Setting up a development environment

Let us first set up a development environment for all the coding exercises in this book. We recommend using a Linux machine for all the Python code examples in this book:

1. We will first set up Anaconda. Anaconda is a widely used Python distribution that bundles with the powerful CPython implementation. One advantage of using Anaconda is its package management system, enabling users to create virtual environments easily. The individual edition of Anaconda is free for solo practitioners, students, and researchers. To install Anaconda, we recommend visiting the website, anaconda.com, for detailed instructions. The easiest way to install Anaconda is usually by running a script downloaded from their website. After setting up Anaconda, run the following command to create a virtual environment of Python 3.7:

   $ conda create -n python3d python=3.7

This command will create a virtual environment with Python version 3.7. In order to use this virtual environment, we need to activate it first by running the command:

2. Activate the newly created virtual environments with the following command:

   $ source activate python3d

3. Install PyTorch. Detailed instructions on installing PyTorch can be found on its web page at www.pytorch.org/get-started/locally/. For example, I will install PyTorch 1.9.1 on my Ubuntu desktop with CUDA 11.1, as follows:

   $ conda install pytorch torchvision torchaudio cudatoolkit-11.1 -c pytorch -c nvidia

4. Install PyTorch3D. PyTorch3D is an open source Python library for 3D computer vision recently released by Facebook AI Research. PyTorch3D provides many utility functions to easily manipulate 3D data. Designed with deep learning in mind, almost all 3D data can be handled by mini-batches, such as cameras, point clouds, and meshes. Another key feature of PyTorch3D is the implementation of a very important 3D deep learning technique, called differentiable rendering. However, the biggest advantage of PyTorch3D as a 3D deep learning library is its close ties to PyTorch.

PyTorch3D may need some dependencies, and detailed instructions on how to install these dependencies can be found on the PyTorch3D GitHub home page at github.com/facebookresearch/pytorch3d. After all the dependencies have been installed by following the instructions from the website, installing PyTorch3D can be easily done by running the following command:

$ conda install pytorch3d -c pytorch3d

Now that we have set up the development environment, let’s go ahead and start learning data representation.