ManimCommunity/manim

Investigate replacement of skia-pathops

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#3529 opened on Dec 14, 2023

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good first issuenew feature

Description

Based on #3456 I am opening a new issue as suggested.

A small summary follows:

  1. We have no control on Skia as it is a google tool and google is famous to drop its own products
  2. Skia supports only 2D animation,
  3. We use only a tiny part of Skia, namely we use it only for bool operation (which to me feels like to kill a fly with a cannon)

Perhaps, if we want support only 2D for boolean operations, we may think to rely on a simpler tool with less dependencies and for which we could have some control, like svgpathtools but I feel that it requires some "in-house" work that may take some time (I honestly see this as a good MsC thesis work for some student).

Alternatively this one seems to stand-out: Pyclipr is a Python library offering the functionality of the Clipper2 polygon clipping and offsetting library

Angus Johnson - Clipper2 https://github.com/drlukeparry/pyclipr

And here for a 3D-library

https://lukeparry.uk/pycork-a-boolean-csg-library-for-python/ https://github.com/elalish/manifold

(the latter is also suggested in the description of the former and it has python bindings).

Contributor guide

Tech stack
python
Domain
backendperformance
Issue type
research
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-2 days
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
Python programmingUnderstanding of boolean operationsFamiliarity with Manim internals
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
30
Research direction
Review the current usage of skia pathops in the Manim codebase, focusing on where boolean operations are performed. Evaluate the suggested alternatives (svgpathtools, pyclipr, Clipper2, manifold) for functionality, performance, and ease of integration. Create a prototype comparing the most promising candidate to assess the impact on animation creation and maintainability.