I'm about 30 minutes into Blender's python API and I've been reading the documentation. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, but from what I'm seeing, I can't just assign an object (like an ico_sphere) to a variable named Sphere and then just modify its properties with methods?
import bpy
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action="SELECT")
bpy.ops.object.delete()
Sphere = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_ico_sphere_add(location=[0,0,0])
# Does something like this work?
Sphere.set_color('red')
I do a lot of matplotlib and I was wondering, if bpy has a similar interface that is object oriented like that?
In blender, an operator returns a status, which would usually be {'FINISHED'}.
After running an add object operator, the new object can be found in bpy.context.object.
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_ico_sphere_add(location=[0,0,0])
Sphere = bpy.context.object
Sphere.location = (1,2,3)
Sphere.active_material = bpy.data.materials.new('mymat')
Sphere.active_material.diffuse_color = (1,0,0,1)
Note that node based materials need some more work. There is a blender specific SE site where you will find some script examples, like this.