[Paraview-developers] Is it possible to animate representation properties?

[Biddiscombe, John A.]

Cory,

Sorry. It was a long train ride. But clearly not long enough.

I discovered some things that didn't work as expected for me, so I'll look more when I have a moment

JB

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Cory Quammen [mailto:cquammen at cs.unc.edu]
> Sent: 11 October 2012 15:49
> To: Biddiscombe, John A.
> Cc: ParaView Developers
> Subject: Re: [Paraview-developers] Is it possible to animate representation
> properties?
> 
> Hi John,
> 
> Thanks for digging into this. I tried what you suggested and indeed got the
> properties of my custom representation to show up in the animation
> controls! I'm happy to know it is possible.
> 
> The only hitch is that I would like my representation properties to show up as
> properties of the object in the pipeline browser, much as the center position
> of the sphere source, say, is available. With your solution, my representation
> shows up in the higher-level menu with the objects in the pipeline, as though
> the representation itself were a pipeline object. It seems that I can animate
> distinct instances of my representation nonetheless by having the desired
> object selected in the pipeline browser, but that interaction doesn't fit with
> how the rest of the animation controls work.
> 
> I don't have an alternative solution at the moment, but I'll try to dig into this
> some more.
> 
> Thanks,
> Cory
> 
> On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 9:50 AM, Biddiscombe, John A. <biddisco at cscs.ch>
> wrote:
> > Cory
> >
> >
> >
> > I had a long train ride to experiment with this and managed to get the
> > basics working.
> >
> >
> >
> > Adding an AddCustomProxy(...) method to pqAnimationViewWidget is all
> > that is really necessary to allow you to display the new stuff in the
> > animation view. For a simple representation I found that all I had to
> > do was in the display panel decorator (in this case for my splotch
> > renderer) add the following
> >
> > //
> >
> > QWidget *mainWindow = pqCoreUtilities::mainWidget();
> >
> > pqAnimationViewWidget *pqaw =
> > mainWindow->findChild<pqAnimationViewWidget*>("animationView");
> >
> > pqaw->addCustomProxy("Splotch", reprProxy);
> >
> >
> >
> > and hey presto all the stuff appears. Unfortunately, pretty much
> > everything appears, but for a quick first go this is enough. What
> > needs to be done is to modify some of the more in depth code to only
> > display the properties on the proxy that are actually marked as
> animateable. I didn't try this yet.
> >
> >
> >
> > I had a more specific problem when I wanted to animate properties from
> > a proxy that I had generated 'internally'. We parse XML on the fly and
> > create dynamic controls based on messages from a simulation, this
> > meant that when I added the proxy I had strange effects. I mention
> > this in case you get problems.
> >
> > 1)      You need to make sure the proxy has a domain. If it's a double
> > (say), then it is sufficient to just make sure you have
> > <DoubleRangeDomain name="range"/> and that will do. Otherwise the
> > property doesn't get updated properly (or at all).
> >
> > 2)      You also need to register your proxy with the proxy manager (and
> > thereby produce an associated pqProxy). I wasn't doing this and when
> > the track is created with your own proxy property selected, the track
> > had no 'title'. It turned out that the string generation of the name
> > that appears needs to get the pqProxy from the servermangermodel in
> > order to fetch the string to show (so sphere1 appears as sphere1 etc
> > etc) and then it adds the property label string to it of the one
> > you're animating . Custom renderers just appear as DataRepresentation1...,
> but I didn't look into tweaking it yet.
> > Anyway, for my custom proxy which is completely fabricated, paraview
> > wasn't happy. It turns out when you call RegisterProxy - the group
> > name you use affects how the pqProxy associated with it is generated
