[vtkusers] Re: Animation of Datasets?

[Nigel Nunn]

Hi Ray, 
> I am trying to get VTK to do rudimentary animation. I have 
> 5 data sets, a vector field generated over 5 discrete time 
> periods, and I would like to display them one after the 
> other in an animation loop. I would also like to be able 
> to move and interact through the data as the animation
> is playing. 
> Is this possible? Has anyone done this? 
> I have looked at the examples KeyFrame.tcl and the animated 
> bottle example, but these are just a static playback with no 
> ability to move through data. 
> I have tried loading each dataset into its own Actor, and 
> then using the vtk interactor in tcl, I add one data Actor 
> to the renderer and remove the other Actors. 
> ... 
 
With a VC++6 / WinNT / MFC app (e.g. see demo "Sample"), 
you might get a worker thread to calc results, sending a 
message to the GUI thread to load each new dataset.  With 
two CPUs, the GUI interaction runs on one chip, while heavy 
calcs run on the other.  This keeps the interaction smooth. 
Using synchronization objects (or timers) one can adjust the 
flow of the simulation.  Freezing the GUI during long calcs 
loses marks  :-) 
Nigel