[Paraview] direct mapping of vertex <-> color, avoiding colormaps?

[Joerg Hipp]

I have a 3D surface (vertices, about 50k plus triangles) with specific
vertex colors in matlab.
I want to export this surface for visualization in ParaView.

In this context I the following questions / problems:

1) Is it possible to represent data in ParaView as a collection of
vertices each with an attached color?
I could only find the possibility to select an index variable in
'Coloring' that points to a colormap.
In principle I could generate a variable for 'Coloring' that runs from 1
to N (e.g. N=50k) and points to a custom colormap with N entries.
However, this seems complicated and inefficient ...

2) I exported my surface from matlab into the VTK format to then read it
with ParaView.
In the documentation of the vtk format (see e.g.
http://bebendorf.ins.uni-bonn.de/teaching/Praktikum_SS13/vtk_file_formats.pdf)

I found the feature of 'COLOR_SCALARS' (i.e., unsigned char values
directly mapped to color). This sounds like what I want.
However, I tried this but 'COLOR_SCALARS' is loaded into ParaView as a
vector variable and does not directly determine the color. How can I use
this 'COLOR_SCALARS' information to directly determine each vertexes' color?

I would be grateful for any advice in this matter!

Best,

Joerg