Major changes made in this version of ParaView are listed in this document. The full list of changes in this release is available here.
The default background has changed from "BlueGrayBackground" to "WarmGrayBackground". The default color map has changed from "Cool to Warm" to "Fast".
The new color map and background color in ParaView.
For more information about this major change, please see the blog post New Default Colormap and Background in the next version of ParaView.
The ParaView command-line executables pvserver, pvpython and pvbatch now support all three modes of rendering - headless, offscreen, and onscreen in one build. The rendering backend is automatically selected at runtime based upon the system capabilities such as availability of an X server or EGL drivers.
Use the new --opengl-window-backend command-line option to specify the OpenGL window backend used in these applications. Supported values are: 'GLX', 'EGL', 'OSMesa', and 'Win32'. If not specified, the default backend is used. The default backend is determined by the build configuration and the hardware configuration of the machine automatically.
You can also force use of a specific backend by setting the environment variable VTK_DEFAULT_OPENGL_WINDOW to any of these values:
vtkOSOpenGLRenderWindow for software headless rendering with OSMesa on Linux and Windows.vtkEGLRenderWindow for hardware accelerated headless rendering on Linux.vtkXOpenGLRenderWindow for non-headless rendering on Linux.vtkWin32OpenGLRenderWindow for non-headless rendering on Windows.Note: the --opengl-window-backend command-line option and environment variable VTK_DEFAULT_OPENGL_WINDOW are not supported in the ParaView GUI client.
Cell grids – which are an extensible new type of data in VTK and ParaView – now have an IOSS-based reader, hardware selection, CPU- and GPU-based interpolation using the same source code, and several new and improved filters.
The example rendering below shows how discontinuities at cell boundaries are allowed while simultaneously supporting spatial variation within each cell (unlike traditional VTK cell-data). You can see both smooth and sharp variations in this example mesh, colored by the Z component of the magnetic field variable (FACE_COEFF_B_Field) at time-step 2.
Cell grid showing off discontinuities.
The arrow glyphs show the overall magnetic field directions. The field itself is stored as a single coefficient per hexahedral face with a vector-valued Thomas-Raviart basis function. This, too, was previously unsupported by VTK.
To read more about these changes, please see this topic on VTK's discourse forum.
ParaView has a new Auto Save State feature.
With the Auto Save State setting enabled, a state file will be written at each significant change in ParaView. This includes any pipeline modification or rendering property modification.
This feature can be enabled in the settings Edit -> Settings... panel. It is off by default. You can also choose the state file format, .py (Python) or .pvsm (ParaView XML) and its location.
ParaView already let you set custom default properties values from the dedicated button in the properties panel. With the Preserve Property Values setting, this can be done automatically after each modification. It applies to every filter, source, reader and extractor and will occur right after clicking on Apply. The next time you create a filter, it will come with your last configuration.
You can now choose a new property in the settings to set PVSM (XML state file) or .py (Python state file) as the default save/load state file format.
Some new options for resetting property values to custom defaults have been added to ParaView. These options are available in the context menu seen when you right-click (or ctrl-left-click) on a property label in the Properties Panel.
A new "Reset to User Settings" menu option lets you reset the property value to your own custom default after manually changing it.
You can choose the "Reset to Application Default" on the Properties Panel before hitting the "Apply" button for the first time, and doing so does not automatically cause the source to be updated. You fully control when apply occurs and can manually modify any restored values before commiting them with the "Apply" button.
Paraview now provides two new options in the Color Map Editor in the Automatic Rescale Range Mode property, Rescale to visible data range on 'Apply' and Rescale to visible data range every timestep. Each option enables updating the color map data range from only visible data in the render view.
The Clip and Slice filters now provide new Frustum, Cone, and Annulus clip/slice types.
The Frustum cut method represents a 4-sided frustum, i.e., a pyramid with the top truncated perpendicularly to its axis, and infinite towards its far plane direction. You can manipulate the frustum in the view using the dedicated widget to control its position, orientation, vertical/horizontal angles and the position of its near plane.
Screenshot of the Frustum widget in ParaView.
The Cone is a one-sided infinite cone, parameterized by an axis and the angle between the sides of the cone and its axis, and an origin point. You can manipulate the widget through controls similars to the cylinder widget controls.
Screenshot of the Cone widget in ParaView.
The Annulus represents two co-axial cylinders, infinite in both direction. You can manipulate the annulus in the view using the dedicated widget to control its axis, position, and inner/outer radii.
Screenshot of the Annulus widget in ParaView.
You can now see the OpenGL window backend in use by the ParaView server in the About dialog under the entries "Window Backend" and "Supported Headless Backends". An example configuration is shown below.
Example of ParaView's About window showing "Window Backend" "EGL" and "Supported Headless Backends" of "EGL OSMesa".
A dedicated 2D scalar bar has been added to the Bivariate Texture Representation. This 2D scalar bar allows you to visualize annotations (titles, ticks and labels) associated with the bivariate texture colors. Unlike the standard scalar bar, this 2D scalar bar does not have an orientation, and it is not attached to a lookup table (transfer function) but to the representation itself. However they have numerous properties in common, as text font, border, background, and so on.
