I’m using the VTK Animation example Rotating Sphere and trying to save the animation to a video and was unsuccessful. My approach was to connect the vtkRenderer to vtkAVIWriter with vtkWindowToImageFilter
Below is the code I tested it with. This will output test.avi file that fails with ‘unable to open file’ on VLC Media player.
#include <vtkActor.h>
#include <vtkNamedColors.h>
#include <vtkPolyDataMapper.h>
#include <vtkProperty.h>
#include <vtkRenderWindow.h>
#include <vtkRenderWindowInteractor.h>
#include <vtkRenderer.h>
#include <vtkSmartPointer.h>
#include <vtkSphereSource.h>
#include <vtkAVIWriter.h>
#include <vtkWindowToImageFilter.h>
class vtkTimerCallback2 : public vtkCommand
{
public:
int timerId;
static vtkTimerCallback2 *New()
{
vtkTimerCallback2 *cb = new vtkTimerCallback2;
cb->TimerCount = 0;
return cb;
}
virtual void Execute(vtkObject *caller, unsigned long eventId,
void * vtkNotUsed(callData))
{
vtkRenderWindowInteractor *iren =
dynamic_cast<vtkRenderWindowInteractor*>(caller);
if (vtkCommand::TimerEvent == eventId)
{
++this->TimerCount;
}
if (TimerCount < 36)
{
actor->RotateZ(5);
iren->GetRenderWindow()->Render();
}
else
{
iren->DestroyTimer();
}
}
private:
int TimerCount;
public:
vtkActor* actor;
};
int main(int, char*[])
{
vtkSmartPointer<vtkNamedColors> colors =
vtkSmartPointer<vtkNamedColors>::New();
// Create a sphere
vtkSmartPointer<vtkSphereSource> sphereSource =
vtkSmartPointer<vtkSphereSource>::New();
sphereSource->SetCenter(0.0, 0.0, 0.0);
sphereSource->SetRadius(1.0);
sphereSource->SetThetaResolution(15);
sphereSource->SetPhiResolution(15);
sphereSource->Update();
// Create a mapper and actor
vtkSmartPointer<vtkPolyDataMapper> mapper =
vtkSmartPointer<vtkPolyDataMapper>::New();
mapper->SetInputConnection(sphereSource->GetOutputPort());
vtkSmartPointer<vtkActor> actor = vtkSmartPointer<vtkActor>::New();
actor->SetMapper(mapper);
actor->RotateX(90);
actor->GetProperty()->SetRepresentationToWireframe();
// Create a window to Image Filter
vtkSmartPointer<vtkWindowToImageFilter> imageFilter =
vtkSmartPointer<vtkWindowToImageFilter>::New();
//Create a video Writer
vtkSmartPointer<vtkAVIWriter> videoWriter =
vtkSmartPointer<vtkAVIWriter>::New();
// Create a renderer, render window, and interactor
vtkSmartPointer<vtkRenderer> renderer =
vtkSmartPointer<vtkRenderer>::New();
vtkSmartPointer<vtkRenderWindow> renderWindow =
vtkSmartPointer<vtkRenderWindow>::New();
renderWindow->AddRenderer(renderer);
renderWindow->SetSize(640, 480);
vtkSmartPointer<vtkRenderWindowInteractor> renderWindowInteractor =
vtkSmartPointer<vtkRenderWindowInteractor>::New();
renderWindowInteractor->SetRenderWindow(renderWindow);
// Add the actor to the scene
renderer->AddActor(actor);
renderer->SetBackground(colors->GetColor3d("Seashell").GetData());
// Render and interact
renderWindow->Render();
// Initialize must be called prior to creating timer events.
renderWindowInteractor->Initialize();
// Sign up to receive TimerEvent
vtkSmartPointer<vtkTimerCallback2> cb =
vtkSmartPointer<vtkTimerCallback2>::New();
cb->actor = actor;
renderWindowInteractor->AddObserver(vtkCommand::TimerEvent, cb);
int timerId = renderWindowInteractor->CreateRepeatingTimer(100);
cb->timerId = timerId;
imageFilter->SetInput(renderWindow);
imageFilter->SetInputBufferTypeToRGB();
imageFilter->ReadFrontBufferOff();
imageFilter->Update();
videoWriter->SetInputConnection(imageFilter->GetOutputPort());
videoWriter->SetFileName("test.avi");
videoWriter->Start();
// Start the interaction and timer
renderWindowInteractor->Start();
videoWriter->End();
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
Thank you