Attention

You are viewing PyUnity docs under the develop branch. As such, they are only applicable if you installed from source. Go to https://docs.pyunity.x10.bz/en/latest/ for the most recent release.

API Documentation

Information on specific functions, classes, and methods.

Subpackages

Submodules

Module contents


Version 0.9.0 (in development)

PyUnity is a pure Python 3D Game Engine that was inspired by the structure of the Unity Game Engine. It aims to be as close as possible to Unity itself. This does not mean that PyUnity are bindings for the UnityEngine. However, this project has been made to facilitate any programmer, beginner or advanced, novice or veteran.

Disclaimer

As we have said above, this is not a set of bindings for the UnityEngine, but a pure Python library to aid in making 3D games in Python.

Installing

To install PyUnity for Linux distributions based on Ubuntu or Debian, use:

> pip3 install pyunity

To install PyUnity for other operating systems, use:

> pip install pyunity

Alternatively, you can clone the repository here to build the package from source. Then use setup.py to build. Note that it will install Cython to compile.

> pip install .

The latest builds are on the develop branch which is the default branch. These builds are sometimes broken, so use at your own risk.

> git clone https://github.com/pyunity/pyunity
> pip install .

Its only dependencies are PyOpenGL, PySDL2, Pillow and PyGLM. Microsoft Visual C++ Build Tools are required on Windows for building yourself, but it can be disabled by setting the cython environment variable to 0, at the cost of being less optimized. GLFW can be optionally installed if you would like to use the GLFW window provider.

Importing

To start using PyUnity, you must import it. A standard way to import is like so:

>>> from pyunity import *

Debug information is turned on by default. If you want to turn it off, set the PYUNITY_DEBUG_MODE environment variable to "0". This is the output with debugging:

Loaded config
Trying GLFW as a window provider
GLFW doesn't work, trying PySDL2
Using window provider PySDL2
Loaded PyUnity version 0.9.0

If debugging is off, there is no output:

>>> import os
>>> os.environ["PYUNITY_DEBUG_MODE"] = "0"
>>> from pyunity import *
>>> # No output

Scenes

All PyUnity projects start with a scene. To add a scene, do this:

>>> scene = SceneManager.AddScene("Scene 1")

Then, let’s move the camera backwards 10 units.

>>> scene.mainCamera.transform.position = Vector3(0, 0, -10)

Finally, add a cube at the origin:

>>> cube = GameObject("Cube")
>>> renderer = cube.AddComponent(MeshRenderer)
>>> renderer.mesh = Mesh.cube(2)
>>> renderer.mat = Material(RGB(255, 0, 0))
>>> scene.Add(cube)

To see what you have added to the scene, call scene.List():

>>> scene.List()
/Main Camera
/Light
/Cube

Finally, to run the scene, call scene.Run(). The window that is created is one of FreeGLUT, GLFW or PySDL2. The window is selected on module initialization (see Windows subheading).

Behaviours

To create your own PyUnity script, create a class that inherits from Behaviour. Usually in Unity, you would put the class in its own file, but Python can’t do something like that, so put all of your scripts in one file. Then, to add a script, just use AddComponent(). Do not put anything in the __init__ function, instead put it in Start(). The Update() function receives one parameter, dt, which is the same as Time.deltaTime in Unity.

Windows

The window is provided by one of three providers: GLFW, PySDL2 and FreeGLUT. When you first import PyUnity, it checks to see if any of the three providers work. The testing order is as above, so FreeGLUT is tested last.

To create your own provider, create a class that has the following methods:

  • __init__: initiate your window and check to see if it works.

  • start: start the main loop in your window. The first parameter is update_func, which is called when you want to do the OpenGL calls.

Check the source code of any of the window providers for an example. If you would like to contribute a new window provider, then please create a pull request.

Environment variables

Here is a list of environment variables used by PyUnity:

  • PYUNITY_TESTING (default: unset) When set, the following features are either disabled or ignored:

    • Window provder selection

    • Audio

    • Font loading

  • PYUNITY_DEBUG_MODE (default: 1) Disables debug output if set to “0”. Debug output has the code |D| in the log file.

  • PYUNITY_AUDIO (default: 1) If set to “0”, sdlmixer won’t be loaded and config.audio is set to False.

  • PYUNITY_GL_CONTEXT (default: unset) Set when the OpenGL context is enabled. Usually not used except by wrapper scripts as Behaviours only update while a valid context exists.

  • PYUNITY_CHECK_WINDOW (default: 0) If set to “1”, forces window provider selection regardless if windowProvider is set in settings.json. If set to “0”, window provider selection is triggered only if windowProvider doesn’t already exist in settings.json.

  • PYUNITY_INTERACTIVE (default: 1) If set to “0”, window providing is disabled and scenes are run without any OpenGL rendering.

  • PYUNITY_SPHINX_CHECK (default: unset) Used by sphinx to fix some bugs that occur during documentation generation.

  • PYUNITY_CHANGE_MODULE (default: 1) Change the __module__ attribute of all imported objects to pyunity. If set to “0”, this is disabled.

Examples

Examples are located at subfolders in pyunity/examples so do be sure to check them out as a starting point.

To run an example, import it like so:

>>> from pyunity.examples.example1 import main
Loaded config
Trying FreeGLUT as a window provider
FreeGLUT doesn't work, trying GLFW
GLFW doesn't work, trying PySDL2
Using window provider PySDL2
Loaded PyUnity version 0.9.0
>>> main()

Or from the command line:

> python -m pyunity 1

The 1 just means to load example 1, and there are 9 examples. To load all examples one by one, do not specify a number. If you want to contribute an example, then please create a pull request.