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?

Working with PolyData

• Useful Classes
• Read a VTP file
• 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
• Add Miscellaneous Data to 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

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)

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)

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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