[vtkusers] Looking for Tutorial on VTK and Java, and VTK in general

[Prabhu Ramachandran]

hi,

>>>>> "KW" == Kathy Walker <kwalker at pegasustec.com> writes:

    KW> Hi All, I am trying to evaluate if VTK meets our needs for
    KW> data visualization.  Preferably, our application will have a
    KW> Swing interface, and we want to display, trim, and resample
    KW> data from 2D plots, and display interpolations of data in 3D
    KW> plots, based on sparse data sets. I am having a devil of a

I am not sure about the VTK-Java wrappers but I think VTK will do just
fine for what you want to do.  IMHO, you should switch to Python.  I'm
biased ofcourse. ;)

    KW> time finding any documentation on the internet. I see big
    KW> lists of functions, but nothing grouping the functions in
    KW> terms of what they do, and I can't find any real tutorials
    KW> anywhere.

Ah, yes, that is a problem there is no free comprehensive
documentation.  You can find a few introductory papers here:

      http://www.barre.nom.fr/vtk/links-doc.html

There is also a nice tutorial but there is no way that tutorial will
cover the 650 odd classes that VTK has.  For that you will simply have
to read the books and learn with experience.

    KW> Do I have to buy the book, "The Visualization Toolkit: An
    KW> Object-Oriented Approach To 3D Graphics" and does this provide
    KW> sufficient documentation such that I can build a prototype
    KW> meeting the above requirements? In general, is VTK the tool

Buy both the VTK book and the users guide.  I think they should both
be very useful.  The VTK book is good even if you are not going to use
VTK. 

    KW> that I should be looking at for these requirements? Last, does
    KW> any list member here have some favorite links that can get me
    KW> started?

There isn't much documentation here but its a very useful resource
nonetheless

 http://public.kitware.com/VTK/

Sebastien's pages are very useful too.

 http://www.barre.nom.fr/vtk/links.html

Ofcourse you should also take a good look at:

 http://www.python.org

:)

cheers,
prabhu