[Paraview] Client server volume rendering problem in 4.1 and 4.2RC1

[ronald.fowler at stfc.ac.uk]

Hi,
A post by Robert Atwood in June mentioned a problem with client server volume visualisation in PV4.1, and I have also seen problems in this case both on Linux and Windows systems.

Fixes (0014794 and 0014792) have been added to 4.2RC1 which allow correct rendering of the wavelet test case. I tried this on a Windows 7 system and works ok for 4.2RC1, but not for 4.1.

However I think that the remote/local render problem for volume visualisation is really very confusing and needs to be improved. After spending more time then I should with it, I conclude that (again on windows 7 64 bit):

(1)    Volume rendering only works if done on the remote server, not the local on (as acknowledged in a tracker ticket, though I have not seen it documented elsewhere).

(2)    For 4.1 to do this correctly for just a volume image this seems to need settings of "remote render threshold" ticked and "0 Mbytes" selected. It will work for cases when >0 Mbytes is selected, if there is also another object displayed (e.g. an isosurface). This led me to think an additional surface was always needed to see the volume, which is not the case.

(3)    For 4.2RC1 the interface to settings has changed and there is no longer a tick box. Instead the slider for remote local render size has a much greater range. This should be set to zero to force remote render for volume views. It also works for non-zero values less than the size of the volume data, e.g. 4Mbytes for a 256^3 volume. This setting did not seem work for 4.1 to force a remote rendering of just volume data.

I think it would be useful if at least the tool tips in the settings panel suggested how to make client server volume rendering work. It would also be useful if a warning message were displayed when trying (and failing) to do a local volume render in client server mode.

Another problem that has been observed is that the "smart" option for volume rendering is not necessarily that smart when the server nodes have no GPUs and the client does. This was on a Linux 64 bit system with 4.1.

Thanks,
Ron fowler








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