How to save pygame scene as jpeg?

Question

I need to do the following. I loaded an obj model using OBJFileLoader and rendered it to a window. How can I save the rendered scene as a picture? Is it possible to do this without even showing the window?

Answer 1

You can save a pygame.Surface object, object as the Surface associated with the screen with pygame.image.save():

This will save your Surface as either a BMP, TGA, PNG, or JPEG image.

screen = pygame.display.set_mode((w, h))

# [...]

pygame.image.save(screen , "screenshot.jpg")

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However, this doesn't work for pygame.OPENGL Surfaces. You must read the framebuffer with glReadPixels before the display is updated (before pygame.display.flip() or pygame.display.update()). Use pygame.image.fromstring() to create new Surfaces from the buffer. Finally, save the Surface to a file:

screen = pygame.display.set_mode((w, h), pygame.DOUBLEBUF | pygame.OPENGL)

# [...]

size = screen.get_size()
buffer = glReadPixels(0, 0, *size, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE)
pygame.display.flip()

screen_surf = pygame.image.fromstring(buffer, size, "RGBA")
pygame.image.save(screen_surf, "screenshot.jpg")