[vtkusers] How can I get a combination of Glyph3D and Follower?

[Day, Robert]

Hi all,

I want to render some points around a landmark on a vtkPolyData for publication in limited grey scale.  The points look great rendered as spheres with vtkGlyph3D on the screen, but not so good when printed as the loss of shading subtlety tends to blend them together.

Ideally, I would like to render them as filled outlined circles, much as one would do when plotting a graph.  This means they would have to face the camera all the time to be properly visible.

vtkGlyph3D will glyph the points; vtkFollower will always face the camera, but vtkFollower is an actor, so I can't use it as a glyph source.  I have tried getting the Matrix4x4 from vtkFollower to build a transform and apply to my glyph source, as suggested in this list some time ago, but in python and tcl vtkFollower's GetMatrix method always seems to return Identity.

Another idea, perhaps one with more general application, would be to outline the silhouettes of my actors, which is what I would do if I were rendering this by hand.  This would make my polydata look better as well as my glyphs.  Unfortunately I haven't been able to work out how to do this either :-(

Does anyone have any hints or suggestions?  

Rob.
--
Robert Day            ph  +61 8 9224 3227
Project Bioengineer   fax +61 8 9224 1138
Royal Perth Hospital  robert.day at health.wa.gov.au