MfxVTK

An Open Mesh Effect plugin for VTK filters

MfxVTK is a plugin that brings filters from the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) library into any 3D software that supports the Open Mesh Effect standard. It provides a non-destructive workflow for polygonal meshes, wireframes and point clouds.

To learn more, please have a look at MfxVTK documentation.

🚧 Currently this is a proof-of-concept; it works, but more features and polish should come in the future.

Features

• Surface/volume point sampling
• Creating tetrahedral wireframe from points
• Smooth and Decimate effects
• ...and more, see list of all effects.

How to use it

In the OpenMeshEffectForBlender branch of Blender:

• select your mesh
• open the Modifier tab and select Open Mesh Effect modifier
• in modifier properties, set path to MfxVTK plugin (mfx_vtk_plugin.ofx – download MfxVTK release from GitHub or build it yourself)
• select desired effect from the drop-down menu

How to build it yourself

You will need Git, CMake and a C++ compiler toolchain (like Microsoft Visual Studio or GCC/Make).

First, build VTK (version >= 9.0), see instructions on VTK wiki.

• Use BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF to make your MfxVTK binary not depend on VTK shared libraries.
• Turn off VTK_GROUP_ENABLE_Rendering, VTK_GROUP_ENABLE_Web, VTK_GROUP_ENABLE_MPI, VTK_GROUP_ENABLE_QT to make compilation faster.
• (Optional) Use VTK_SMP_IMPLEMENTATION_TYPE other than Sequential for better performance of some filters.

Then clone MfxVTK from GitHub (note that it has the OpenMeshEffect repository as a submodule):

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/tkarabela/MfxVTK

Build MfxVTK using CMake:

cd MfxVTK
mkdir cmake-build
cd cmake-build
cmake .. -DVTK_DIR:PATH=/path/to/VTK-9.0.1-build  # change this accordingly
cmake --build . --config Debug

The plugin is now in your build directory: src/mfx_vtk_plugin/libmfx_vtk_plugin.ofx.

How it works

It converts Open Mesh Effect mesh into vtkPolyData. General structure of the plugin as well as handy C++ wrapper over the Open Mesh Effect interface is borrowed from MfxVCG.

License

MfxVTK source code (src/mfx_vtk_plugin) is released under the MIT license, see LICENSE.txt. Parts of this repository also contain code licensed under the Apache 2 license, please see copyright notices in individual files.

MfxVTK Open Mesh Effect plug-in
Copyright (c) 2020 Tomas Karabela

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