Orbiting

Orbit around a scene.

Note

The quality of the movie will be better when using p.open_movie('orbit.mp4') instead of p.open_gif('orbit.gif')

For orbiting to work you first have to show the scene and leave the plotter open with .show(auto_close=False). You may also have to set pv.Plotter(off_screen=True)

Note

Use lighting=False to reduce the size of the color space to avoid “jittery” GIFs when showing the scalar bar.

import pyvista as pv
from pyvista import examples

mesh = examples.download_st_helens().warp_by_scalar()

Orbit around the Mt. St Helens dataset.

p = pv.Plotter()
p.add_mesh(mesh, lighting=False)
p.camera.zoom(1.5)
p.show(auto_close=False)
path = p.generate_orbital_path(n_points=36, shift=mesh.length)
p.open_gif("orbit.gif")
p.orbit_on_path(path, write_frames=True)
p.close()

p = pv.Plotter()
p.add_mesh(mesh, lighting=False)
p.show_grid()
p.show(auto_close=False)
viewup = [0.5, 0.5, 1]
path = p.generate_orbital_path(factor=2.0, shift=10000, viewup=viewup, n_points=36)
p.open_gif("orbit.gif")
p.orbit_on_path(path, write_frames=True, viewup=[0, 0, 1], step=0.05)
p.close()

mesh = examples.download_dragon()
viewup = [0, 1, 0]

p = pv.Plotter()
p.add_mesh(mesh)
p.show(auto_close=False)
path = p.generate_orbital_path(factor=2.0, n_points=36, viewup=viewup, shift=0.2)
p.open_gif("orbit.gif")
p.orbit_on_path(path, write_frames=True, viewup=viewup, step=0.05)
p.close()