VerseView is a fast and flexible toolkit for making high-quality visuals of phenomena in the Universe
Most animation and visualization tools are made for one of two things:
beautiful animations OR scientifically-accurate visuals
VerseView aims to do both
Workflow
Wherever possible, VerseView prefers API over GUI, keeping the elements that specify a visual in code, rather than in some magical combination of UI interactions and context menus
Visuals are created using Python and OpenGL, with a minimal UI to power interaction & rapid development
There is a Jupyter-Console embedded in the editor, which has full access to the scene, allowing you to probe the API, quickly debug, tweak colors and positions, and build out your visual rapidly.
Architecture
VerseView is built on top of the Python package ModernGL, which itself is built on top of OpenGL
There are three tiers of VerseView functionality, named after the layers of the Earth:
Core, Mantle, and Surface
- Core houses the Editor window, the Canvas, and a library of super fast JIT-compiled utility functions
- Mantle houses a bunch of visual primitives, lines, circles, dots, images, text, particles, and so on
- Surface holds more complex visuals, like a PlanetaryBody class which can visualize rocky planets like Earth or Mars, there's a Black Hole visual, Orbits in the Solar System, Spacecraft's orbit simulation, and so on
Availability
VerseView is available to Verse Patreon ($10/mo) subscribers, but the goal is to open source as soon as possible, and I'm working hard to stabilize the API and fix issues but I only have time to work on it during evenings and weekends away from client work & teaching
Patreon makes it increasingly possible for me to focus my full energy on VerseView, and Verse generally So if you want to get your hands on VerseView, and be a part of its open source release, subscribe to the Patreon and gain access to the code and community