The first big challenge in any visualization endeavor is to first massage the data into some format you can start playing with available tools. After finishing the previous exercise, you should be comfortable, or at least familiar, with that first step. Now you are ready to make images and movies. Download Paraview (binaries), and open the data you created in Exercise 2a.
Combine two different views of the same object into one single image, such as outline and volume rendering, or points and smooth rendered (normal generated) surface. This will mean applying at least one filter, and displaying both objects with different color styles, with two different color transfer functions (or one solid, and one by a variable).
Finally, set up an animation that has 3 view keyframes. One from far, one up close, and then the final on the other side of the object. Remember you need to do this under the animation view, and add necessary keyframes at the respective place with camera being set. 60 frames is sufficient.
Save the movie as an AVI. Resolution 640x480, at 24fps. Alternatively, save movie frames as TIFF images. Convert the images to PPMs, and then use ppmtompeg to make a resulting MPEG movie. Here is a sample script to convert the frames to ppms:
using tifftopnm
or
using imagemagick's convert
#!/bin/csh foreach i (*.tiff) tifftopnm $i > $i.ppm end
#!/bin/csh foreach i (*.tiff) convert $i `echo $i | sed -e 's/.tiff$/.ppm/` end
When you are done, feel free to upload you results here (either a single frame, or the whole movie). Good luck!
sample results please upload your pictures here!
This is a short movie showing the free diffusion of a molecule in a box with short surface adsorption. Simulation was carried out using MCell3. The output data, in DREAMM_V3_GROUPED format, was converted to VTP format for ParaView visualization using Dr. Slombey's dx2file utility. Animation was saved as a series of tif files, which were converted to ppm image using one of the scripts above. ppmtompeg generated mpeg movie using the above input file with minor modification. However the frame rate is so high that the whole movie lasted only about 3-4 sec. I don't have access to QuickTime Pro, so ImageJ was used to make a movie (avi format) at 4 fps.
