Metadata-Version: 2.4
Name: quiltwright
Version: 0.8.0
Summary: Holographic output for Looking Glass displays: off-axis multi-view quilts from PyVista or POV-Ray scenes
License-Expression: BSD-3-Clause
License-File: LICENSE
Keywords: looking-glass,light-field,holographic-display,quilt,povray,pyvista,stereoscopy
Author: Eric G. Suchanek, PhD
Author-email: suchanek@flux-frontiers.com
Requires-Python: >=3.12,<3.14
Classifier: Development Status :: 4 - Beta
Classifier: Intended Audience :: Science/Research
Classifier: Intended Audience :: Developers
Classifier: Topic :: Multimedia :: Graphics :: 3D Rendering
Classifier: Topic :: Scientific/Engineering :: Visualization
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3.12
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3.13
Provides-Extra: molecules
Provides-Extra: video
Provides-Extra: viz
Requires-Dist: click (>=8.1.0,<9)
Requires-Dist: imageio-ffmpeg (>=0.4) ; extra == "video"
Requires-Dist: numpy (>=1.26)
Requires-Dist: pillow (>=10.0)
Requires-Dist: pypdb2pov (>=0.1.1) ; extra == "molecules"
Requires-Dist: pyvista (>=0.44) ; extra == "viz"
Project-URL: Documentation, https://github.com/suchanek/quiltwright/tree/main/docs
Project-URL: Homepage, https://github.com/suchanek/quiltwright
Project-URL: Issues, https://github.com/suchanek/quiltwright/issues
Project-URL: Repository, https://github.com/suchanek/quiltwright
Description-Content-Type: text/markdown

<p align="center">
  <img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/suchanek/quiltwright/v0.8.0/assets/logo_pack/quiltwright_logo_512.png" alt="Quiltwright" width="512"/>
</p>

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[![DOI](https://img.shields.io/badge/DOI-10.5281%2Fzenodo.21798503-blue.svg)](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21798503)

**Quiltwright** -- holographic output for scientific visualisation.

*Eric G. Suchanek, PhD -- Flux-Frontiers*

Quiltwright is the last stage of a scientific rendering pipeline -- any
pipeline that ends in a scene. It takes what you already have, whether that is
a PyVista or VTK scene built in memory, a POV-Ray scene on disk, or a `.pov`
file written thirty years ago by someone who is no longer around to explain
it, and puts it on holographic hardware in glasses-free depth. Nothing is
rewritten to get there: a POV-Ray scene is ray-traced unmodified, with a
camera appended per view.

It is used that way by [WaveRider](https://github.com/Flux-Frontiers/waverider)
for geometric ML manifolds and by
[pypdb2pov](https://github.com/Flux-Frontiers/pypdb2pov) for molecular
structures, but neither is a prerequisite. If you can render it, you can hang it in the air.

![Eric's Science Museum, the canonical POV-Ray render](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/suchanek/quiltwright/v0.8.0/gallery/museum.png)

*A career in structural biophysics, arranged as exhibits: B-DNA and Z-DNA
under bell jars, Ras and my original **DNA Under Glass** on the walls. The molecular
models were generated by pdb2pov in 1997; the room dates to 1995. Quiltwright
ray-traces it into a 48-view light-field quilt for Looking Glass light-field
panels, or into 2-D video for Hololuminescent displays. A third output -- a
23-view sweep for LitiHolo's desktop hologram printer -- is in development.*
[About the image](docs/about-the-image.md)

---

## Latest news

**v0.8.0 (2026-08-24).** A standard museum vitrine -- a stone plinth under a
bell jar, lit like an exhibit -- now hosts any molecule at all on one camera
and one depth budget, normalised to the enclosing radius `pdb2pov` already
writes into every file. `quiltwright cartoon` closes a gap open since 1993:
Richardson cartoons through the same object-only contract as atoms and bonds,
built on a new `mesh2` primitive in povgen and a coalescer that turns PyMOL's
one-mesh-per-triangle output (75,792 meshes on OmpF) into one mesh POV-Ray can
parse quickly. `scripts/make_exhibit.py` runs the whole pipeline -- fetch,
convert, compose, render, sweep -- in one command, and the `molecules` extra
(`pip install "quiltwright[molecules]"`) now resolves straight from PyPI.

