Module category: Tools

• Sphere
  • Parameters
  • Input Ports
  • Output Ports
  • Examples

Sphere

Sphere builds spheres (made up of triangle-strips) out of points (e. g. retrieved using a particle tracer) or sends data for rendering sphere impostors to OpenCOVER.

Sphere is available for COVISE version 4.5 on all supported platforms.

Parameters

Name	Type	Description
radius	Scalar	Radius of each sphere
scale	Scalar	Scale factor for the spheres deformation (see data input-port description)
render_method	Choice	Generate triangle strips (Polygons), texture mapped impostors (CPU Billboards), or pixel shaded impostors (Cg Shader)

Note:

• Use the parameter "radius" to determine the size of your spheres in case you don't have connected data input to the Sphere module; in this case the parameter "scale" has no effect.
• Use the parameter "scale" together with scalar or vector data to determine the size resp. the deformation of your spheres (see Input Ports); in this case you have to connect scalar or vector data input to Sphere and the parameter "radius" has no effect.

Input Ports

Name	Type	Description
requiredpoints	Points UnstructuredGrid StructuredGrid	Points to be used. Grid points are used if grids are assigned to this port.
optionaldata	Float Vec3	The optional data on this port is used to deform the spheres: scalar: the radius of each sphere will be scale*(data value) vector: the radius will be stretched in the vectors direction according to scale*(length of vector)
optionalcolors_in	Float Vec3 RGBA	Scalar data to be mapped on the spheres.

Output Ports

Name	Type	Description
outputspheres	TriangleStrips Polygons Spheres	The spheres themselves
outputnormals	Vec3	Normals for the spheres for better visual quality (for max. performance the spheres are made up of only very few triangles and so you should use the normals in order to make them look like spheres instead of some sort of n-hedron)
outputdataOut	Float Vec3 RGBA	The colors_in recomputed to match the spheres; this can e.g. be used as an input for the Colors module.

Examples

Figure: covise/net/examples/Sphere.net

The map covise/net/examples/Sphere.net displays a few spheres arranged in a circle.

The Renderer snapshots show the following cases:

• result without any data applied on the spheres
• scalar data (this corresponds to the map)
• vector data

Figure: result without any data applied on the spheres

Figure: scalar data

Figure: vector data