[Paraview] How to efficiently "clip" a voxel dataset for volume rendering

[Dr. Roman Grothausmann]

Dear mailing list members,


Is there a better way (taking less render time) to clip a voxel dataset along an 
arbitrarily oriented plane in paraview than using the clip-filter? It works find 
as long as no volume rendering is chosen as the displaying method but when I 
change to volume rendering it takes more than a day what before took only a minute.
My guess is, that the change of the type of the dataset caused by the 
clip-filter (output is unstructured grid) is not as efficiently rendered as 
vtkImage. For my purpose it would be sufficient to not clip intersected voxel 
themselves, just not to render those on one side of the clipping plane.
Is there any way to achieve that with existing paraview or vtk-filters?
If not should I use vtkImplicitFunctionToImageStencil in a plugin to create a 
mask image from an interactive plane-widget and then render e.g. black transparent?

Any help or hints are very much appreciated
Roman

-- 
Dr. Roman Grothausmann

Tomographie und Digitale Bildverarbeitung
Tomography and Digital Image Analysis

Institut für Funktionelle und Angewandte Anatomie, OE 4120
Medizinische Hochschule Hannover
Carl-Neuberg-Str. 1
D-30625 Hannover

Tel. +49 511 532-9574