As much as I like Unity, it's definitely getting to the point where i'm having to do enough custom implementation that it's putting a damper in my relevant iteration time. Don't get me wrong, i'm enjoying getting to dip my toes into other languages and features (learning P/Invoke has been pretty cool), but i feel like a Python based prototyping environment might get me a little further a little faster. More often than not, Python modules work in whatever your Python environment is, and I understand that's not a 1-to-1 comparison as Unity is not a pure .NET environment, but still...
So in my wanderings last night, I dug up a few different tools that seem like things I'll want to be diving into next. I went to bed super early, so I haven't spent a ton of time with alot of these resources, but enough to feel like these will all be useful in the future. Once i get done with this current demo cycle, I'm going to get out of Unityland and start writing standalone apps, just to get more practice writing big software projects. I feel like I'll have more flexibility in a pure python environment and I'll probably get more done faster. Props to my co-worker Chris for inspiring my search...
Modules/Libraries
Most of these provide the full suite of lower-level functionality you need for prototyping/building media applications (event loop processing, input management, etc), just import whatever else you need alongside them and you're good to go. Fair warning, some of these are NUI/MT specific, but then, that's really what I'm into these days. I gotta say it's also made me realize how much of a gadgetwhore I am, but man, I hate spending money on them, which is probably why i don't have one. That and it also makes me realize how much of a touch interface freak I am. I can't say I'm huge on gestures, but touch is cool. I actually found a fairly extensive list of game engines that would probably be make great generic event loop/input/rendering managers too, that's for another blogpost...
Python for AndroidI'm not 100% sure why i put this here but it seemed like a cool little aside. I only glanced over the docs a bit, so I can't make any recommendations, but I will say it's definitely more of a power tool than a ready to go development resource. More and more i keep finding reasons to want to get that Android device i keep threatening to get, but then i think, ugh, do i really want to spend money on another gadget? "Another", like i own a bunch of them already...
pygame and PyKinectI lumped both of these together because most of the PyKinect samples run on pygame anyway, altho nothing precludes you from using your event loop manager (heretoforth referred to as ELMs) of choice. While this isn't necessarily MT, if you want to get started with NUI prototyping, this is honestly the way I'd recommend going. The Kinect SDK is super easy to write code against, you'll be doing crazy things in no time.
VPythonAlright kids, gather around, and let me tell you a tale of POVRay...yes, I just dated myself horribly, but then, i'm constantly getting told that I'm too old for...certain people anyway, so i guess it is what it is. But really, that's about what we have here, even to the point where VPython lets you export to POVRay renderable files. How cool is that? Also includes its own version of IDLE, but I'm going to have to frown on that...
kivyFrom what I understand, this is the way to go for Python MT development. I found a few other options (PyMT, etc), but this seems to be the one everyone recommends. If you're an experienced pythonista or have an established development environment, you can skip some of the weird setup requirements and dive right in. Get started now and whip some cool stuff up for their next contest!
pyTUIONo discussion of MT development would be complete without including some TUIO bindings, so here you go! There are a few dependencies you might want to be aware of too (most notably reacTIVision), but once you've get everything down, this is another great way to get up and running with minimal hardware investment and setup. Make your own Reactable, actually, i've just hit on a plan...
Art IDEs
Sure you could sit in a coffee shop and write a book, but let's be honest, if any chick looks over your shoulder and sees you rockin some cool interactive art in one of these apps, there's an icebreaker. Show her your camera or other input device, get her to play around with it a bit and it's all over except for the part where you embarrass yourself horribly trying to ask her out...Probably better to just get a bunch of buddies together and rock some interactive art jams on your laptops, takes me back to the days of laptop jamming with Live. Or at least I think it would, i'll know more tomorrow, actually going to a group Processing session of sorts, should be fun. May even be the beginning of my social life...
Nodebox 2If you're a Maya or Houdini Tech Artist, or just an ICE freak, this one's for you. I actually came across Nodebox a while back, but got a sad panda because it was MacOS only, altho I suppose it would have been a good use for my still not very used Macbook Pro. But yeah, this is basically Processing with a hypergraph attached to it, how cool is that? And Python to boot, so it's like Maya, but light and stable...ish.
ShoebotShoebot is the best-ish of both worlds in that you can run it from its own IDE or you can import it into existing Python projects. It's also a...well, let's say derivative, for lack of a better term, of Nodebox, so most of the docs you find for one apply to the other. Not to down on the work of the Shoebot guys, it's a "derivative" like pyprocessing or pycessing are derivatives of Processing.
Additional Reading
A few last little tidbits to keep your head in the MT game, skip this if you're not interested in this sort of thing.
TxzoneAll sorts of really fun musings here, not much of a learning resource, but great for inspiration and keeping up with what all's out there for the MT pythonista...
Getting Started With MT Dev In PythonSome dated and slightly specific tutorials, but definitely great for a quick dip of your toes into the whole world of Python MT/NUI development.
I've got some pretty cool interactive art projects in the pipe right now, no ETA on any of them yet, but hopefully I'll be able to post some stuff up in the near future. Got some longer term "milestones", altho I'm not sure milestone is the proper term since they tend to equate to public releases or showings of some sort...Nothing like a little pressure.
check out panda3d, not the best, but it's got some cool stuff. shitty documentation last time i used it.
ReplyDeleteHehe yeah, true on the docs, but it's definitely got some great features. Going to put that one in my next post on Python game engines and the like...
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