Major Improvements on the Point Gaussian Representation

One feature in ParaView 4.4 that was quite used was the Point Sprite Representation available through a built-in plugin. The feature was lost when we transitioned to the new OpenGL2 backend rendering engine.

The new Point Gaussian Representation was supposed to take its place partially and be supported for a long time as an official representation and not “just a plugin” as before. However Point Sprite users were not very happy with it: the new feature wasn’t easy to use and slower when rendering big number of points.

This issue comes to an end with some new features and bug fixes which are now merged into ParaView :

• A bug fix that increased performance three-fold ;
• Possibility to write Custom Shader from within ParaView UI ;
• Possibility to use Opacity and Scaling not only with a Scalar Array but also with a Vector Array by selecting the component to use or the magnitude ;
• Opacity and Scale transfer functions are now dynamic and automatically adjusted ;
• Multiple improvements to the UI ;
• Enable Point Gaussian Representation for every DataSet type.

Please try it and let us know what you think.

Acknowledgments

This work has been founded by EDF SA, in the context of the MOVIDO/ParaVis/SALOME project.