[vtkusers] [vtk-developers] Overhaul of the rendering subsystem in VTK: Volume Rendering update

Mon Nov 3 08:11:13 EST 2014

Hello,

Thank you for letting us know the current changes in VTK volume rendering,
that seems really exciting.
In the source issue 31, I saw that your were asking to the community if
there were any feature needed.
One feature that we would really like to see is a way to have multiple
opacity transfer functions together used with a label data map to mask the
volume.
Right now it is possible to have multiple color TF, but not multiple
opacity TF. Is this feature planned to be developed ? This would enable
to have "almost transparent" structure in front of the camera and "opaque
structure" in the back, even though the structure have the same scalar
value. A visual example here
<http://www.piemedicalimaging.com/product/3mensio-structural-heart/>, coming
from the 3mensio software.

Thanks,
Simon

2014-10-22 20:27 GMT+02:00 Aashish Chaudhary <aashish.chaudhary at kitware.com>
:

> Friends,
>
> Some more good news on the rendering side of things. In the last few days,
> we have worked on porting two more volume mappers to OpenGL2 (FixedPoint
> and Bunyk) and this noon we merged that code into VTK master. This change
> should not affect the code that is using the OpenGL (and not OpenGL2)
> backend. We will keep an eye on the dashboards and fix any issue that we
> may find. Also, we have updated the vtkSmartVolumeMapper to deal with the
> OpenGL and OpenGL2 backend.
>
> Please let us know if you have any questions or if you encounter any
> issues in the current master related to this change.
>
> Thanks,
>
> On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 12:31 PM, Aashish Chaudhary <
> aashish.chaudhary at kitware.com> wrote:
>
>> Friends,
>>
>> As referred earlier, we are continuously working on improving the volume
>> rendering. As part of next set of delivery,  we are going to bring our
>> first OpenGL2 volume mapper to the OpenGL2 backend.
>> We have a branch that will get merged today and* it should only affect
>> the dashboards and code base switched to OpenGL2 backend*. We will
>> continue to improve the integration and will use and improve the
>> existing OpenGL2 backend code as necessary.
>>
>> If you have any questions of concerns or if you find in any ways its
>> affecting your regular builds that uses OpenGL(default, and not OpenGL2)
>>  backend then let us know as soon as possible.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 9:53 AM, Aashish Chaudhary <
>> aashish.chaudhary at kitware.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Friends,
>>>
>>>
>>> As reported back in July, we are in the process of a major overhaul of
>>> the rendering subsystem in VTK. The July article (
>>> http://www.kitware.com/source/home/post/144) focused primarily on our
>>> efforts to move to OpenGL 2.1+ to support faster polygonal rendering.  The
>>> October Source will contain an article focused on our rewrite of the
>>> vtkGPURayCastMapper class to provide a faster, more portable and more
>>> easily extensible volume mapper for regular rectilinear grids.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> VTK has a long history of volume rendering, and unfortunately that
>>> history is evident in the large selection of classes available to render
>>> volumes. Each of these methods was state-of-the-art at the time, but given
>>> VTK's 20+ year history many of these methods are now quite obsolete. One
>>> goal of this effort is to reduce the number of volume mappers to ideally
>>> just two - one that supports accelerated rendering on graphics hardware and
>>> another that works in parallel on the CPU. In addition, the
>>> vtkSmartVolumeMapper would help application developers by automatically
>>> choosing between these techniques based on system performance.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> In this first phase, we have created a replacement for
>>> vtkGPURayCastMapper. Currently, this is available for testing from the VTK
>>> git repository (in master branch, disabled by default). General
>>> instructions on how to build VTK from the source is available at this URL:
>>> http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/VTK/Git*. *In order to build the new mapper,
>>> enable the Module_vtkRenderingVolumeOpenGLNew module in cmake (via -D
>>> *Module_vtkRenderingVolumeOpenGL=ON*), in ccmake or cmake-gui. Once
>>> built, it can be used via vtkSmartVolumeMapper or used directly. Once
>>> sufficient testing by the community has been performed, this class will
>>> replace the old vtkGPURayCastMapper.  In addition, we are adding this new
>>> mapper to the OpenGL2 module.  Availability of the new mapper with OpenGL2
>>> module will improve the management of textures in the mapper and eventually
>>> benefitting both forms of rendering (geometry and volume) by sharing common
>>> code between them.
>>>
>>>
>>> Please contact us if you have any questions or encounter any issues.
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *| Aashish Chaudhary | Technical Leader         | Kitware Inc.
>>>   *
>>> *| http://www.kitware.com/company/team/chaudhary.html
>>> <http://www.kitware.com/company/team/chaudhary.html>*
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>>
>> *| Aashish Chaudhary | Technical Leader         | Kitware Inc.
>> *
>> *| http://www.kitware.com/company/team/chaudhary.html
>> <http://www.kitware.com/company/team/chaudhary.html>*
>>
>
>
>
> --
>
>
>
> *| Aashish Chaudhary | Technical Leader         | Kitware Inc.            *
> *| http://www.kitware.com/company/team/chaudhary.html
> <http://www.kitware.com/company/team/chaudhary.html>*
>
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