Today, let’s have some fun playing with perspective rendering in Python! My graphics package of choice is VPython:
<code>sudo apt-get install python-visual</code>
Suppose we want to represent a simple cubic lattice: Using the visual
package, we can create a collection of spheres at positions $(i,j,k)$ with $i,j,k = -L…L$.
from visual import sphere L = 5 R = 0.3 for i in range(-L,L+1): for j in range(-L,L+1): for k in range(-L,L+1): sphere(pos=[i,j,k],radius=R)
Resulting in this beautiful rendering:
But what if we want to change the color? Simply alter the last line:
<code>sphere(pos=[i,j,k],radius=R).color = color.blue</code>
Less atoms? Alter the value of L.
![]() |
L = 1 |
Same number of atoms with smaller radii? Alter the value of R.