Project

Before we can do anything with the framework we need to create a project. A project is simply a package containing a settings.py module and a manage.py entrypoint script. This is also required to run effect packages using runeffect.

This can be auto-generated using the demosys-admin command:

demosys-admin createproject myproject

This will generate the following structure:

myproject
└── settings.py
manage.py
project.py
  • settings.py is the settings for your project with good defaults. See Settings for more info.
  • manage.py is the entrypoint for running your project
  • project.py is used to initialize more complex project.

The project.py Module

The project.py module is the standard location to configure more complex projects. We achieve this by creating a class implementing BaseProject. This class contains references to all resources, effect packages, effect instances and whatnot so we can freely configure our project:

from demosys.project.base import BaseProject

class Project(BaseProject):
    effect_packages = [
        'myproject.cube',
    ]
    resources = []

    def create_effect_instances(self):
        # Create three instances of a cube effect that takes a color keyword argument
        # adding them to the internal effect instance dictionary using label as the key
        # Args: label, class name, arguments to effect initializer
        self.create_effect('cube_red', 'CubeEffect', color=(1.0, 0.0, 0.0))
        self.create_effect('cube_green', 'CubeEffect', color=(0.0, 1.0, 0.0))
        # Use full path to class
        self.create_effect('cube_blue', 'myproject.cube.CubeEffect', color=(0.0, 0.0, 1.0))

This project configuration is used when the run command is issued. For the project class to be recognized we need to update the settings.PROJECT attribute with the python path:

PROJECT = 'myproject.project.Project'

manage.py run will now run the project using this project configuration.

How you organize your resources and effects are entirely up to you. You can load all resources in the Project class and/or have effect packages loading their own resources. Resources dependencies for effect packages are always loaded automatically when adding the package to effect_packages (can be overriden by implementing the create_external_resources method.

The Project class also have direct access to the moderngl context through self.ctx, so you are free to manually create any global resource (like framebuffers) and assign them to effects.

The created effect instances can then be used by a timeline class deciding what effects should be rendered at any given point in time. The default timeline configured just grabs the first runnable effect it finds and render only that one.

Timers

Timers are classes responsible for controlling the current time. It simply reports the number of seconds as a float since effect rendering started. Timers also need to support pausing and time seeking so we can freely move around in the timeline.

This time value is passed through the configured timeline class and forwarded to each active effect through their `draw() method. We should assume time can move in any direction at any speed and suddenly jump forward and backwards in time.

The default timer if not specified in settings:

TIMER = 'demosys.timers.clock.Timer'

Standard Timers

You create a custom timer by extending demosys.timers.base.BaseTimer.

Timelines

A timeline is a project responsible for knowing exactly when an effect instance is active based on the reported time from a timer.

The current standard timelines are:

  • demosys.timeline.single.Timeline: Grabs a the single effect instance from your project rendering it
  • demosys.timeline.rocket.Timeline: The active status of each effect is decided by rocket

New timeline classes can be created by extending demosys.timeline.base.BaseTimeline.

Effects Package Organization

By default it’s a good idea to put effect packages inside the project package as this protects you from package name collisions and makes distribution of the project through Python Package Index simpler.

An exeption is when creating a reusable effect package in a separate repository. The effect package could for example be named demosys_postprocessing containing configurable effects doing various postprocessing techniques.

Note

We encourage you to share reusable effect packages on pypi and are planning add these links these in the project description on github. (Make an issue or PR)

manage.py

The manage.py script is an alternative entry point to demosys-admin that properly setting the DEMOSYS_SETTINGS_MODULE enviroment variable for your project. The main purpose of demosys-admin is to initially have an entry point to the commands creating a projects when we don’t have a manage.py yet.

By default manage.py sets your settings module to <project_name>.settings matching the default auto generated settings module. You can override this by setting the DEMOSYS_SETTINGS_MODULE enviroment variable before running manage.py.

Examples of manage.py usage:

# Create a new project
python manage.py createproject myproject

# Create effect inside a project
python manage.py createeffect myproject/myeffect

# Run a specific effect package
python manage.py runeffect myproject.myeffectpackage

# Run using the ``project.py`` configuration.
python manage.py run

# Run a cusom command
python manage.py <custom command> <custom arguments>

The manage.py script is executable by default and can be executed directly ./manage.py <arguments> on linux and OS X.

Effect Templates

A collection of effect templates reside in effect_templates directory. To list the available templates:

$ ./manage.py createeffect --template list
Available templates: cube_simple, empty, raymarching_simple

To create a new effect with a specific template

$ ./manage.py createeffect myproject/myeffect --template raymarching_simple

Note

If you find the current effect templates insufficent please make a pull request or report the issue on github.

Management Commands

Custom commands can be added to your project. This can be useful when you need additional tooling or whatever you could imagine would be useful to run from manage.py.

Creating a new command is fairly straight forward. Inside your project package, create the management/commands/ directories. Inside the commands directory we can add commands. Let’s add the command convert_meshes.

The project structure (excluding effects) would look something like:

myproject
└── management
    └── commands
        └── convert_meshes.py

Notice we added a convert_meshes module inside commands. The name of the module will be name of the command. We can reach it by:

./manage.py convert_meshes

Our test command would look like this:

from demosys.core.management.base import BaseCommand

class Command(BaseCommand):
    help = "Converts meshes to a more desired format"

    def add_arguments(self, parser):
        parser.add_argument("message", help="A message")

    def handle(self, *args, **options):
        print("The message was:", options['message'])
  • add_arguments exposes a standard argparser we can add arguments for the command.
  • handle is the actual command logic were the parsed arguments are passed in
  • If the parameters to the command do not meet the requirements for the parser, a standard arparse help will be printed to the terminal
  • The command class must be named Command and there can only be one command per module

The idea is to create modules doing the actual command work in the management package while the command modules deal with the basic input/output.