Screenshot of the Textured Scalar Bar in ParaView
Two new preset colormaps, "Fast (Blues)" and "Fast (Reds)" have been added that extract the respective halves of the "Fast" colormap. These colormaps may be useful for creating plots of values that are known to be either all-positive (e.g., von Mises stress) or all-negative values (e.g., change in temperature for a cooling object), while retaining visual consistency with the "Fast" colormap. You can find these colormaps in the "Linear" preset list.
New colormaps, each derived from one side of the Fast color map.
This is a Python-only plugin based on xarray_support.vtkXArrayCFReader. It uses readers in XArray to read data so it enables formats not previously available in ParaView such as zarr and grib. Once data is in memory it is passed (using zero copy when possible) to the NetCDF CFReader to parse and create a dataset.
Please see the blog post Bridging Data and Visualization: Interactive Scientific Exploration with VTK-Xarray Interoperability for more details.
NVIDIA IndeX now uses CUDA 12.8, which has native support for the NVIDIA Blackwell GPU architecture.
The minimum NVIDIA driver versions required are 525.60.13 (Linux) and 528.33 (Windows). Recommended driver versions are 570.33 (Linux) and 570.84 (Windows) or newer.
Also required is an NVIDIA GPU that supports at least CUDA compute capability 5.0, i.e., Maxwell GPU architecture or newer. To find out the compute capability of a specific GPU, see the NVIDIA website.
ParaView is now able to read plugin versions and descriptions from plugin configuration files directly, which means that the plugin version and its description are now visible in the plugin manager without loading the plugin.
A new Axis-Aligned Reflect filter is now available in Paraview. This filter reflects the input dataset across the specified plane. It operates on any type of dataset or Hyper TreeGrid and produces a Partitioned DataSet Collection containing partitions of the same type as the input. If the Copy Input property is enabled, the reflection and the input is copied to the output.
The new Axis-Aligned Transform filter is now available in Paraview. This filter applies an axis-constrained affine transformation to the input dataset (translation, scaling, rotation). The main benefit of this filter over the standard transform filter is to handle Hyper TreeGrids and to preserve the input type.
ParaView now offers a new filter, Cell Quality, that allows you to compute a given cell quality metric on all cells contained in a dataset.
Some metrics and cell types are not yet supported, but you can set a default value for such cases with these properties:
The Feature Edges Region Ids filter is now available. It generates a cell array to identify region of a polygonal (surface) mesh. A region is a portion of the surface where two adjacent cells have a relative angle less than a given threshold.
You can view Feature Edges Region Ids like a variant of the Connectivity filter, using an angle criteria like the Feature Edges filter.
Superposition of Regions coloration and Feature Edges of a surface
The new Explode Data Set filter enables creation of a composite data based on a CellData array values. Typically, this can be material ids, like groups in OBJ files, or other kind of region ids, such as those that can be generated by the Connectivity or the Feature Edges Region Ids filters.
Using Explode Data Set after a Feature Edges Region Ids
The Quadric Decimation filter is now available. This filter let's you reduce the number of triangles in a triangulated mesh while preserving the shape of the mesh as much as possible. Set the targeted number of triangles reduction ratio to control the extent of the decimation. While the previous Decimation Filter uses a vertex decimation approach with re-triangulation, the Quadric Decimation Filter uses edge collapses which tends to produce higher-quality results.
Example of Quadric Decimation filter with 0.5 target reduction that cuts the number of triangles in half.
The Append Datasets and Append PolyData filters have been re-writen and multithreaded, and their performance has been significantly improved. Merge Blocks which uses Append Datasets internally has also been improved.
Extract Surface and Surface Representation (which uses Extract Surface internally) used to extract the whole cell when getting faces from polyhedron cells. Now, it accesses only the faces to efficiently extract the polyhedron faces-related information.
ParaView now provides two strategies for the Integrate Variables filter. The original strategy is now called Linear Strategy and the new Gaussian Strategy is now available. This enables the proper computation of degenerate linear cells (e.g. with non-planar faces) and opens the way to high-order cell integration.
The PCA Normal Estimation filter now supports choosing whether the output polydata contains no cells (output may not appear in a render view in that case), a single poly vertex cell, or as many vertex cells as there are points.
Process Id Scalars is now removed from Paraview. Please use Process Ids instead.
Deprecation of the HyperTreeGrid Ghost Cells Generator filter, as the Ghost Cells filter already supports Hyper TreeGrids. You can use Ghost Cells for Hyper TreeGrids, DataSets, or Composite DataSets.
You can now use Feature Edges for any PolyData or HyperTreeGrid,so HyperTreeGrid Feature Edges is deprecated.
Hyper TreeGrids are now supported by the Cell Centers filter.
You can now use Cell Centers for any DataSet or Hyper TreeGrid. HyperTreeGrid Cell Centers is therefore deprecated.
