ParaView vs Tecplot Gouraud shading

ParaView Support
1

I found the ParaView Gouraud shading shows different effect from the Tecplot Gouraud. See attached two images: above is Paraview, below is Tecplot. The surface of each particle is plotted by FEM quadrilateral elements.

In addition, selecting “flat” or “Gouraud” does not make a difference in Paraview.

How can I make ParaView display smooth surfaces like Tecplot?

paraview
paraview2000×1776 989 KB
tecplot
tecplot2000×1778 635 KB

Thanks,
Beichuan Yan

2

Welcome to the ParaView community, Yanb!!

My guess is that there are two things going on. For performance reasons, ParaView does not calculate surface normals for the lighting equations. Use the Generate Surface Normals filter. You may need to run the Extract Surface filter first, in order to get a surface for the normals.

Second is that your second image has specular turned on. Paraview has it off by default, since a reflection (which looks white) looks like the middle range of our color map. Turn it on by changing Properties Tab/ Lighting/ Specular to a non zero value.

3

Thank you so much for your quick suggestion. It works well! Extract Surface filter first, and then the Generate Surface Normals filter.

The Lighting/ Specular also works.

paraview-filters
paraview-filters1555×895 191 KB

Best,
Beichuan