Exporting ParaView scenes to ParaView Glance

For a long time, ParaView’s WebGL exporter in the Scene Exporter of ParaView has allowed you to generate a standalone HTML file that contains 3D geometry with pseudocoloring that can then be visualized inside a browser. Other than letting you interact with the data by zooming, rotating, and panning, a scene exported this way is fairly static and allows limited interaction with the exported data.

With our recent work on vtk.js and ParaView Glance, more exciting options for exporting data are now possible. A refreshed version of this feature that provides a vtkjs export of a scene from ParaView will be available in the upcoming ParaView 5.7.0 release. In addition, this feature provides an option to embed exported datasets into a standalone ParaView Glance HTML file. The exported vtkjs and HTML files can be sent to others for viewing and interaction using only a modern web browser. What’s more, the big difference from the WebGL export is that you can use ParaView Glance to adjust the lookup tables, fields to view, representations and even create some cool looking screenshots.

To try it out, you will need to wait for ParaView 5.7.0 or obtain a nightly build from the ParaView download page. Then come up with a cool visualization like below.

Then click on the File > Export Scene… option and select the *.vtkjs format.

If you toggle the advanced options by clicking on the gear, like shown above, you will be able to point ParaView to a ParaView Glance HTML file in which the exported data will be embedded. If you leave the Para View Glance HTML entry blank, no HTML file with embedded data will be exported. You can download the most recent version of ParaView Glance here (right-click the link and choose Save Link As… to save the HTML file to your computer). While it seems a little odd to specify the ParaViewGlance.html file, this lets you export to updated versions of ParaView Glance when they become available When you click Save, ParaView will produce the vtkjs file along with the optional HTML viewer file with the data embedded.

Double clicking on the HTML file you will launch ParaView Glance inside your default web browser with your data preloaded like shown below:

The HTML file with embedded data typically weighs a few megabytes and can easily be emailed to colleagues. The best part is that your colleagues don’t need to install any special 3D viewer software or even the ParaView desktop application to view the data because they already have the viewer – a web browser – installed!

You can also share just the vtkjs data file. The data file can also be loaded from another instance of ParaView Glance (click here to start one) by dragging and dropping the vtkjs file onto the designated “Open A File” area as shown below:

With this new feature, exporting a visualization made in ParaView is even easier and sharing it with others for exploration is easier and more versatile. If you create and publish any cool visualizations using this feature on the web, please link to them in the comments below.

Acknowledgements

The work was funded by Sandia National Laboratories.

Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.