You can now use the HyperTreeGrid Source to create distributed Hyper Tree Grids with masked cells.
The Files -> Reload Files menu item now reloads all readers, not just the active reader selected in the Pipeline Browser. You can still reload only files for a chosen reader in the Pipeline Browser by acessing the Release Files menu item in the context menu accessed by right-clicking or control-left-clicking the reader source.
The
Reload Filesitem in theFilemenu (top) andReload Filesitem in the Pipeline Browser context menu (bottom).
ParaView has a completely rewritten EnSight Gold Combined Reader and EnSight SOS Gold Reader. These were rewritten to be easier to maintain and to find and fix bugs in the old reader. It also includes some additional features that the old reader lacked:
AVMesh files produced by HPCMP CREATE-AV software can now be read by ParaView. The AVMesh file format extension is ".avm".
ParaView can now open HyperTreeGrid datasets using the VTKHDF format. These files support temporal data and can be read in parallel.
The Merge Parts option was removed from the VTKHDF Reader. You should manually create a Merge Blocks filter if a non-partitioned data type is required.
_0)The OpenFOAM reader can now read result files which filename ends with _0 by disabling the Ignore Restart Files. Previously, these files were ignored because "restart files" use the same naming pattern. The reader still ignores these files by default to keep previous behavior.
The OpenFOAM reader now supports multithreaded reading of OpenFOAM case files. This feature is on by default, and it can be disabled by turning on the Sequential Processing option. It can be useful to enable when reading large case files that are stored on a network drive. If the case file is stored on a local drive, it may be better to keep this feature off. An additional property, Read All Files To Determine Structure has been added, which enables reading only the proc0 directory to determine the structure of the case file and broadcasting it to all processors. This property is off by default, because there is no such guarantee that the proc0 directory contains all the necessary information to determine the structure of the full set of data files. Finally, the default value of property Create Cell To Point data has been changed to off.
The Delimited Text Reader (aka CSV reader) has new properties:
Screenshow of new properties and preview in the Delimited Text reader.
The reader also benefits from different performance improvements that make it run faster and require less memory during file parsing.
You can now read surface (2D) elements stored in CGNS files as Element_t nodes. This allows reading of arbitrary surfaces saved in the file that are not associated to a boundary condition BC_t node.
You can now select the zone sections you wish to load when reading a FLUENT file. The output multiblock dataset will contain only the selected zones.
Keep in mind that all intermediate structures are cached by default to avoid re-parsing the file when the zone selections change. If you wish to avoid caching to lower memory usage at the expense of increased IO performance, you can set the Cache Data property to false.
Because of zone sections interdependency in the FLUENT format, some unselected zone sections may still need to be read from the file, even if they are not part of the output multiblock dataset.
The general file parsing logic is:
As a result, unselecting a zone will not always improve the file reading time, but it will lower the output's size.
LAMMPS Dump files are sometimes written as a series of files (one file per timestep) and sometimes as restarts (multiple files each containing multiple timesteps). Reading a time series of Dump files is now supported.
This gets the proper time values when reading a time series of files, but each file defines the proper simulation time. Previously, any time values were ignored and the file index was used for the time. Now, a time value can be read from a single file to get the appropriate simulation time.
A bug that made the Spy Plot Reader always down convert volume fraction arrays has been fixed. Now the Down Convert Volume Fraction property setting is respected correctly.
The IOSSWriter introduced in ParaView 5.12 is now the default Exodus writer in ParaView. The old ExodusIIWriter is now available as LegacyExodusIIWriter once you load the LegacyExodusWriter plugin. In addition, the IOSSWriter now supports the following extensions: .g, .e, .ex2, .ex2v2, .gen, .exoII, .exoii, and .exo.
A new Fides Writer that uses the Fides library to write data to ADIOS2 BP files is now available in ParaView. This initial version only provides support for the BP engines (SST support is in progress). When writing the data, Fides will also write the schema as an attribute in the BP file, so the data can be read back in to ParaView with the Fides Reader.
New options have been added to the VTK.JS scene exporter.
Several properties of the Polar Axes have been renamed:
| Previous name | New name |
|---|---|
| Number Of Polar Axes | Number Of Arcs |
| Delta Range Polar Axes | Delta Range Arcs |
| Radial Title Visibility | Radial Label Visibility |
| Radial Title Format | Radial Label Format |
| Radial Title Location | Radial Label Location |
| Radial Title Offset | Radial Label Offset |
| Polar Ticks Visibility | All Ticks Visibility |
Full backwards compatibility with ParaView state files and Python scripts from versions created by ParaView versions before 6.0.0 is maintained.
The HTG surface representation now supports toggling individual block visibility in the MultiBlock Inspector.
Expanded HyperTreeGrid Visible Leaves Size to allow new fields to be computed. The filter has been renamed HyperTreeGrid Generate Fields and HyperTree Grid Visible Leaves Size is now deprecated.
New fields available:
Any field can be turned off, and their name can be modified.