> > and I had to fool paraview into creating a bare pqProxy (as opposed to
> > a pqTimeKeeper or some other specialized type) by using the group
> > "layouts" which is of course nonsense, but if you skim through the
> > code in Qt\Core\pqStandardServerManagerModelInterface.cxx you'll see
> > why. I think I should fix this to allow a "Custom" group so that I
> > don't need to lie about the real group. Either that or allow some
> > other default of pqProxy rather than NULL which is current. If Utkarsh
> > is reading this he'll no doubt comment or suggest a sensible default.
> >
> > pm->RegisterProxy("layouts", "DsmProxyHelper", this->DsmProxyHelper);
> >
> > pqServerManagerModel* smmodel =
> >
> > pqApplicationCore::instance()->getServerManagerModel();
> >
> > this->pqDsmProxyHelper =
> > this->smmodel->findItem<pqProxy*>(this->DsmProxyHelper);
> >
> > and then later ...
> >
> > //
> >
> > QWidget *mainWindow = pqCoreUtilities::mainWidget();
> >
> > pqAnimationViewWidget *pqaw =
> > mainWindow->findChild<pqAnimationViewWidget*>("animationView");
> >
> > pqaw->addCustomProxy("DSM", this->DsmProxyHelper);
> >
> >
> >
> > To get the pqProxy if you need it in your own code, use the findItem
> > shown above. Anyway, for what you want, most of this email is
> > unnecessary and you can just to the top bit.
> >
> >
> >
> > Hope this helps.
> >
> >
> >
> > JB
> >
> >
> >
> > diff --git a/Qt/Components/pqAnimationViewWidget.cxx
> > b/Qt/Components/pqAnimationViewWidget.cxx
> >
> > index 8ee9eef..4cca0a2 100644
> >
> > --- a/Qt/Components/pqAnimationViewWidget.cxx
> >
> > +++ b/Qt/Components/pqAnimationViewWidget.cxx
> >
> > @@ -75,6 +75,7 @@ SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
> SUCH
> > DAMAGE.
> >
> > #include "vtkSMPropertyHelper.h"
> >
> > #include "vtkSMProxy.h"
> >
> > #include "vtkSMRenderViewProxy.h"
> >
> > +#include "vtkSMProxyManager.h"
> >
> >
> >
> > //--------------------------------------------------------------------
> > ---------
> >
> > class pqAnimationViewWidget::pqInternal
> >
> > @@ -818,6 +819,16 @@ void
> pqAnimationViewWidget::setActiveView(pqView*
> > view)
> >
> > }
> >
> >
> >
> > //--------------------------------------------------------------------
> > ---------
> >
> > +void pqAnimationViewWidget::addCustomProxy(const char *name,
> > +vtkSMProxy*
> > pxy)
> >
> > +{
> >
> > +  this->Internal->CreateSource->removeProxy(name);
> >
> > +  if (pxy && this->Internal->CreateSource->findText(name) == -1)
> >
> > +    {
> >
> > +    this->Internal->CreateSource->addProxy(0, name, pxy);
> >
> > +    }
> >
> > +}
> >
> > +
> >
> > +//-------------------------------------------------------------------
> > +----------
> >
> > void pqAnimationViewWidget::setCurrentSelection(pqPipelineSource*
> pxy)
> >
> > {
> >
> >    if (pxy)
> >
> > diff --git a/Qt/Components/pqAnimationViewWidget.h
> > b/Qt/Components/pqAnimationViewWidget.h
> >
> > index 0b8f38b..ca5270c 100644
> >
> > --- a/Qt/Components/pqAnimationViewWidget.h
> >
> > +++ b/Qt/Components/pqAnimationViewWidget.h
> >
> > @@ -53,6 +53,7 @@ public:
> >
> >    pqAnimationViewWidget(QWidget* parent=0);
> >
> >    virtual ~pqAnimationViewWidget();
> >
> >
> >
> > +  void addCustomProxy(const char *name, vtkSMProxy* pxy);
> >
> > public slots:
> >
> >
> >
> >    /// set the scene to view
> >
> > diff --git a/Utilities/Xdmf2 b/Utilities/Xdmf2
> >
> > index 616fe9f..4cb22f3 160000
> >
> > --- a/Utilities/Xdmf2
> >
> > +++ b/Utilities/Xdmf2
> >
> > @@ -1 +1 @@
> >
> > -Subproject commit 616fe9f5525c0a39c215837888ef48269fdb83a6
> >
> > +Subproject commit 4cb22f3e1f3bfed6e8382f689999030055ada4b3-dirty
> >
> > diff --git a/VTK b/VTK
> >
> > index 8b0026d..0429b26 160000
> >
> > --- a/VTK
> >
> > +++ b/VTK
> >
> > @@ -1 +1 @@
> >
> > -Subproject commit 8b0026d1764edfb8dcd3dda3222abc79f100f652
> >
> > +Subproject commit 0429b26096df318ca1c58cea239d22daa83ed475
> >
> >
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Cory Quammen
> Research Associate
> Department of Computer Science
> The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill