Matplotlib VTK integration

Date:2009-11-17 (last modified), 2006-01-22 (created)

Just in case you would ever like to incorporate matplotlib plots into your vtk application, vtk provides a really easy way to import them.

Here is a full example for now:

In [ ]:
from vtk import *

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('Agg')
from matplotlib.figure import Figure
from matplotlib.backends.backend_agg import FigureCanvasAgg
import pylab as p

# The vtkImageImporter will treat a python string as a void pointer
importer = vtkImageImport()
importer.SetDataScalarTypeToUnsignedChar()
importer.SetNumberOfScalarComponents(4)

# It's upside-down when loaded, so add a flip filter
imflip = vtkImageFlip()
imflip.SetInput(importer.GetOutput())
imflip.SetFilteredAxis(1)

# Map the plot as a texture on a cube
cube = vtkCubeSource()

cubeMapper = vtkPolyDataMapper()
cubeMapper.SetInput(cube.GetOutput())

cubeActor = vtkActor()
cubeActor.SetMapper(cubeMapper)

# Create a texture based off of the image
cubeTexture = vtkTexture()
cubeTexture.InterpolateOn()
cubeTexture.SetInput(imflip.GetOutput())
cubeActor.SetTexture(cubeTexture)

ren = vtkRenderer()
ren.AddActor(cubeActor)

renWin = vtkRenderWindow()
renWin.AddRenderer(ren)

iren = vtkRenderWindowInteractor()
iren.SetRenderWindow(renWin)

# Now create our plot
fig = Figure()
canvas = FigureCanvasAgg(fig)
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.grid(True)
ax.set_xlabel('Hello from VTK!', size=16)
ax.bar(xrange(10), p.rand(10))

# Powers of 2 image to be clean
w,h = 1024, 1024
dpi = canvas.figure.get_dpi()
fig.set_figsize_inches(w / dpi, h / dpi)
canvas.draw() # force a draw

# This is where we tell the image importer about the mpl image
extent = (0, w - 1, 0, h - 1, 0, 0)
importer.SetWholeExtent(extent)
importer.SetDataExtent(extent)
importer.SetImportVoidPointer(canvas.buffer_rgba(0,0), 1)
importer.Update()

iren.Initialize()
iren.Start()

To have the plot be a billboard:

In [ ]:
bbmap = vtkImageMapper()
bbmap.SetColorWindow(255.5)
bbmap.SetColorLevel(127.5)
bbmap.SetInput(imflip.GetOutput())

bbact = vtkActor2D()
bbact.SetMapper(hmap)

Comments

In [ ]:
From zunzun Fri Aug 19 07:06:44 -0500 2005
From: zunzun
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 07:06:44 -0500
Subject:
Message-ID: <20050819070644-0500@www.scipy.org>

from http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=7884469&forum_id=33405

If pylab is imported before vtk, everything works fine:

import pylab, vtkpython
pylab.ylabel("Frequency\n", multialignment="center", rotation=90)
n, bins, patches = pylab.hist([1,1,1,2,2,3,4,5,5,5,8,8,8,8], 5)
pylab.show()

If however vtk is imported first:

import vtkpython, pylab
pylab.ylabel("Frequency\n", multialignment="center", rotation=90)
n, bins, patches = pylab.hist([1,1,1,2,2,3,4,5,5,5,8,8,8,8], 5)
pylab.show()

then the Y axis label is positioned incorrectly on the plots.
In [ ]:
From earthman Tue Oct 25 15:21:14 -0500 2005
From: earthman
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 15:21:14 -0500
Subject:
Message-ID: <20051025152114-0500@www.scipy.org>

The reason for this is that vtk comes with it's own freetype library, and this is the one being used if vtk is loaded first. Worse symptoms could be errors about fonts not being found. This is typically solved by importing vtk after other packages which might use freetype (pylab, wxPython, etc).
In [ ]:
From mroublic Tue Jan 10 11:26:45 -0600 2006
From: mroublic
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 11:26:45 -0600
Subject: One more change I had to make
Message-ID: <20060110112645-0600@www.scipy.org>
In-reply-to: <20050819070644-0500@www.scipy.org>

When I first tried this, I had the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "MatplotlibToVTK.py", line 61, in ?
    importer.SetImportVoidPointer(canvas.buffer_rgba(), 1)
TypeError: buffer_rgba() takes exactly 3 arguments (1 given)

I had to add 0,0 to the import line:
 importer.SetImportVoidPointer(canvas.buffer_rgba(0,0), 1)

I'm using VTK from CVS using the 5_0 Branch from around November 2005

The above code didn't run on my system. I had to change the following line: fig.set_figsize_inches(w / dpi, h / dpi) into: fig.set_figsize_inches(1.0w / dpi, 1.0h / dpi)

Section author: AndrewStraw, Unknown[41], Unknown[122]