices and lines

line-render.gif

Rending 3d object by faces (with light source)

face-render.gif

Key Components by File

  • vector3.py | Vector3

    • vector3.py features the Vector3 class. This is used (as the name implies) to represent a 3 dimensional vector. Nearly every 3 dimensional vertex is represented by an object of this class.
    • A Vector3 object stores its (x, y, z) values in a numpy array. This allows for faster mathematical operations to be used on the the values.

  • camera.py | Camera

    • camera.py features the Camera class. An object of this class represents a perspective camera, and is used to rotate and translate every existing vertex by its own rotation and position. It also converts the 3 dimensional point to a 2 dimensional cartesian plane that can be drawn on screen
    • The bulk of the math is computed within the orient_vector() method. It translates a point, then rotates it by the cameras current rotation, applies a projection matrix, perspective matrix, and then an offset matrix. The resulting point remains in (x, y, z) form, where ‘(x, y)’ can be drawn on the screen and ‘z’ is the depth from the from the front of the camera’s viewing angle.

  • environment.py | Environment

    • environment.py features the Environment class. An object of this class acts as the “3 dimensional space manager”. It is designed to help keep track of loaded 3D objects and meshes.
    • Add/remove objects, translate/rotate objects, etc
    • draw_object() is a method that calculates the position of points, lines, faces, and lighting and returns the values in an easy to draw format.

  • mesh.py | Mesh & MeshReader

  • mesh.py features the Mesh class. An object of this class stores a mesh (vertices, lines, faces) from a loaded .obj 3D object.

  • mesh.py features the MeshReader class. An object of this class can be used to read the raw data from .obj files and store them in a Mesh object.

  • main.py | Gui

  • main.py features the execution code and the Gui class. This class handles the pygame window and drawing mechanics.

Learning Resources