[WIP] Introducing a new animated Stream Lines representation
This MR introduces a new plugin (for OpenGL2 backend only) that provides a new representation called "Stream Lines" for any kind of data set in ParaView. The representation displays an animated view of streamlines in a vector field of the dataset. Seeds are initialized randomly in the bounds of the domain and created each time one particle dies (time to live - ie, max number of iterations - is reached, out-of-domain or zero velocity). The UI panel allows to specify:
- Vectors: the vector field (mandatory).
- Alpha: the rate of blending (depends on MaxTimeToLive, 0: no trace, 1: trace will fade as long as TimeToLive).
- Step Length: Normalized integration step - allow to adjust particle speed.
- Number Of Particles: Number of simulated particles in the flow.
- Max Time To Live: Maximum number of iteration a particle is followed before it dies. The solid color and line width can be changed using default ParaView UI widgets.
Note that pqStreamLinesAnimationManager class observes all pqRenderView. When a
rendering on such a view is finished, it checks all existing representations
and search for an enabled StreamLines one. If found, a new still render pass is
requested. This mechanism allow to refresh the view and animate the particles over and over.
How to test
- Load the plugin "StreamLinesRepresentation".
- Create a "Wavelet" source. Apply a "Gradient" filter on it.
- Switch representation from "Outline" to "StreamLines".
- Play with the StreamLines options in the Representation panel.
- Change the Coloring array
Another cool demo is to load the disk_out_ref.ex2 dataset with the V vector point data array.
See the video on YouTube:
[
](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6ElNFp3cSU"Small Demo of Stream Lines representation plugin for ParaView")