[Paraview] animations with Xdmf Format

[Eric Monson]

Hello Dinesh,

 From what I understand, you can't use a .pvd file with Xdmf -- only  
with VTK XML files (.vtu, .vti, .vtp, etc). Right now, ParaView  
support for Xdmf is still in transition (from Xdmf v.1 to v.2). Here  
is a summary from a recent reply to me by Dave DeMarle:

> The transition is not yet complete, but we (Kitware and ARL) are  
> working toward updating VTK and ParaView support for XDMF as part of  
> the ParaView 3.4 development effort.
>
> This is a summary of the state of  XDMF in ParaView 3.2:
> * The writer writes files in the original XDMF format. It has not  
> yet been rewritten to take advantage of the new features in the new  
> XDMF.
> * The reader partially supports the new XDMF format. It is not yet  
> capable of producing deep tree structures, and instead collapses  
> them to a single level.
> * Temporal support and Parameter support have been temporarily  
> removed from XDMF and thus ParaView. We plan to add them back, but  
> until then you will have to shoehorn them in as you have suggested.

So, if you want to animate Xdmf files, you will have to follow the  
instructions in "Making custom readers work with file series" in the  
ParaView Animating_legacy_VTK_file_series Wiki entry. (http://www.paraview.org/Wiki/Animating_legacy_VTK_file_series 
) If you want to animate using PVD files, you will have to convert  
your files to XML-based VTK format.

Here is an example of a PVD file in case it's helpful:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<VTKFile type="Collection" version="0.1" byte_order="LittleEndian"  
compressor="vtkZLibDataCompressor">
	<Collection>
		<DataSet timestep="0.00" group="" part="0"  
file="Fig3_cells_0000.vti"/>
		<DataSet timestep="0.25" group="" part="0"  
file="Fig3_cells_0010.vti"/>
		<DataSet timestep="0.50" group="" part="0"  
file="Fig3_cells_0020.vti"/>
		<DataSet timestep="0.75" group="" part="0"  
file="Fig3_cells_0030.vti"/>
		<DataSet timestep="1.00" group="" part="0"  
file="Fig3_cells_0040.vti"/>
		<DataSet timestep="1.25" group="" part="0"  
file="Fig3_cells_0050.vti"/>
		<DataSet timestep="1.50" group="" part="0"  
file="Fig3_cells_0060.vti"/>
		<DataSet timestep="1.75" group="" part="0"  
file="Fig3_cells_0070.vti"/>
	</Collection>
</VTKFile>

Good luck,
-Eric

-----------------------------------------------------
Eric E. Monson
Duke Visualization Technology Group


On Dec 13, 2007, at 3:50 PM, Dinesh Kumar wrote:

> Hi Xdmf users,
>
> I was looking for some help on creating animations with Paraview  
> 3.xx. On wiki there is some hint about putting all the files into  
> a .pvd file with time-step information. Has anyone done that  
> successfully already? If yes can you please guide me. I small pvd  
> example file would be a great help.
>
> best regards
> --dinesh
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