Plug-in RenderView Object and Caption

Development
1

Hi experts,
I am new to developing paraview (pv) plug-in and am trying to display an object with a caption in the renderview. I was able to create the below image in python VTK where I added a cylinder and an “vtkCaptionActor2D()” actor to the renderer.
ParaviewCommunityQuestion

I need to create similar functionality in a plug-in in ParaView. However, I cannot figure out how to get access to the pv renderer and add the caption actor. Or may be, return a single object by “grouping” the cylinder and caption (not sure how to “combine” or “group”).

If it helps below is my “RequestData()” function.

1. int MyPlugin::RequestData(vtkInformation* vtkNotUsed(request),
2.   vtkInformationVector** vtkNotUsed(inputVector), vtkInformationVector* outputVector)
3. {
4.     auto cyl = vtkCylinderSource::New();
5.     cyl->SetCenter(0, 0, 0);
6.     cyl->SetHeight(100);
7.     cyl->SetRadius(1);
8.     cyl->SetResolution(50);
9.     cyl->Update();

10.     auto caption = vtkCaptionActor2D::New();
11.     caption.SetCaption("Test Caption");

12.     auto outInfo = outputVector->GetInformationObject(0);
13.     auto outObj = outInfo->Get(vtkDataObject::DATA_OBJECT());
14.     outObj->ShallowCopy(cyl->GetOutput());

15.     return 1;
16. }

Any suggestions or example would be helpful.

Regards

2

Hi,

I am not an expert and this is a shot in the dark but looking at this Caption Widget Example, the vtkCaptionActor2D() is a property of an axes or a representation.

In the RequestData() function you only usually get the data of the source. I think you will have to set the caption elsewhere in your code where the view is being rendered.

3

Thanks John.
My only objective is to create a 3D object with a descriptive text in a paraview plug-in. It does not have to use vtkCaptionActor2D() or be inside the function RequestData().

For now, I am using the vtkAppendPolyData to append a cylinder and vtkVectorText inside the RequestData().

image

This works, however I guess font and color cannot be updated, since pv renderer is needed for that. Unfortunately, I am unable to find how to get access to the paraview renderer. Will keep trying.

Regards

4

For anyone facing similar issue
Access to the Mapper in the Paraview is explained in the section “Adding new Representations for 3D View using Plugins * new in version 3.7” on the page

Regards

5

This is higly outdated, here is the correct page: ParaView: Plugin Howto