ovito

This module mainly provides the Scene class, which serves as a “universe” or context for all actions performed by a script. The scene object is accessible through the module-level ovito.scene variable. The scene manages a list of Pipeline objects, which will be visible in images and videos when rendering the scene through a Viewport. Futhermore, you can save the entire scene to a .ovito state file, which can be viewed in the graphical OVITO application or stored for later use.

ovito.scene

This module-level variable points to the global Scene object, which serves as context for all operations performed by the script. The Scene object represents the program state and provides access to the contents of the visualization scene:

import ovito

# Retrieve the output data of the pipeline that is currently selected in OVITO:
data = ovito.scene.selected_pipeline.compute()

ovito.version

A module-level attribute reprting the OVITO program version number (as a tuple of three ints).

ovito.version_string

Module-level attribute reporting the OVITO program version (as a string).

class ovito.Scene

This class encompasses all data of an OVITO program session (basically everything that gets saved in a .ovito state file). It manages the list of objects (i.e. Pipeline instances) that are part of the three-dimensional scene and which will show up in rendered images.

From a script’s point of view, there exists exactly one universal instance of this class at any time, which is accessible through the ovito.scene module-level variable. A script cannot create another Scene instance by itself.

property pipelines

The list of Pipeline objects that are currently part of the three-dimensional scene. Only pipelines in this list will display their output data in the viewports and in rendered images. You can add or remove a pipeline either by calling its add_to_scene() or remove_from_scene() methods or by directly manipulating this list using the standard Python append() and del statements:

from ovito import scene
from ovito.io import import_file

pipeline = import_file('input/simulation.dump')

# Insert the pipeline into the visualization scene.
pipeline.add_to_scene()
# It's now part of the 'scene.pipelines' list.
assert(pipeline in scene.pipelines)
# If needed, we can take it out again.
pipeline.remove_from_scene()

save(filename)

Saves the scene including all data pipelines that are currently in it to an OVITO state file. This function works like the Save State As menu function of OVITO. Note that pipelines that have not been added to the scene will not be saved to the state file.

Parameters

filename (str) – The output file path

The saved program state can be loaded again using the -o command line option of ovitos or in the graphical version of OVITO. After loading the state file, the pipelines list will contain again all objects that were part of the scene when it was saved. See also this section for more information.

property selected_pipeline

Returns the Pipeline that is currently selected in the graphical OVITO application, or None if no pipeline is selected. Typically, this is the last pipeline that was added to the scene using Pipeline.add_to_scene().

This field can be useful for scripts running in the context of the graphical OVITO application which want to perform some action on the currently selected pipeline, e.g. insert a new modifier.

ovito.enable_logging()

Calling this function at the beginning of a Python script enables activity logging for OVITO’s internal operations. When performing long-running operations, OVITO will print messages to stderr indicating the current activity, e.g. file reading and writing, modifier execution, or rendering.