WritePLY

Description¶

Note

Unlike vtkPolyDataXMLWriter and most other VTK writers, to write colors to the .ply file you must specify to the vtkPLYWriter:

plyWriter->SetArrayName("Colors");

where your color array was created/named like this:

vtkSmartPointer vtkUnsignedCharArray> colors = vtkSmartPointer vtkUnsignedCharArray>::New(); colors->SetNumberOfComponents(3); colors->SetName("Colors");

(This was found in response to a user question on StackOverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17783612/save-mesh-with-rgb-in-vtk/19525938)

Other Languages

See (Cxx)

Code¶

WritePLY.py

import vtk

filename = "writeply.ply"

sphereSource = vtk.vtkSphereSource()
sphereSource.Update()

plyWriter = vtk.vtkPLYWriter()
plyWriter.SetFileName(filename)
plyWriter.SetInputConnection(sphereSource.GetOutputPort())
plyWriter.Write()

# Read and display for verication
reader = vtk.vtkPLYReader()
reader.SetFileName(filename)
reader.Update()

mapper = vtk.vtkPolyDataMapper()
mapper.SetInputConnection(reader.GetOutputPort())

actor = vtk.vtkActor()
actor.SetMapper(mapper)

renderer = vtk.vtkRenderer()
renderWindow = vtk.vtkRenderWindow()
renderWindow.AddRenderer(renderer)
renderWindowInteractor = vtk.vtkRenderWindowInteractor()
renderWindowInteractor.SetRenderWindow(renderWindow)

renderer.AddActor(actor)
renderer.SetBackground(.3, .6, .3)  # Background color green

renderWindow.Render()
renderWindowInteractor.Start()