SciRender

                    

Qt 6 + OpenGL scientific rendering application. Loads VTK STRUCTURED_GRID (curvilinear), RECTILINEAR_GRID, STRUCTURED_POINTS, POLYDATA, UNSTRUCTURED_GRID, STL & OBJ files, maps scalar data to surface colormaps, and draws instanced vector-field arrow glyphs. A Lighting system, axis triad, clipping, Level-of-Detail (LOD) and screenshot export, all driven from a QML control panel.

Build

Requires Qt 6 (Core, Gui, Qml, Quick, QuickControls2, OpenGLWidgets), OpenGL, a C++20 compiler, CMake ≥ 3.16, and GLAD/GLM (vendored under vendor/, no install needed).

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="<path-to-Qt6>"
cmake --build build -j4

The shaders in src/shaders/ are copied next to the binary at build time, so the program can run from the build directory.

Features

• Loads VTK STRUCTURED_GRID (curvilinear), RECTILINEAR_GRID, STRUCTURED_POINTS, POLYDATA, UNSTRUCTURED_GRID and STL
• Scalar surface coloring with colormaps; per-dataset surface tessellation for curvilinear grids (boundary shell, not the full volume)
• Vector field arrow glyphs with user-controllable density and scaling
• Colorbar legend: clean gradient bar with a user-controllable number of tick labels (colorbarTicks, 2–20) spread across the live data range; applies to both the scalar and vector-magnitude bars
• Lighting system: key/fill/back/head lights that track the view, key intensity + K-ratios, kit-wide warm tint
• Axis triad + light-direction markers in a corner overlay
• FPS Head up Display (HUD)
• Screenshot export (PNG/JPEG/BMP), optional transparency
• Robust mesh loading: exact vertex dedup, and level-of-detail (LOD) that is safe for multi-shell surfaces while orbiting

Level of Detail (LOD)

LOD shows a coarser mesh only while the camera is moving, then snaps back to full detail when motion stops. It is used only when all of the following hold:

• Dataset type: volumetric grids (STRUCTURED_GRID, RECTILINEAR_GRID, STRUCTURED_POINTS) and surface meshes (STL, POLYDATA, UNSTRUCTURED_GRID).
• Size: at least 4000 vertices.
• Worthwhile: the decimated mesh has less than half the original triangles.
• Multi-shell safe: a single connected solid is always supported. Meshes with multiple disconnected parts are only decimated when the parts are far enough apart that they cannot be merged; otherwise full resolution is used.

Layout

Path	Purpose
src/app/	Qt/QML application entry point (main.cpp)
src/core/	VTK/STL parsers, mesh loading, mesh-quality analysis, camera, colormap definitions
src/render/	OpenGL renderer, lighting, mesh/LOD upload, vector glyphs, colorbar, axis triad
src/shaders/	GLSL vertex/fragment shaders
src/ui/	Custom QML viewport item
tests/	Standalone parser regression harness (parse_regression.cpp + run_tests.{bat,sh})
samples/	VTK/STL fixture files used by the regression harness
assets/	Application icon
vendor/	GLAD, GLM

License

MIT license