[Paraview] can vtkImplicitPlaneWidget be used in an XML-only paraview plug-in?

[Dr. Roman Grothausmann]

Dear mailing list members,


I managed to write c++ vtk-program that uses vtkImplicitFunctionToImageStencil 
to "clip" image data. However one needs to copy past the origin and normal 
coordinates of e.g. a clipping plane in paraview to the cli command. Therefore 
I'd like to integrate this as a plugin into paraview using the 
vtkImplicitPlaneWidget as a direct interaction method.
Now, I wonder if there is a way to write an XML-only paraview plug-in that uses 
e.g. a vtkImplicitPlaneWidget as input to a chain of vtk-filters? I.e. would it 
be possible to write an XML-plug-in that would give the same functionality as 
the paraview clip-filter or would it have to be a c++ based plugin?
It seems there is no plug-in in the paraview XML-plugin list that uses a 
vtkImplicitPlaneWidget nor could I find any instruction on that in the plugin howto.

Any help or hints are very much appreciated
Roman


On 13/08/13 13:33, Dr. Roman Grothausmann wrote:
> 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