Ratcave

Nicholas A. Del Grosso and Anton Sirota at the Bernstein Centre for Computational Neuroscience recently published their new project called Ratcave, a Python 3D graphics library that allows researchers to create and 3D stimuli in their experiments:

Neuroscience experiments often require the use of software to present stimuli to a subject and subsequently record their responses. Many current libraries lack 3D graphic support necessary for psychophysics experiments. While python and other programming languages may have 3D graphics libraries, it is hard to integrate these into psychophysics libraries without modification. In order to increase programming of 3D graphics suitable for the existing environment of Python software, the authors developed Ratcave.

Ratcave is an open-source, cross-platform Python library that adds 3D stimulus support to all OpenGL-based 2D Python stimulus libraries. These libraries include VisionEgg, Psychopy, Pyglet, and PyGam. Ratcave comes with resources including basic 3D object primitives and wide range of 3D light effects. Ratcave’s intuitive object-oriented interface allows for all objects, which include meshes, lights, and cameras, can be repositioned, rotated, and scaled. Objects can also be parented to one another to specify complex relationships of objects. By sending the data as a single array using OpenGL’s VAO (Vertex Array Object) functionality, the processing of drawing much more efficient. This approach allows over 30,000 vertices to be rendered at a performance level surpassing the needs of most behavioral research studies.

An advantage of Ratcave is that it allows researchers to continue to use their preferred libraries, since Ratcave supplements existing python stimulus libraries, making it easy to add on 3d stimuli to current libraries. The manuscript also reports that Ratcave has been tested and implemented in other’s research, actively showing reproducibility across labs and experiments.

 This research tool was created by your colleagues. Please acknowledge the Principal Investigator, cite the article in which the tool was described, and include an RRID in the Materials and Methods of your future publications. Project portal RRID:SCR_021555; Software RRID:SCR_021599