VTK User's Guide

The Visualization Toolkit (VTK) is an open-source, freely available software system for 3D computer graphics, image processing and visualization. VTK consists of a C++ class library and several interpreted interface layers including Tcl/Tk, Java, and Python. VTK supports a wide variety of visualization algorithms including: scalar, vector, tensor, texture, and volumetric methods; and advanced modeling techniques such as: implicit modeling, polygon reduction, mesh smoothing, cutting, contouring, and Delaunay triangulation. VTK has an extensive information visualization framework, has a suite of 3D interaction widgets, supports parallel processing, and integrates with various databases on GUI toolkits such as Qt and Tk. VTK is cross-platform and runs on Linux, Windows, Mac and Unix platforms. The VTK User s Guide contains everything you need to install, use, and extend VTK. Detailed examples, installation procedures, developers guide, file format descriptions, how to write imaging and graphics filters, plus data object API details. The text includes source code, updated HTML documentation, release notes, data, and PC binaries. The VTK User's Guide is a companion text to The VTK Textbook; while The VTK Textbook stresses algorithmic and data structure details, the VTK User's Guide stresses how to use the software.

The Eleventh Edition of the VTK User s Guide features a new chapter detailing VTK's information visualization functionality, including the table, graph, and tree data structures required to represent nonspatial data; enhanced details on 2D and 3D widgets and other forms of user interaction required to create an exploratory visualization application; a new chapter on geospatial visualization for geographically organized data; additional details on time dependent and composite data; and a discussion of advanced rendering techniques, including depth peeling for transparency.

As always, the VTK User s Guide includes: a description of the structured and unstructured data types supported by VTK; details on the pipeline architecture model; an overview of the rendering engine used to display data; examples showing the use of various scalar and vector visualization and data processing algorithms; chapters dedicated to image processing and volume rendering; and information on how to write your own algorithms in VTK, including details on the VTK coding style.