[Paraview] Volume Rendering in Paraview - Speed

[Christian Werner]

Hello!

I am working on a diploma thesis on defect analysis in cast iron. I 
found ITK to be the perfect tool to manipulate my volume data. Now I am 
looking for a tool for visualization. At fist, Paraview seemed to be the 
perfect choice because of its VTK-Plugin capability (and thus ITK). The 
bad thing is that the rendering is far too slow for my needs. At this 
point I could as well store my results in a new file and view them in 
another (faster) viewer. Of course this is not the perfect way either.

Am I missing some configuration or something? What I do is loading a raw 
volume (dimensions: 256x256x110), go to the display tab and choose the 
following options:

Color:
Interpolate Scalars: OFF
Map Scalars: OFF

Style:
Representation: Volume
Interpolation: flat
Material: none

Which seems to be the most basic setup for rendering. When the volume is 
loaded I get frames every 5 seconds. The quality is good, no problems 
there, but any other generic Volume Renderer gives me 20FPS+ (using 
Textures). Maybe it's because the actual mapper does Ray Casting(?). 
There is a field "Volume mapper" in the display tab under "Style" but 
it's not enabled so I can't change anything there...

Has anybody some good advice?

Best regards,
Christian Werner