_Full history: [CHANGELOG.md](CHANGELOG.md) and
[releases](https://github.com/suchanek/quiltwright/releases)._

---

## What it's for

```
     scene sources                  quiltwright                  outputs

  PyVista / VTK  -----+        +------------------+        +-->  LFD  light-field panels
   (WaveRider, TVB)   |        |  off-axis views  |        |          multi-view quilts
                      +------->|  depth budget    |------->+-->  HLD  hololuminescent
  POV-Ray  -----------+        |  quilt assembly  |        |          2-D video
   (pypdb2pov, PyMOL)          |  view sweeps     |        +-->  LitiHolo  hogel sweeps
                               +------------------+                       (in development)
```

**Two backends, not two pipelines.** `render_quilt()` sweeps any PyVista/VTK
scene held in memory. `render_pov_quilt()` ray-traces any POV-Ray scene on
disk, appending a camera per view and modifying nothing -- which is what lets
it render files written decades ago, by tools that no longer exist, without
altering them. The two converge at a shared, renderer-agnostic assembler, so
everything downstream remains indifferent to which backend produced the views.

What feeds the backends is open. WaveRider's voxel and manifold visualiser and
pypdb2pov's PDB conversion are the two that drove the design, but
`quiltwright.tvb_data` pulls real brain geometry from
[The Virtual Brain](docs/tvb-data.md), PyVista's own example datasets work
as-is, `quiltwright.povgen` writes POV-Ray from analytic primitives, and a
plain `.pov` file off your disk needs no pipeline at all.

**Two display technologies.** *Light-field displays* (LFD -- Portrait, Go,
16"/27"/32"/65") are lenticular panels that consume **quilts**: N views of the
same scene tiled into one image, fused optically into real depth.
*Hololuminescent displays* (HLD -- 16"/27"/86") play **ordinary 2-D video**
behind a fixed holographic optic and require styling rather than parallax:
dark field, high contrast, generous safe margins. `quiltwright.lfd` targets the
first; `quiltwright.hld` the second.

The shared middle is what makes this a package rather than two scripts: quilt
geometry and device presets, depth-budget arithmetic that decides whether a
scene will fuse before you spend an hour rendering it, filename conventions the
Looking Glass software parses, video encoding, and direct Bridge control.

**A third output, under development.** That middle layer also serves consumers
that are not panels at all: `render_pov_views()` writes the sweep as separate
frames, and `sweep_spec()` / `LITIHOLO_SWEEP` provide the single-row layout a
hologram printer's view count requires -- a structure a quilt grid cannot
express -- so one scene feeds a light-field panel and a hologram printer without
being rebuilt. Nothing has yet passed through a printer's software, so the
claim is a sweep matching LitiHolo's published specification rather than
verified compatibility;
[docs/lfd.md](docs/lfd.md#view-sweeps--when-the-consumer-is-not-a-panel)
records what remains open.

### The part that is easy to get wrong

Each view must use an **off-axis (asymmetric-frustum) projection**: the camera
slides sideways while continuing to face the same direction, with the image
plane sheared back onto the original view axis.

The intuitive alternative is to swivel each camera to keep the subject centred.
This "toe-in" approach introduces vertical parallax and keystone distortion, so
the display cannot fuse the views: you get ghosting instead of depth. It is the
single most common way light-field renders go wrong, and it produces output
that looks perfectly plausible in any individual frame. Quiltwright implements
the off-axis projection correctly in both backends and provides the arithmetic
to predict whether a scene will fuse.

