VTK

The Visualization ToolKit (VTK) is an open source, freely available software system for 3D computer graphics, image processing, and visualization used by thousands of researchers and developers around the world. VTK consists of a C++ class library, and several interpreted interface layers including Tcl/Tk, Java, and Python. Professional support and products for VTK are provided by Kitware, Inc. (www.kitware.com) VTK supports a wide variety of visualization algorithms including scalar, vector, tensor, texture, and volumetric methods; and advanced modeling techniques such as implicit modelling, polygon reduction, mesh smoothing, cutting, contouring, and Delaunay triangulation. In addition, dozens of imaging algorithms have been directly integrated to allow the user to mix 2D imaging / 3D graphics algorithms and data.

Example Usage (C++)

These are fully independent, compilable examples. There is significant overlap in the examples, but they are each intended to illustrate a different concept and be fully stand alone compilable.

Please add examples in your areas of expertise!

Getting Started

• Which Libraries Do I Link To?
• Which Header Files Do I Include?
• Typical CMakeLists.txt file
• Environment Setup

Working with PolyData

• Useful Classes
• Read a VTP file
• Read a plain text file into a polydata
• Write a file of triangle corners
• Write a file of triangle corners (+vertices)
• Write a file of a triangle
• Write a file of colored triangle vertices
• Write a file of a colored triangle
• Write a file of a solid color triangle
• Write a sphere to a VTP file
• Write a plane to a VTP file
• Write two cubes to a VTP file
• Add Normals to a Polydata
• Point and Cell Normals
• Add Miscellaneous Data to Points in a Polydata
• Get Miscellaneous Data from Points in a Polydata
• Add Miscellaneous Data to Cells in a Polydata
• Get Miscellaneous Data from Cells in a Polydata
• Add Global Miscellaneous Data to a Polydata
• Extract Normals from a Polydata
• Get the names of all of the data arrays
• Determine data types of arrays

Other File Types

• Write a VTU file
• Read a VTU file
• Read an OBJ File
• Convert a series of DICOM files into a VTI File

Data Structures

• KDTree
• Octree

Filters

• Apply a Transformation to Points
• Landmark Transform
• Iterative Closest Points (ICP) Transform
• Triangulate a Terrain Map
• Create a surface from Unorganized Points
• Create a surface from Unorganized Points (Gaussian Splat)
• Create models from labeled volume data (Discrete MarchingCubes)
• Create cubes from labeled volume data

Visualization

• Visualize a Sphere or a VTP File

Example Usage (Python)

Getting Started

• How do I setup my environment? (python)

Working with PolyData

• Write the corners of a triangle to a file (python)
• Write the corners of a triangle to a file (+vertices) (python)
• Write a triangle with colored points (python)
• Write a colored triangle (python)
• Write a solid colored triangle (python)
• Write a triangle to a file (python)
• Iterative Closest Points (ICP) (python)

Creating a dashboard submission

It is impossible for developers to test code on every operating system, compiler, and configuration. By creating a dashboard submission, you can help them find bugs that could be affecting many users but are transparent to some developers. The idea is to get the latest source code, compile it, and run a battery of tests - reporting any compile, build, and test errors to a system which very neatly arranges the results (http://www.cdash.org/CDash/index.php?project=VTK).

It is recommended to not use the same build you work with daily for you dashboard submission. If there is a problem with the nightly cvs, your code may not compile the next day!

To get started, create a new directory called /home/username/Dashboards/VTK. It does not actually have to be in this exactly directory, but this path will be used throughout this example to make the ideas concrete. cd to your new directory and run these commands to check out an initial version of VTK and data sets used for testing.

Here is an example cmake dashboard file.

You will probably want to submit a dashboard every night, so you can add a cronjob. Run 'crontab -e' and enter the following command <source lang="text"> 0 1 * * * ctest -S /home/username/Dashboards/VTK/dashboard.cmake -V > /home/username/Dashboards/VTK/dashboard.log 2>&1 </source>

This says "at 1:00 AM, every day, every month, run the dashboard tests and log verbose output to dashboard.log".

Examples for Developers

Simple object class

Administrative Topics

• Where can I find more information about VTK?

• VTK 5.4 Release Planning

• Where can I download VTK?

• Where can I download a tarball of the nightly HTML documentation?

• Where can I get VTK Datasets?

• Extending VTK

• VTK Coding Standards

• VTK cvs commit Guidelines

• VTK Patch Procedure -- merge requests for the current release branch

• Extending VTK with Scripts

• VTK-Based Tools and Applications

• What are some projects using VTK?

• Proposed Changes to VTK

• Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

• Common OpenGL troubles

• VTK Related Job Opportunities

• Writing VTK files using python

• Geometric mesh quality

• VTK XML Format Details

• VTK 3rd Party Library Patrol

• Python Wrapping FAQ

• VTK executives

• Streaming data in VTK

Current Projects

• VTK Graph Layout
• VTK Java Wrapping
• Composite Data Redesign
• VTK Widget Redesign
• Shaders in VTK
• VTK with Matlab
• VTK Time support
• VTK Depth Peeling
• VTK Multi-Pass Rendering
• Using VTK with JRuby
• Painters
• Cray XT3 Compilation
• Statistics
• Array Refactoring
• Multicore and Streaming

External Links

• IMTEK Mathematica Supplement (IMS), the Open Source IMTEK Mathematica Supplement (IMS) interfaces VTK and generates ParaView batch scripts
• [1], VTK examples in C# (Visual Studio 5.0 and .NET 2.0)

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