ActiViz release: Native rendering controls for various UI frameworks

Kitware is pleased to announce the release of ActiViz 9.3.2024.515.

This version greatly improves the integration of ActiViz into various UI frameworks to allow users to build advanced applications with a cutting-edge user interface on Windows, Linux and MacOS.

In addition, the target framework has been updated to .NET 8 to use the latest long term support (LTS) release from Microsoft, which includes many improvements to performance, garbage collection, and the core and extension libraries.

ActiViz

ActiViz is a .NET library for 3D visualization and data processing. It exposes the API of the C++ Visualization Toolkit (VTK), to be used in C# or VB.

ActiViz interfaces with many existing applications and frameworks written in C#, including WindowsForm, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), WinUI 3, Avalonia, and the Unity software. This enables a seamless and fast integration of advanced algorithms and rendering techniques in various environments.

Enhancing the Avalonia cross-platform support

Following the upgrade to Avalonia 11 introduced in the latest version, this new release includes various fixes for keyboard and mouse interactions, as well as improvements to the rendering callback functions to completely wipe out the rendering refresh issues when using the Windows WGL native API. The user experience on Windows is now as smooth as the one for Linux or MacOS.

WPF support using native controls

In previous versions of ActiViz, support for the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) framework was based on the interoperability between WindowsForm and WPF through the WindowsFormHost component. This approach is impacted by the well-known “airspace” issue which forces the WindowsForm-based content to be rendered always on top of WPF components.

In this new release, ActiViz provides seamless VTK rendering pipeline integration in a WPF application through the native D3DImage control.

A new WinUI 3 rendering control

The Windows UI library (WinUI 3) is the native UI platform component that ships with the Windows App SDK. ActiViz now includes a new rendering control based on the native SwapChainPanel component. Similarly to the new support for WPF, this control leverages the interoperability between OpenGL and DirectX to integrate the advanced rendering capabilities of VTK in a WinUI 3 application without restrictions.

Visit the ActiViz website to learn more about ActiViz and download the new version.

Acknowledgments

This work is funded in cooperation with Waygate Technologies.