---

## Install

```bash
pip install quiltwright                 # core: quilt geometry + Bridge control
pip install "quiltwright[viz]"          # + PyVista/VTK rendering backend
pip install "quiltwright[molecules]"    # + PDB and mmCIF, via pypdb2pov
```

The POV-Ray backend needs a `povray` binary on `PATH` rather than a Python
package:

```bash
brew install povray                  # macOS
```

For the complete stack -- renderers, ffmpeg, Looking Glass Bridge, pypdb2pov --
see the [installation guide](docs/install.md).

---

## Quick start

### From a PyVista scene

```python
import pyvista as pv
from quiltwright import QUILT_PRESETS, render_quilt, save_quilt

p = pv.Plotter(off_screen=True)
p.add_mesh(pv.ParametricTorus())

spec = QUILT_PRESETS["portrait"]
save_quilt(render_quilt(p, spec), "torus", spec)   # -> torus_qs8x6a0.75.png
```

### From a POV-Ray scene

The scene file is never modified -- each view wraps it with `#include` and
appends one camera.

```python
from quiltwright import QUILT_PRESETS, PovCamera, render_pov_quilt, save_quilt

camera = PovCamera(location=(15, 20, 6), look_at=(44, 19.2, 45.1), fov=53.13)
spec = QUILT_PRESETS["16-landscape"]
quilt = render_pov_quilt("pov-scenes/museum/museum.pov", spec, camera,
                         include_paths=["pov-scenes/myinclude", "pov-scenes"])
save_quilt(quilt, "museum", spec)
```

A 2026 cut of the museum, `museum_2026.pov`, is composed for the panel rather
than for paper: 16:9, the oval mirror where the Risedronate picture hung, and
both pedestals moved inward to flank the alcove. The 1999 original is
untouched beside it.

The museum scene above ships in [pov-scenes/](pov-scenes/), and
[scripts/render_museum_hologram.py](scripts/render_museum_hologram.py) renders
it end-to-end with a measured depth budget -- the worked case study in
[docs/povray.md](docs/povray.md), and the scene itself in
[docs/about-the-image.md](docs/about-the-image.md).

Two more scene trees ship alongside it -- the bell-jar DNA still lifes the
museum's pedestals were built from, and porin's beta-barrel over water. What is in
each, and how to render them directly, is in
[pov-scenes/README.md](pov-scenes/README.md).

### Send it to the display

```python
from quiltwright import cast_quilt, pause_quilt, resume_quilt, stop_quilt

cast_quilt("museum_qs8x6a1.77778.png", spec)   # needs Looking Glass Bridge >= 2.2
```

`save_quilt` takes the array and `cast_quilt` takes a path, and mixing them up
only surfaces minutes into a ray-traced render. `save_and_cast_quilt` composes
the two in the right order, and returns a failed cast rather than raising, so a
Bridge that isn't running never costs you the render:

```python
from quiltwright import save_and_cast_quilt

path, error = save_and_cast_quilt(quilt, "museum", spec)
```

Saved filenames carry the `_qs<cols>x<rows>a<aspect>` suffix that Looking Glass
Studio and Bridge parse, so playback settings are detected automatically.

### Send it to a hologram printer (in development)

A printer wants the views as **separate frames**, not tiled, and LitiHolo's
published input specification asks for 23 of them per hogel -- a prime count, so
no `columns × rows` grid can express it. `LITIHOLO_SWEEP` is that single-row
spec, and the camera sweep behind it is the same off-axis geometry a quilt is
built from:

```python
from quiltwright import LITIHOLO_SWEEP, format_depth_budget, render_pov_views

print(format_depth_budget(LITIHOLO_SWEEP, camera, {"near": 31, "far": 96}))

paths = render_pov_views("pov-scenes/museum/museum.pov", LITIHOLO_SWEEP,
                         camera, "sweep/",
                         include_paths=["pov-scenes/myinclude", "pov-scenes"])
# -> sweep/view000.png ... sweep/view022.png, view 0 leftmost
```

Print the budget first rather than after. 23 views over 45° is **2.05° between
adjacent views** against a Portrait quilt's 0.74° -- about 2.75× coarser sampling,
so a sweep has *less* margin than a quilt, not more. The museum, framed as
above, reports ~43 px of adjacent-view disparity at that cone: far past the
~8 px ghosting threshold, and exactly the sort of thing worth learning before
the ray-tracer starts rather than after.

