Temporal Series (MultiBlockDataSet)

Hi there,

In order to implement a custom speed playback, I’m currently using a vtkInterpolator for each node to get the timesteps I need. While browsing VTK’s docs/source I’ve found the vtkTemporalInterpolator which I suppose would be a great fit for what I want.

From what I’ve read, I can get the desired timestep by updating the information, something like:
info->Set(vtkStreamingDemandDrivenPipeline::UPDATE_TIME_STEP(), time);

But I couldn’t quite grasp how to properly provide the data to the vtkTemporalInterpolator. Currently I’m trying to use a vtkMultiBlockDataSet where each block represents a TimeStep, but I’m not quite sure how to correctly set the temporal Info needed for the temporal interpolator.

Any help to set this informations, as well as any other suggestions would be of great help!


Context
We’re currently implementing the visualization of an off-shore simulation application. So far every “static” aspect (point clouds, objs, etc) has been a smooth experience.
The next step, is displaying some animated actors coming from a temporal series file.
We need user interaction during simulation, so I’ve discarded AnimationScene.

For a fixed structure, I have no problem using a Timer to update Actors transforms.
The problem I’m facing is animating a PolyLine (with TubeFilter): For each TimeStep I have all nodes (fixed number of nodes) positions.

“Refilling” the PolyData and updating the filter at each TimerEvt, takes too long so my next try was to generate an Actor for each TimeStep and change which one is been rendered, while this works, for larger models (typical) this can’t fit in the memory.

Please, if you have any experience with this kind of problem don’t hesitate to provide suggestion or new ideas I can try!