pierdell / viz3d

A lightweight (experimental) point cloud visualization library

viz3d

viz3D is a lightweight C++ GUI library, integrating Dear ImGUI (The amazing graphical interface library for C++), ImPlot (Which provides interactive plotting library) and VTK, the Visualization ToolKit.

Description

The library is a simple application layer the singleton GUI, which opens a GLFW window, and manages a set of user-defined ImGUIWindows.

We integrate ImGui with the branch docking, allowing the creation of multiple viewport and the customization of the layout.

A specialized VTKWindow extends an ImGUIWindow, and allows the creation and visualization of multiple VTK Pipelines integrated with the ImGui managed layout of windows. The pipelines are rendered offscreen in a texture, and then copied in the available space of the window.

Installation

install.sh and install.bat provide complete installation scripts for Linux and Windows. They first install the external dependencies (VTK, GLFW, and GLAD), then build the project. The install destination is set by default to ./install.

Usage

The viz3d::GUI singleton manages a set of viz3d::GUI::ImGuiWindow. Child classes of viz3d::GUI::ImGuiWindow must specify in DrawImGuiContent the ImGui components to appear on screen.

// std::thread gui_thread {viz3d::GUI::LaunchMainLoop, "GUI"}; //< Launches the GUI in separate different thread
auto gui = viz3d::GUI::Instance(); //< Initialize the GUI Singleton

gui.AddWindow(std::make_shared<TestWindow>("Test Window")); //< Add a custom ImGui window which specifying the ImGui components to draw 

auto vtk_window = std::make_shared<viz3d::VTKWindow>("VTK Window"); //< Creates a VTKWindow
vtk_window->AddActor(GetConeActor()); //< Add an actor to the window
gui.AddWindow(vtk_window); //< Add the window to the GUI


gui.MainLoop(); //< Launches the MainLoop 
// gui_thread.join();

See example.cpp for more details.

The interactor style used for each VTKWindow is the vtkInteractorStyleMultiTouchCamera. Which works as specified below:

• Left Mouse Button Pressed: Rotates the Camera
• Shift Key + Left Mouse Button Pressed: Translates the camera
• Ctrl Key + Left Mouse Button Pressed: Rotates the camera

TODO(s)

• Add convenient methods to create richer VTK actors