This path is POV-Ray only for now, and no file has been through the printer's
software: what it emits is a sweep matching the published specification, which
is a narrower claim than compatibility. The two open questions -- whether a hogel
slicer expects off-axis frusta or a toe-in arc, and whether 2.05° is too coarse
-- are written up in
[docs/lfd.md](docs/lfd.md#what-this-does-and-does-not-establish).

---

## Driving it from the shell

Two things sit around the library: a `Makefile` for the bundled 1993-99
scenes, and a CLI for the stage after the assembler, which does not care what
produced the quilt. The full tour -- every target, the parallelism model, run
reports, and what each CLI command is for -- is [docs/shell.md](docs/shell.md).

```bash
make gallery                    # every reference still -> gallery/
make quilts                     # every bundled quilt, measured budgets dialled in
make preview-museum             # quarter-size, for iterating on composition

quiltwright cast renders/quilts/bell-jar-holo_qs8x6a1.77778.png
quiltwright bridge status       # is Bridge actually able to draw?
quiltwright weave ... && quiltwright wallpaper ...   # the no-Bridge path
quiltwright cartoon 2omf.cif.gz ompf_cartoon.inc     # molecular ribbon, via PyMOL

python scripts/make_exhibit.py 7AHL --quilt          # fetch -> convert -> render
```

Worth knowing before the details:

- **Renders never take the whole machine.** `RENDER_THREADS` defaults to
  `ncpu - 2`; override it deliberately.
- **Preview first.** A quarter-size quilt costs seconds per view and prints
  the same depth budget the full render will use.
- **Every full quilt writes a provenance report** to `renders/reports/` --
  scene hash, commit, camera, measured depths -- because the quilt itself is a
  gitignored 25-40 MB PNG that says nothing about where it came from.
- **`make_exhibit.py` fetches into `$PDB`** (default `~/pdb`), and nothing
  already there is fetched twice.
- **When the glass stays black, run `bridge status` first.** Bridge keeps
  answering HTTP after crashing internally, so a cast can report success
  against a daemon that will never draw.

---

## The depth budget

Whether a hologram fuses comes down to **adjacent-view disparity**: how far a
feature moves between neighbouring views. Roughly 4-5 px is the practical
ceiling; past ~8 px, hard edges ghost. Quiltwright gives you the arithmetic
before the render:

```python
from quiltwright import QUILT_PRESETS, focal_distance_for_range, view_disparity

focal = focal_distance_for_range(near=31, far=96)       # harmonic mean, not midpoint
view_disparity(QUILT_PRESETS["16-landscape"], fov=53.13,
               focal_distance=focal, depth=31)          # -> px between adjacent views
```

The results worth knowing before you frame a shot -- each derived and worked
through in [docs/povray.md](docs/povray.md):

- **Content at the focal plane has zero disparity** -- it is welded to the glass.
- **The focal plane belongs at the harmonic mean** of the measured depth range,
  not the midpoint; near content is the expensive side.
- **A narrower field of view increases disparity.** The widely repeated
  "use ~14 degree FOV" advice is specific to object-centric scenes; applied to
  an interior it makes ghosting worse.
- **Interiors have a fourth trap no arithmetic warns about**: the camera sweep
  physically travels sideways, and in a room that path can run through a wall.
  Measure the corridor --
  [sweep clearance](docs/povray.md#3-sweep-clearance--the-constraint-peculiar-to-interiors).
- **The depths themselves are measured, not guessed** --
  [scripts/measure_depth_range.py](scripts/measure_depth_range.py) sweeps an
  opaque plane along the view axis and reports where content actually begins
  and ends.

