# Automatic offscreen generation of (render, chart, ..) views screenshots
**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/automatic-offscreen-generation-of-render-chart-views-screenshots/13604
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [December 26, 2023, 5:15pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/automatic-offscreen-generation-of-render-chart-views-screenshots/13604 "2023-12-26T17:15:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@nenad-vujicic](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/nenad-vujicic)
#### Post date: [December 26, 2023, 5:15pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/automatic-offscreen-generation-of-render-chart-views-screenshots/13604/1 "2023-12-26T17:15:00Z")
Hello, everyone!
I’m trying to automatically generate reports from my ParaView exporter plugin, by creating the scene first manually (from Qt client), and then, from the exporter plugin apply some additional filters, apply Plot Data, save several screenshots, populate external report and return to the initial pipeline state. However, to be able to take a screenshot from XYChartView (Plot Data), I need to add it to ‘multi-view widget’, i.e. to UI’s layout, which doesn’t look so nice visually (of course, I remove it after taking each screenshot). Is it possible to do this off-screen, i.e. without adding XYChartView to the multi-view widget?
Manual creating the scene is a little bit time consuming, so, I wouldn’t like (unless really necessary) to export current scene to the state file, re-load it using ‘pvpython --force-offscreen-rendering’ and perform screenshots exporting … 🙂
Thanks,
Nenad.
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### Author:  [@mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2024, 9:00am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/automatic-offscreen-generation-of-render-chart-views-screenshots/13604/2 "2024-01-02T09:00:42Z")
Hi @nenad-vujicic
Use a state file ? Python or PVSM should work.
Best,
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### Author:  [@nenad-vujicic](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/nenad-vujicic)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2024, 10:46am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/automatic-offscreen-generation-of-render-chart-views-screenshots/13604/3 "2024-01-02T10:46:21Z")
Dear @mwestphal ,
Thank you very much. Yes, I’ve already tried this approach, but, it’s a little bit time and memory consuming to do it twice in the same session (the first time in Qt client and the second time in pvpython in the background).
Thanks,
Nenad.
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### Author:  [@mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2024, 10:48am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/automatic-offscreen-generation-of-render-chart-views-screenshots/13604/4 "2024-01-02T10:48:35Z")
So you want to render offscreen to a chart using the Qt ParaView interface ?
If that is so, this is not supported.
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### Author:  [@nenad-vujicic](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/nenad-vujicic)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2024, 10:51am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/automatic-offscreen-generation-of-render-chart-views-screenshots/13604/5 "2024-01-02T10:51:55Z")
Dear @mwestphal ,
Yes. And yes, that’s what I was afraid of.
Thanks,
Nenad.