In the past, ParaView used to always set a default number of frames set to 10. This created an issue when trying to save animation/extracts with an object that doesn't have time information. Now the default number of frames is set to 1, which is more appropriate for such cases. If you want to create an animation with more frames, you can change the number of frames in the Time Manager panel.
Previously, reversing an animation required stopping the playback and then changing the play direction. Now, you can change the play direction while already playing without needing to stop the animation first.
New buttons have been added to the Common and Data Analysis toolbars.
The toolbar button to show the Colormap Editor panel is now toggleable, i.e., it can show and now hide the Color Map Editor.
The Color Map Editor toolbar button can now be toggled to show or hide the Color Map Editor.
Thumbnails for existing example visualizations have been updated with the new default color map and background. In addition, three new examples have been added:
A new menu item "Unlink Camera" is available in the context menu obtained by by right-clicking (ctrl-left-clicking) in a RenderView. When selected, this item will remove all camera links associated with the view.
Clients may now inject options into the SSH client command by setting the PARAVIEW_SSH_OPTIONS environment variable.
SSHCommand port forwarding mechanism has been improved to now support random port forwarding port, thanks to the new PV_SSH_PF_SERVER_PORT variable.
Example syntax for a reverse connection server with a random forwarded port between 8080 and 88888:
ParaView no longer uses versioned user interface settings files, which means it is no longer necessary to copy over the user interface settings when updating ParaView versions. The file is named ParaView.ini and can be found in standard user configuration file storage locations.
ParaView now supports a site settings file for user interface settings. It uses the same syntax and has the same purpose as the .ini file that can be found under the standard user configuration. It stores settings for which windows are open and their geometry on the screen. This site settings file is used as fallback.
The paths searched are relative to the ParaView installation and depends on the operating system:
ParaView property visibility is either "default" (always visible), "advanced" (when an advanced button is toggled on) or "never". You can now override those with a simple PropertyPanelVisibilities.json JSON-formatted configuration file, placed under a standard ParaView configuration directory.
The JSON should be a collection of objects per proxy group, containing one object per proxy, itself having a list of properties and their desired visibilities.
Example of PropertyPanelVisibilities.json
ParaView's CAVEInteraction plugin now supports basic collaboration features. If you build ParaView with the CAVEInteraction plugin and collaboration enabled, the plugin's CAVE Interaction Manager includes new controls in the user interface allowing you to configure your connection to the collaboration server. It also allows you to manage the mapping between events you have configured and your avatar's head and hands.
Using this new feature, you can collaborate with people in other CAVE systems, as well as with people using the XRInterface plugin.
This change provides a new Physical To World Matrix property on render views. This is used in some common representations when the new Coordinate System property is set to physical coordinates instead of the default world coordinates.
Adds a new attribute, Coverable, available to set on Machine elements in a .pvx file. When the attribute is set to 1, the associated pvserver window will be manageable by the windowing system. This allows other windows to cover it, and provides a taskbar item which can be used to bring the pvserver window back to the front.
This functionality is only available for the X windows implementation. A warning will be printed on non-X windows systems.
ParaView's Python Shell previously had basic autocomplete support that worked to complete the names of sources/filters/readers/writers, attributes of existing sources/filters/readers/writers, or names of free functions such as SaveScreenshot when calling them.
Now, autocomplete works in additional cases, including:
s = Sphere(registra<TAB> autocompletes to s = Sphere(registrationNameConnect(ds_<TAB> brings up a combobox with autocomplete choices ds_host and ds_portPython state files will now be less verbose. The new approach records only properties that are used in the visualization instead of all modified properties of a proxy.
To use the previous verbosity level choose "any *modified* properties" in the Properties to Trace on Create property of the Python Trace Options dialog.
For example, in ParaView 5.13.0 the saved state of a Clip filter will look like this:
The new aprroach takes advantage from the fact that the default value of Clip is a Plane and that for a clip that uses a plane on an unstructured grid all the other properties are not used
Similarly for representations
We now have
In addition, defaults for proxy properties are now tracked so that they may be excluded from Python state files when the Python trace is set to record only modified properties.
For a simple example that contains a Wavelet, Contour, and a couple of extractors, the Python state file size was reduced from 215 lines to 199 lines. For example, the code initializing the renderView was changed from this:
to this (three default proxy properties were removed):
Several other default proxy properties were likewise removed from other functions. For example, PointMergeMethod='Uniform Binning' was removed from the contour settings, the following were all removed from the geometry representation:
And Trigger = 'Time Step' was removed from the extractors.
Finally, 2D transfer functions would always appear in Python trace or Python state files that included rendering components, even when the 2D transfer functions were not used at all. The recent changes to proxy property defaults, however, allow us to also remove 2D transfer functions when they are unmodified/unused.
Now, 2D transfer functions are no longer present in the state file if they are unmodified. The following are examples of lines that are removed:
And in the setter for the lookup table:
Those lines of code were unnecessary because the TransferFunction2D for the lookup table was already set to that exact same object.