---

## Supported devices

`QUILT_PRESETS` carries the official quilt settings for Portrait, Go, and the
16"/27"/32"/65" panels in both orientations. The 16" Gen3 Landscape entry is
verified against what Bridge reports for real hardware.

```python
from quiltwright import QUILT_PRESETS
QUILT_PRESETS["16-landscape"]      # 8x6 views, 7680x4320, aspect 1.7778
```

---

## Documentation

| Document | Contents |
|----------|----------|
| [docs/install.md](docs/install.md) | Installing the full stack: package extras, POV-Ray, ffmpeg, Bridge, pypdb2pov |
| [docs/shell.md](docs/shell.md) | Driving it from the shell: every make target, the parallelism model, run reports, and the CLI command by command |
| [docs/lfd.md](docs/lfd.md) | Light-field output, Bridge/Studio setup, device presets, the PyVista path, view sweeps for hologram printers |
| [docs/pyvista-datasets.md](docs/pyvista-datasets.md) | PyVista dataset ideas for holograms: topography, the Allen mouse brain atlas, other strong-depth candidates |
| [docs/tvb-data.md](docs/tvb-data.md) | Brain geometry from The Virtual Brain: cortical surfaces, connectomes, parcellations, downloaded on demand |
| [docs/povray.md](docs/povray.md) | The POV-Ray backend: off-axis camera derivation, depth budget, sweep clearance, a worked case study |
| [docs/povgen.md](docs/povgen.md) | Writing POV-Ray scenes from analytic primitives, so a scene composed in Python can be ray-traced rather than rasterised |
| [docs/pov-workflow.md](docs/pov-workflow.md) | The procedure: taking an archive scene from "won't parse" to a quilt that fuses, step by step |
| [docs/pdb2pov.md](docs/pdb2pov.md) | Rendering molecular structures as holograms with pypdb2pov, from the shell or in-process |
| [docs/hld.md](docs/hld.md) | Hololuminescent Displays, which play ordinary 2-D video rather than quilts |
| [docs/about-the-image.md](docs/about-the-image.md) | The museum scene: what is on display, and the thirty-year pipeline behind it |
| [docs/gallery.md](docs/gallery.md) | Every image in `gallery/`, which scene made it, and the aspect each must be rendered at |

---

## Testing

```bash
pip install -e ".[viz]" && pip install pytest
pytest
```

Rendering tests skip cleanly on machines with no OpenGL stack, and the POV-Ray
tests skip when no `povray` binary is present. Under a headless CI runner, use
`xvfb-run -a pytest` to exercise them.

---

## The pipelines this serves

- [WaveRider](https://github.com/Flux-Frontiers/waverider) -- manifold-aware
  geometric ML. Its voxel and manifold visualiser builds the PyVista scenes
  that `render_quilt()` sweeps.
- [pypdb2pov](https://github.com/Flux-Frontiers/pypdb2pov) -- PDB and mmCIF to
  POV-Ray, and the converter this pipeline actually calls. It reads mmCIF and
  compressed input, ships the atom textures inside the package, and imports,
  so a conversion and a quilt render fit in one script. Its scenes are
  byte-identical to those of
  [pdb2pov](https://github.com/suchanek/pdb2pov), the 1993 C original that
  produced the molecular models in the image above and still builds from a
  fresh clone.
- [proteusPy](https://github.com/suchanek/proteusPy) -- protein disulfide bond
  analysis and rendering.

## Citation

If you use Quiltwright in your work, please cite it. Citation metadata is in
[CITATION.cff](CITATION.cff); GitHub's "Cite this repository" button generates
BibTeX/APA from it, and the DOI badge above resolves to the archived release
on Zenodo.

```bibtex
@software{suchanek_quiltwright,
  author  = {Suchanek, Eric G.},
  title   = {Quiltwright: Holographic Output for Looking Glass Displays},
  url     = {https://github.com/suchanek/quiltwright},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.21798503},
  version = {0.8.0},
  year    = {2026}
}
```

## License

BSD 3-Clause. See [LICENSE](LICENSE).

