Re: [vrjuggler-info] vjVTK initial release

[Patrick H. <pa...@in...>]

Kris,

I took a look at your web page for vjVTK shortly after you posted this
announcement, but I have not had a chance to look at the code. I am excited
to see this since VTK support in VR Juggler has been desired for a long
time--as you know.

I think it's great that you were able to take advantage of the OpenGL Draw
Manager so you could avoid the complexities of writing a wholly new Draw
Manager. My knowledge of VTK is limited at this time, but I seem to recall
that VTK wants (or wanted) to have full control over the window management.
That understanding always led me to believe that a full VTK Draw Manager
would be needed. I am sure that looking at your code would enlighten me, but
I would like to hear more about your decision making process. That is, could
you describe what the trade offs are for using the existing OpenGL Draw
Manager as opposed to making a new Draw Manager? I ask only because I am
curious to learn more about this from you and not because I am questioning
your approach.

Now the big question: is vjVTK something that you would consider submitting
for inclusion with VR Juggler 2.2? I do not think that there would be any
copyright issue, but of course, IANAL. You hold the copyright on the code,
and I know that that would continue to be the case if your code was included
as part of the VR Juggler source.

I really like the sound of what you have described here, and I would
certainly like to hear feedback from others who have used vtkActorToPf or
other approaches to mix VR Juggler and VTK.

 -Patrick

Kristopher J. Blom wrote:
> I am proud to announce the initial release of vjVTK.  vjVTK is a small
> library, which enables the use of the VTK rendering pipeline natively
> within the VR Juggler framework.  
> 
> The vjVTK library builds a VTK rendering interface for VR Juggler
> similar to Juggler's own OpenSG and OSG interfaces.  Inheriting from
> VTKApp, user applications deal directly with VTK's visualization
> pipeline.  Following VTK's normal pipeline setup methods, users add
> renderable objects, vtkActors and vtkProps, or lights to a special
> Renderer provided by the library.   
> 
> This allows not only the native use of VTK without the intermediary step
> of converting vtkActors to models, more importantly this enables the
> possibility of interacting with the VTK pipeline at run-time.
> Interactions with the pipeline automatically cause the visualization to
> be updated, displaying the updated geometry.  Moving cutting planes,
> changing the density of iso-surfaces, or simply moving the source point
> for streamlines in a flow are a few of the many interactions now
> capable.
> 
> The initial release of vjVTK and information on the library are
> available at http://imve.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/blom/vjVTK.html
> 
> For further information or question please don't hesitate to contact me.
> 
> -Kris
> 
> 


-- 
Patrick L. Hartling                    | VP Engineering, Infiscape Corp.
PGP: http://tinyurl.com/2msw3          | http://www.infiscape.com/