Many colormaps include a large number of RGBPoints. For example, "Viridis" and "Inferno" both contain around 250 points. Previously, all of the RGBPoints would be explicitly written out to Python state files. This could be overwhelming for state files. For example, it may have looked like this:
Now, while saving the Python state file, we check to see if we can generate the RGB points automatically by using a preset name and a range of values. If we can generate the RGB points automatically, we call the function to do so instead of explicitly listing all RGB points. Thus, that section of the state file now looks like the following:
This is much more user-friendly, since you have the opportunity to see and manually edit the minimum and maximum of the range. It is also significantly less verbose than writing out all of the points.
While saving the state file, if we cannot generate the RGB points automatically (this could happen, for example, if you manually modify one or more of the points), then we default to the old behavior of writing out all of the points explicitly.
paraview.infoParaView has now a new python module info that allows you to get diagnostic information about the current build.
You can access it via pvbatch:
To get output as json use
In pvpython (or a catalyst script) you can now do
Sample output:
vtkMultiBlockDataGroupFilter with generic vtkGroupDataSetsFilter as PostGatherHelper in servermanager.Fetchservermanager.Fetch now uses generic vtkGroupDataSetsFilter instead of vtkMultiBlockDataGroupFilter as the PostGatherHelper for its reduction filter in case of composite input. Therefore, Fetch now works with vtkPartitionedDataSetCollection and vtkPartitionedDataSet inputs.
paraview.servermanager.options.satelite option has been renamed to satellite to fix the typo.In CAVE mode,pvservers are normally provided the path to a .pvx file to read that contains the geometry of each display as well as the physical coordinates of the screen corners of each display.
This change makes those values available to the client via new API on the render view proxy. Clients can query whether or not the system is in CAVE mode (the rest of the API methods will complain if not in CAVE mode), as well as query the number of displays. For each display the client can ask for the geometry and screen corners.
Example:
simple.pyOver time the paraview.simple module grew to contain many functions over many lines of code. It was time to rework its structure to promote clarity and enable a deprecation path while empowering developers to create new and better helper functions.
The new structure breaks the single simple.py file into a package split into a set of submodules with common responsibilities. Deprecated methods are centralized within their own file for easy eventual removal.
This change also exposes a new set of methods (Set, Rename) on proxies directly to streamline their usage.
The code block below capture the usage of those new methods:
Note that from paraview.simple import * works as before to import all functions in the paraview.simple package.
There were conditions that under some circumstances would cause deadlock when a message was written to the output. The problem was that the Output Messages window's display text method would first lock a mutex and then send some Qt signals to handle the message. However, it was possible for one of the slots attached to the signal to send its own message. In one particular case, this happened when the dock for the output messages was shown. That would cause the display text method to be reentrant. When it tried to grab the mutex again, it would lock because it already locked the mutex higher up the stack.
When using embossing representation plugin, some errors occurred on the OpenGL level.
vtkIdType data, an error used to show up because the type was unknown. ParaView still does not support vtkIdType data in this plugin, but it is now properly handled, preventing low level errors from OpenGL.The initialize protocol of ParaView-Catalyst Blueprint has now a new optional entry catalyst/python_path.
catalyst/python_path allows to add a list of paths to be added in the PYTHONPATH on the Python interpreter that executes the catalyst python script. catalyst/python_path should be given as a single string. Multiple paths should be separated with the system path separator, i.e., : for Unix and ; for Windows.
Catalyst 2's CxxPolygonal example has been renamed to CxxPolygonalWithAttributes to showcase how to use VTK specific array attributes within Catalyst.
When defining fields in a Conduit tree, it is often useful to include metadata about the fields that can be interpreted by VTK, and used appropriately. To that end, we have added a new node to the Conduit tree that can be used to store metadata about the fields in the tree. This node is called state/metadata/vtk_fields.
Each child of the state/metadata/vtk_fields node has a name that corresponds to a field in the tree. The number of children of the state/metadata/vtk_fields node need not match the number of fields in the tree since not every field needs to have metadata.
The current metadata that can be stored for each field is:
attribute_type: It is a string and represents the attribute type of a field that, so that VTK can use an attribute array, such as GlobalIds. The values uses are the entries of vtkDataSetAttributes::AttributeTypes + Ghosts. The complete list of values is:ScalarsVectorsNormalsTCoordsTensorsGlobalIdsPedigreeIdsEdgeFlagTangentsRationalWeightsHigherOrderDegreesProcessIdsGhostsvalues_to_replace and replacement_values: These two are vectors of values that be used to replace specific values in the field. This is useful when the field has some values that are not valid for VTK. For example, the vtkGhostType array uses specific values that other ghost cell generator algorithms may not use. In this case, the values_to_replace would be the values that need to be replaced, and the replacement_values would be the values that should replace them. The two vectors should have the same length.Example:
Lastly, the usage of ascent_ghosts has been deprecated and should be replaced with the new state/metadata/vtk_fields node, as shown above.
ParaView now permits C++17 language features and hence requires C++17 compiler support. The minimum required compiler versions have been updated as well.
