Paraview Color Map Editor colors only pink. Not matching display area

ParaView Support
1

Hello. My color map editor is showing up as shades of pink but the colors in the display window are correct. There are blotches of color on top of the color map editor as well. See the blue smearing in the picture.

This really limits what I can do to change the displayed color.

Screenshot from 2021-04-16 14-57-05
Screenshot from 2021-04-16 14-57-051920×1080 276 KB

I recently installed ParaView 5.9.0 on my Debian buster (10) machine. I was using the repo version of the ParaView for the last while but I wanted to use some of the updated features so I went for the latest version. (The current MPI supports runs significantly quicker.)

I installed it by simply downloading the tar ball: ParaView-5.9.0-MPI-Linux-Python3.8-64bit.tar.gz from the ParaView site: https://www.paraview.org/download/

I removed the repo version of ParaView with apt and then extracted the ParaView tar ball into my home directory. I put a symbolic link in my user bin directory which is in the path i.e.

ln -s ~/ParaView-5.9.0-MPI-Linux-Python3.8-64bit/bin/paraview ~/bin/paraview

ParaView runs great accept the issue I indicated above. To try and fix things I added the paraview directory to my path by adding the following line into my .bashrc file:

export PATH="$HOME/ParaView-5.9.0-MPI-Linux-Python3.8-64bit:$PATH"

I was thinking it may have something to do with access to libraries at run time. It didn’t help.

I then look at my video driver (amdgpu) but everything seems to be working fine. I don’t want to have to try the AMD drivers as a back port so I thought I might ask if anyone has any thoughts?

Below is the client information from the load screen:

Client Information:
Version: 5.9.0
VTK Version:
Qt Version: 5.12.9
vtkIdType size: 64bits
Embedded Python: On
Python Library Path: /home/mark/ParaView-5.9.0-MPI-Linux-Python3.8-64bit/lib/python3.8
Python Library Version: 3.8.6 (default, Jan 23 2021, 18:21:19) [GCC 7.3.1 20180303 (Red Hat 7.3.1-5)]
Python Numpy Support: On
Python Numpy Path: /home/mark/ParaView-5.9.0-MPI-Linux-Python3.8-64bit/lib/python3.8/site-packages/numpy
Python Numpy Version: 1.19.2
Python Matplotlib Support: On
Python Matplotlib Path: /home/mark/ParaView-5.9.0-MPI-Linux-Python3.8-64bit/lib/python3.8/site-packages/matplotlib
Python Matplotlib Version: 3.2.1
Python Testing: Off
MPI Enabled: On
Disable Registry: Off
Test Directory:
Data Directory:
OpenGL Vendor: X.Org
OpenGL Version: 4.5 (Core Profile) Mesa 18.3.6
OpenGL Renderer: AMD PITCAIRN (DRM 2.50.0, 4.19.0-16-amd64, LLVM 7.0.1)

Connection Information:
Remote Connection: No

Note that ParaView is picking up my video card correctly (ASUS HD 7870 DirectCU II.) I have seen comments in the forum that MESA is buggy and a bit slow… Does this mean I have to switch my X video card driver to the AMD version?

Any help will be greater appreciated.

Kind regards,

MarkY

2

This does sound like a rendering issue.

Switching to amd driver should indeed help here.

Alternatively, you can try using the mesa provided within ParaView:

paraview --mesa

3

That was timely and help Mathieu. Thank-you.

When I run paraview with the --mesa directive the colors now appear correctly. The issue now is that things have slowed way down to the point where navigation is difficult. Can one say for sure that this is a problem with the linux amdgpu driver (non vendor supplied) or is it possible that a future version of ParaView could potential correct this? I’m trying to decide my path forward… ? Any more helpful advice now that we know that --mesa fixes the color issue?

Kind regards,

Mark

4

What could fix this is an update of the Qt version in use in ParaView. You can already try this by building ParaView yourself against a more recent Qt.

In you situation I’d definitely try to use the actual AMD driver instead.

5

Unfortunately this is not something I can do in a few minutes. It looks like the current (really far behind) Debian buster repos are not up to date enough for this to be easy. I suspect Qt and cmake will have to be upgraded past the the current stable versions which I may try but not in the next day or so. If it is a Qt thing then something was linked in that was incorrect or out of date… ? I’m not familiar with Qt but after a quick check it seems like it is a ide/cross platform code base system. Does Qt sense my environment and link the appropriate libraries? I’m guessing this is how this could solve this issue. Also… I need to correct what I stated earlier. Looks like the amdgpu drivers I am using are actually the current non free AMD drivers for Debian Buster… Looks like I need to do a compile. Bummer. (Or maybe I could roll back to the generic Linux video drivers.)… I have compiled programs before… But it always seems like a bit of a crap shoot if it works out the first time (second etc.) Anyhoo. I guess I know where things are at. I’ll update the thread if I get things sorted out.

Kind regards,

Mark

6

Qt is a GUI library used by ParaView.

Looks like the amdgpu drivers I am using are actually the current non free AMD drivers for Debian Buster

I do not think this is correct as ParaView reports that it is using mesa.