Pardhav Maradani PardhavMaradani

This document lists learnings from explorations and prototyping of MDAnalysis GSoC 2025 - Project 4: Better interfacing of Blender and MDAnalysis

Viewport rendering uses opengl (bpy.ops.render.opengl is the call)
- opengl context is not setup in the background (-b) mode, which is the same when using the bpy module in headless mode
- The only way to get a viewport rendering (or anything opengl related) in background mode is to save the file and launch it with Blender in the regular GUI mode and run a script (with the -P parameter) to generate the render output
  - Blender can be launched with the --no-window-focus param to not show up in the foreground and -p 0 0 0 0 to set the window parameters to minimum
To ensure the script runs after the file is loaded, bpy.app.handlers.load_post handler has to be used

This is a quick PoC of a MolecularNodes API that allows different styles based on MDAnalysis selection strings using a single Blender object that represents a universe. This is to support the discussion in issue #5 and issue #11 of ggmolvis.

Copy / Install the mn_api.py file to the Blender's script/addons directory or execute from Blender's Text Editor
In Blender's Python Console run to verify this module can be loaded

import mn_api

Here are the API calls that match the ggmolvis example:

This gist has instructions and code for the Visualization of MDAnalysis results in Blender discussion.

Basic Annotations
Density Visualization
Pore Visualization

Basic Annotations

Copy / Install the bmda.py file to the Blender's script/addons directory or execute from Blender's Text Editor

	#include <algorithm>
	#include <cstring>
	#include <climits>
	#include <vector>
	#include <map>
	#include <set>
	#include <bitset>

	using namespace std;

	# https://pardhav-m.blogspot.com/2020/08/auto-generated-mandalas.html
	# https://trinket.io/embed/python/8dffbb47db
	# Auto Generated Mandalas
	# Random Walker
	import math
	import turtle
	from slider import Slider
	from line_clip import cohensutherland
	import time
	import random

	# https://pardhav-m.blogspot.com/2020/07/interactive-mandalas.html
	# https://trinket.io/embed/python/91d2965689
	# Interactive Mandalas
	# Mandala Creator
	import json
	import math
	import turtle
	from slider import Slider
	from line_clip import cohensutherland

	# https://pardhav-m.blogspot.com/2020/07/interactive-voronoi.html
	# https://trinket.io/embed/python/17e4c5d950
	# Interactive Voronoi
	# Voronoi Points
	import turtle
	from Voronoi import Voronoi

	# seeds
	g_seeds = []

	# https://pardhav-m.blogspot.com/2020/07/voronoi-whirls.html
	# https://trinket.io/embed/python/25fa0c9d1a
	# Voronoi Whirls
	# Basic Vornoi
	import turtle
	import random
	import time
	from Voronoi import Voronoi
	from voronoi_helpers import get_voronoi_polygons

	# https://pardhav-m.blogspot.com/2020/07/sliders.html
	import turtle

	# register square thumb shape
	thumb_size = 7
	screen = turtle.Screen()
	screen.register_shape('thumb', ((-thumb_size, -thumb_size), (thumb_size, -thumb_size), (thumb_size, thumb_size), (-thumb_size, thumb_size)))

	# Slider Class
	class Slider(turtle.Turtle):

	# http://pardhav-m.blogspot.com/2020/06/bezier-curve-animations.html
	# https://trinket.io/embed/python/99a4c5990a
	# https://pardhav-m.blogspot.com/2020/06/bezier-curve-animations.html
	# Bezier Curve Animation
	# Bezier Curves
	import turtle
	import random
	import math
	import time