ParaView's image testing framework has been enhanced to incorporate the Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) metric on the Lab color space. This contribution provides an opt-in feature to ensure that as a project that is using VTK, it does encounter broken tests when updating.
The Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) is a metric introduced in the paper titled "Image Quality Assessment: From Error Visibility to Structural Similarity" by Wang et al. It measures the "structural correlation" between two images, providing a comprehensive evaluation of their similarity.
In this implementation, SSIM is computed per pixel around a patch in the Lab color space. The Lab color space is chosen for its perceptual uniformity, ensuring that differences in color are consistent with human perception.
The SSIM metric produces a value between 0 and 1, where 1 indicates perfect structural similarity between the images, and 0 indicates no similarity.
The output of SSIM metric ranges from 0 to 1, where 1 indicates perfect similarity, and 0 indicates no similarity.
You can enable this feature by defining the CMake variable DEFAULT_USE_SSIM_IMAGE_COMP as true. When turned on, SSIM will be used by default.
There are three ways to use the SSIM metric when setting a test:
TIGHT_VALID (Default)LOOSE_VALIDLEGACY_VALIDSet VTK_TESTING_IMAGE_COMPARE_METHOD to one of the following values: TIGHT_VALID, LOOSE_VALID, or LEGACY_VALID.
It is advised to migrate to the new SSIM metric within a reasonable time frame. The new metric is more selective and results in fewer false negatives compared to the legacy method.
The new vtkPVStandardPaths groups methods to get the standard paths an application may want to use. This includes system directories, install directories and user directories. They of course depend on the operating system.
On linux and macOS, it tries to match the XDG specifications.
Some environment variables may modify the behavior: those defined by XDG when relevant. On windows APPDATA is used to get the User directory.
vtkSMSettings priorities updateSome vtkSMSettings API ask for a priority as a numeric value.
We added GetUserPriority(), used as default, for the writeable settings. This is the highest priority used in ParaView. We also added GetApplicationPriority() to put all ParaView-defined settings (aka site-settings) under the same priority, lower than GetUserPriority().
Those replace hard-coded values. If you define custom settings priority, please base them on this new API.
vtkPVGeneralSettings breaking changesThe vtkPVGeneralSettings class was updated to limit its dependency to other modules at the strict minimum. During this work, its members were moved from protected to private. Please use the getters and setters instead.
Some changes were made in ParaView to prevent warning messages when using the application with MPI:
PARAVIEW_PLUGIN_LOADER_PATHS to vtkPVPluginLoader definitionsAdding PARAVIEW_PLUGIN_LOADER_PATHS to compile definitions for vtkPVPluginLoader is fixed to stop removing BUILD_SHARED_LIBS definitions.
vtkPVPlane deprecationvtkPlane in VTK now supports Axis Aligned and Offset properties. Therefore, vtkPVPlane is now deprecated. Please note that the protected members of vtkPVPlane have been modified without deprecation, which may have an impact if you were inheriting from that class. Please inherit from vtkPlane instead.
vtkPVArrayInformation::CopyFromArray() performancesAdded two new vtkPVArrayInformation::CopyFromArray(vtkAbstractArray*) and vtkPVArrayInformation::CopyFromArray(vtkFieldData*, int) overloads, and deprecated the existing vtkPVArrayInformation::CopyFromArray(vtkAbstractArray*, vtkFieldData*).
This change makes the distinction explicit. This allows us to make sure to not repeatedly loop over the field data's arrays using costly string comparisons. This results in notable performance improvements during ParaView's pipeline updates for dataset with a large number of arrays.
ParaView has a new behavior, pqPropertyPanelVisibilitiesBehavior that can be instantiated to enable the feature. Upon creation, it will read the configuration JSON file, and it will be consulted in every proxy registration. To properly work, this behavior needs to be created before any pqProxyWidget, as only further widget creation will be affected by it.
refresh_on_interaction attributeA new boolean attribute refresh_on_interaction has been added. It allows live sources to be refreshed upon user interaction. The default value is false (current behavior).
Keep in mind that enabling this option could complicate interactions with large data sets.
xmlpatternsThe ParaViewClient APIs now support using (and prefer) xsltproc if available. This allows documentation generation to be supported with Qt6, which does not provide an xmlpatterns executable.
ParaView's cmake configuration exposes a new variable ParaView_QCH_FILES that stores the location of ParaView .qch help files. It is useful for a ParaView-based applications that wish to include ParaView's documentation.
ParaView-based application can already specify a MAIN_WINDOW_CLASS in paraview_client_add CMake function. This is in fact the main point of a those kind of applications.
You can now also specify a APPLICATION_CORE_CLASS, that should subclass the pqPVApplicationCore default class.
It is useful to control core features at creation, before the end of the initialization. An example is deciding to use or not use the application version in the settings filename (see pqApplicationCore::useVersionedSettings).
A filter may require an input array associated with a specific attribute type (mainly Points or Cells). ParaView provides a global setting to automatically move arrays to the required association. This applies to every filter.
