3d-simple

Very simple 3d engine in Python via Jupyter Lab

Scope

I've made this project for finding out if I could create a simple 3d engine from basically scratch purely based on what I know about 3d graphics and what my intuition tells me. Turns out: Yes, apparently I can.

⚠️ This 3d engine is neither complete nor optimized or production ready. Feel free to play around with it and have some fun.

What it does

This 3d engine

• renders objects consisting of arbitrary n-gons with flat colors and an outlines
• honors colors with alpha
• supports perspective
• tries to sort drawing order by z-depth of the faces
• supports arbitrary rotation via euler angles
• applies fuzzy dithering as an effect to simulate image noise
• applies line shifting as an effect to simulate VCR tracking artefacts
• supports very simple math based animations
• renders any nummber of frames into a gif

What it does not

This 3d engine does not

• load 3d model files
• shade faces based on light sources or normal direction (because it knows nothing about normals)
• render textures
• have optimized image effects for faster than realtime rendering of frames
• work well with extreme perspective values or coordinates in the far back
• have easily changeable parameters for a lot of things

What I would change

This project met my needs and I got some nice animations out of it that I will use as logo animations for my next personal website.

If I were to continue this project I would

• create a more robust data format, probably split into a list of vertices and a list of faces referencing vertices
• implement a more robust way to determine z-depth of a face
• implement vertex colors (optional)
• implement proper scaling or vertices based on depth so that they can't overshoot an arbitrary point but will shrink indefinitely the farther they are
• implement a proper camera system
• implement normal vectors for the faces to facilitate light based shading, fresnel shading and LUT based shading
• implement rotation via quaternions
• add keyframe based animation
• put all the parts that should be variable into a nice config object
• honestly … reimplement it in a more exeecution speed conscious programming laguage than Python (e.g. Rust)
• think hard about why anyone would want to have a generalized simple 3d rendering engine that renders purely CPU based in a world where every computer supports opengl in some way