Module: Surface View ()

Description:

This module allows you to visualize triangular surfaces, i.e., data objects of type Surface. Derived from the generic View Base class, the module provides an internal buffer of visible triangles. You can add triangles to this buffer by means of two special option menus. For example, if your surface contains regions R1 and R2, you may first highlight all triangles separating these two regions by choosing R1 and R2 in port Materials. Highlighted triangles are displayed in red wireframe. By pressing button Add of port Buffer highlighted triangles can be added to the internal buffer, which causes them to be displayed in their own colors. You may restrict highlighting by means of an adjustable box. In order to resize the box pick one of the green handles at the corners of the box. Highlighted triangles may also be removed from the buffer by pressing button Remove. In addition, individual triangles may be removed from the buffer by shift-clicking them.

Connections:

Data [required]
The surface to be visualized.

ColorField [optional]
Scalar field to be visualized via pseudo-coloring. The field will be evaluated at the vertex positions of the surface and a color will be mapped onto the surface using the colormap connected to connection port Colormap. The field may be either of type HxScalarField3 or of type HxSurfaceScalarField. In addition to scalar surface fields also 3 and 4-component surface fields are supported. In this case, the field components are directly interpreted as RGB or RGBA values. The values should range from 0 to 1.

Colormap [optional]
Colormap used for pseudo-coloring (see Color Field). To change the colormap right-click the colormap window or reconnect (drag) the blue connection line with another colormap data object. To change the port's default color double- (left-)click the colormap window and select a color from the ColorDialog. See also Colormap.

Texture [optional]
This port allows you to connect a 2D image that will be mapped onto the surface as a texture. The image must be a single slice of type ColorField. A transformation can be applied to the texture image in order to change the texture projection axis and texture coordinates scale. Note that texture projection overrides pseudo-color mode.

ROI [optional]
Connection to a ROI Box module defining a region of interest.

Ports:

Draw Style

This port is inherited from the View Base class and therefore the description will be found there.

Colors

There are several different color modes:

BaseTrans

This port is visible if transparent has been chosen as the draw style. It allows you to control the overall transparency of the surface object. Move the slider from fully opaque (0) to completely transparent (1) to achieve the desired appearance. It is also possible to control the transparency of materials individually. To do so, you need to create a parameter transparency in the Material bundle of the surface object's parameter section. If such a parameter exists, the transparency of the material is set exactly to this value when the slider is set to 0.5. Moving the slider thus modulates the base transparency, with greater values making it more transparent and smaller values making it more opaque.

Colormap

This port becomes visible only if a scalar field has been connected to the ColorField port.

TextureWrap

Wrap mode used for the texture projection on the surface when a texture is applied to the surface. There are two wrap modes: Repeat: The texture is repeated outside its 0-1 texture coordinate range. Clamp: Clamps texture coordinates to lie within 0-1 range. This port is hidden if there is nothing connected to the Texture connection port.

ColorFieldMappingType

Defines how colorfield data will be mapped onto the surface. If per vertex is choosen colors will be set to the vertices and will be interpolated inside the triangles, leading to a fast but less precise rendering. On the other hand, per voxel colors will give correct colors inside a triangle at the expense of a high memory consumption and potentially lower performance.

Buffer

Action

This port lets you add and remove highlighted triangles (being displayed in red wireframe) to an internal buffer. For a further description and for the functionality of each of the port buttons see View Base.

Selection mode

This port lets you specify whether you want to highlight triangles on the basis of their associated material, their patch ID, or their boundary ID.

Materials

This port is visible if Selection mode is Material. It offers two pull-down menus each listing all Materials defined in the surface. Since each triangle exactly interfaces two Materials, triangles can be selected by choosing the appropriate pair of Materials in those menus. When triangles are selected they are highlighted in red wireframe. In addition, you may restrict the set of highlighted triangles by adjusting size and position of the dragger box. Use port Buffer to add or remove highlighted triangles to/from the internal buffer.

Patch

This port is visible if Selection mode is Patch. It allows you to highlight triangles having the specified patch ID.

Boundary id

This port is visible if Selection mode is BoundaryID. It allows you to highlight triangles having the specified boundary ID.