It is now possible to specify this behavior per filter in the XML configuration with the attribute auto_convert_association="1" in the InputArrayDomain.
The conversion is done if either the global settings is true or the filter property is set to "1".
The Contour filter uses this feature.
Note: With automatic array conversion, more arrays are available. This may change the default array picked by the downstream filter.
Calling GetValuatorRole(eventName) has never worked because valuator events are configured with a single id, which is the index of a single channel of valuator data. However, valuator events are delivered with all ids/indices of valuator as a single event.
Since the relationship between roles and valuator events isn't one-to-one, the GetValuatorRole method has been removed. Now vtkSMVRInteractorStyleProxy provides a method to get the id/index associated with given a role name.
vtkCPMappedVectorArrayTemplate has been deprecated. Please use the SetArray functionality of vtkAOSDataArrayTemplate instead.pqReloadFilesReaction, the static member function bool pqReloadFilesReaction::reload() has been deprecated. Use reloadSources() instead.pqServerConfiguration, the function QString portForwardingLocalPort() const has been deprecated. Use int localPortForwardingPort() const instead.vtkSMAnimationScene, the member function static void SetGlobalUseGeometryCache(bool) has been deprecated in favor of vtkPVGeneralSettings::SetCacheGeometryForAnimation(bool), and the member function static bool GetGlobalUseGeometryCache() has been deprecated in favor of bool vtkPVGeneralSettings::GetCacheGeometryForAnimation().vtkPVArrayInformation, member function void CopyFromArray(vtkAbstractArray*, vtkFieldData*) has been deprecated. Use CopyFromArray(vtkAbstractArray*) or CopyFromArray(vtkFieldData*, int) overloads instead.vtkPVPluginLoader, the member function bool LoadDelayedLoadPlugin(const std::string&, const std::vector<std::string>&, const std::string&) has been removed in favor of overloaded member functions of the same name with version and description arguments.vtkPVPluginTracker, member function unsigned int RegisterAvailablePlugin(const char*) has been deprecated. Use LoadPluginConfigurationXML(const char*, bool) instead.vtkPVXYChartView the static member variable IgnoreNegativeLogAxisWarning and its accessors static void SetIgnoreNegativeLogAxisWarning(bool val) and static bool GetIgnoreNegativeLogAxisWarning() have been deprecated. Use void vtkPVGeneralSettings::SetIgnoreNegativeLogAxisWarning(bool) and bool vtkPVGeneralSettings::GetIgnoreNegativeLogAxisWarning() instead.vtkSMChartSeriesSelectionDomain, the member functions static void SetLoadNoChartVariables(bool) has been deprecated in favor of vtkPVGeneralSettings::SetLoadNoChartVariables(bool) and static bool GetLoadNoChartVariables() has been deprecated in favor of bool vtkPVGeneralSettings::GetLoadNoChartVariables().vtkSMParaViewPipelineControllerWithRendering, member function static void SetHideScalarBarOnHide(bool) has been deprecated. Use vtkPVGeneralSettings::SetScalarBarMode(AUTOMATICALLY_HIDE_SCALAR_BARS) instead. static void SetInheritRepresentationProperties(bool) has been deprecated in favor of vtkPVGeneralSettings::SetInheritRepresentationProperties(bool), and static bool GetInheritRepresentationProperties() has been deprecated in favor of bool vtkPVGeneralSettings::GetInheritRepresentationProperties().vtkPVGhostCellsGenerator, member function int GhostCellsGeneratorUsingSuperclassInstance(vtkInformation*, vtkInformationVector**, vtkInformationVector*) has been deprecated. Use int GhostCellsGeneratorUsingSuperclassInstance(vtkDataObject*, vtkDataObject*) instead.vtkPVPlane has been deprecated. Use vtkPlane instead.paraview module, function satelite() has been deprecated. Use satellite() instead.pvPVAnimationWidget has been removed. Use pqTimeManagerWidget instead.pqResetScalarRangeReaction and its associated .ui file has been removed. Use pqRescaleScalarRangeReaction instead.pqTimeInspsectorWidget and its associated .ui file have been removed. Use pqTimeManagerWidget instead.pqAnimationTimeWidget, public slots void setNotation(RealNumberNotation) and void setPrecision(int) have been removed. Global settings for these properties are now used.pqAnimationTimeWidget has been removed. Use pqTimeManagerWidget instead.pqHelpWindow, public slot virtual void showHomePage(const QString&) has been removed. Use setNameSpace(const QString&) and showHomePage() functions instead.pqHelpWindowWebEngine, member function static pqWebView* newInstance(QHelpEngine*, QWidget*) has been removed. Use pqWebView* newInstance(QHelpEngine*, pqHelpWindow*) instead.pqRescaleRange has been removed. Use pqRescaleScalarRangeToCustomDialog instead.pqScalarValueListPropertyWidget, public member function void setLabels(std::vector<const