assimp/port/PyAssimp

PyAssimp Readme

A simple Python wrapper for Assimp using ctypes to access the library. Requires Python >= 2.6.

Python 3 support is mostly here, but not well tested.

Note that pyassimp is not complete. Many ASSIMP features are missing.

USAGE

Complete example: 3D viewer

pyassimp comes with a simple 3D viewer that shows how to load and display a 3D model using a shader-based OpenGL pipeline.

To use it, from within /port/PyAssimp:

$ cd scripts
$ python ./3D-viewer <path to your model>

You can use this code as starting point in your applications.

Writing your own code

To get started with pyassimp, examine the simpler sample.py script in scripts/, which illustrates the basic usage. All Assimp data structures are wrapped using ctypes. All the data+length fields in Assimp's data structures (such as aiMesh::mNumVertices, aiMesh::mVertices) are replaced by simple python lists, so you can call len() on them to get their respective size and access members using [].

For example, to load a file named hello.3ds and print the first vertex of the first mesh, you would do (proper error handling substituted by assertions ...):

from pyassimp import *
scene = load('hello.3ds')

assert len(scene.meshes)
mesh = scene.meshes[0]

assert len(mesh.vertices)
print(mesh.vertices[0])

# don't forget this one, or you will leak!
release(scene)

Another example to list the 'top nodes' in a scene:

from pyassimp import *
scene = load('hello.3ds')

for c in scene.rootnode.children:
    print(str(c))

release(scene)

INSTALL

Install pyassimp by running:

$ python setup.py install

PyAssimp requires a assimp dynamic library (DLL on windows, .so on linux, .dynlib on macOS) in order to work. The default search directories are:

• the current directory
• on linux additionally: /usr/lib, /usr/local/lib, /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu

To build that library, refer to the Assimp master INSTALL instructions. To look in more places, edit ./pyassimp/helper.py. There's an additional_dirs list waiting for your entries.