char*>&) has been removed. Use void setLabels(const std::vector<std::string>& labels) instead.pqAnnotationsModel, the unused member variable QIcon MissingColorIcon has been removed.pqFileDialogFavoriteModel, removed member variable static bool AddExamplesInFavorites. Use pqFileDialogLocationModel::AddExamplesInLocations instead.pqFileDialogModel, member function void setCurrentPath(const QString&, bool) has been removed. Use setGroupFiles(bool) and setCurrentPath(path) instead.pqPythonMacroSupervisor, member function static void removeStoredMacro(const QString&) has been removed in favor of hideFile(). Member function static QStringList getSupportedIconFormats() has been removed in favor of pqIconListModel::getSupportedIconFormats().pqAnimationKeyFrame, pqAnimationModel, pqAnimationTrack, and pqAnimationWidget have been removed. See pqTimeManagerWidget for the new design.pqDoubleLineEdit, member function static QString formatDouble(double, QTextStream::RealNumberNotation, int) has been removed. Use pqDoubleLineEdit::formatDouble(double, pqDoubleLineEdit::RealNumberNotation, int) instead. static QString formatDoubleUsingGlobalPrecisionAndNotation(double) has been removed - use pqCoreUtilities::formatNumber(double) instead. void setAlwaysUseFullPrecision(bool) has been removed - use pqDoubleLineEdit::setNotation(pqDoubleLineEdit::FullNotation) instead.vtkCompositeAnimationPlayer, void SetDuration(int) has been removed. Use SetStride(int) and vtkSequenceAnimationPlayer instead.vtkRealtimeAnimationPlayer has been removed. Use vtkSequenceAnimationPlayer instead.vtkSMAnimationScene, member function void SetDuration(int) has been removed. Use SetStride(int) instead.vtkPVOptions, vtkPVOptionsXMLParser, vtkCommandOptions, and vtkCommandOptionsXMLParser have been removed. Use vtkCLIOptions instead.vtkSMParaViewPipelineController and vtkSMParaViewPipelineControllerWithRendering, member function virtual void DoMaterialSetup(vtkSMProxy*) has been removed. Material setup is now handled by the RenderView proxy on raytracing backend update.vtkSMProperty, member function static const char* CreateNewPrettyLabel(const char*) has been removed. Use vtkSMObject::CreatePrettyLabel(const std::string&) instead.vtkPVGeneralSettings, member functions void SetConsoleFontSize(int) and int GetConsoleFontSize() has no effect and have been removed.vtkChartRepresentation, vtkPVContextView, vtkPVParallelCoordinatesRepresentation, and vtkXYChartRepresentation, member function virtual bool Export(vtkCSVExporter*) has been removed. Use Export(vtkAbstractChartExporter*) instead.vtkPVRepresentedArrayListSettings, member functions virtual void SetNumberOfExcludedNameFilters(int), virtual int GetNumberOfExcludedNameFilters(), virtual void SetExcludedNameFilter(int, const char*), virtual const char* GetExcludedNameFilter(int), and vtkStringArray* GetAllNameFilters() have been removed. Use member functions of the same name in class vtkPVIOSettings instead.vtkPolarAxesRepresentation, member function virtual void SetNumberOfPolarAxisTicks(int) has been removed. Set SetDeltaRangeMajor(double) instead or enable AxisTickMatchesPolarAxes. Member function virtual void SetAutoSubdividePolarAxis(bool) has also been removed. Set SetDeltaRangePolarAxes(double) instead.vtkSMChartSeriesListDomain, member function static const char** GetKnownSeriesNames() has been removed. Use vtkPVRepresentedArrayListSettings::GetAllChartsDefaultXAxis() instead.vtkSMChartSeriesSelectionDomain, member function static void AddSeriesVisibilityDefault(const char*, bool) has been removed. Use vtkPVRepresentedArrayListSettings::SetChartsHiddenAttributes() instead.vtkSMPVRepresentationProxy, member functions static bool GetUsingScalarColoring(vtkSMProxy*) and static void SetupLookupTable(vtkSMProxy*) have been removed. Use static functions from vtkSMColorMapEditorHelper instead.vtkPVMetaSliceDataSet, member function void SetMergePoints(bool) was removed. Use SetLocator(vtkIncrementalPointLocator*) instead._colorMaps.py and lookuptable.py have been removed as they were no longer used.paraview/coprocessing.py, function CoProcessor.CreateWriter has been removed - use CoProcessor.RegisterWriter instead. Function CoProcessor.CreateView is deprecated - use CoProcessor.RegisterView instead.paraview.servermanager.DataInformation, the Update() method has been removed as it is no longer necessary because it is called automatically when any value from the data information object is retrieved.paraview.servermanager.ParaViewLoader, method LoadXML(xmlstring) has been removed. Use LoadPlugin() instead. In this same class, method updateModules(m=None) has been removed since it is no longer necessary.paraview.simple, function GetLookupTableForArray(arrayname, num_components, **params) has been removed. Use GetColorTransferFunction() instead.
1.8.13 on Fri Aug 1 2025