Orbit Camera default missing

[Hovden]

I am trying to make a basic animation in tomviz where the object rotates about it's center.

It appears that datasets other than the sample dataset, or a dataset that has been cropped, the orbit is not able to provide a default center:

As such, I cannot figure out what the center should be so that the object will rotate about the center. Every value I chose causes the object to rotate off axis.

[Hovden]

Actually, it seems to be connected only to cropped data.

[cquammen]

I can't seem to find how to create an orbit animation through the UI, but I do see references to it in the code. Did this functionality go away, @cryos @mathturtle ?

[mathturtle]

Select the camera as the proxy to animate and the default option is create an orbit.

[cquammen]

Thanks @mathturtle . It looks like there was a Tomviz-specific UI to create an orbit animation, but it no longer exists?

[mathturtle]

If you're referring to the picture above that @Hovden posted, that is what pops up when clicking the plus with Camera+Orbit selected. I don't recall ever having a custom orbit UI.

[cquammen]

Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation, @mathturtle !

[cquammen]

I cannot reproduce this. After modifying a dataset with the crop operator, I do need to remove the current Camera Orbit and add it again, but it is centered about the current data source when I do so. The Center settings are set to a reasonable setting, that is, the center of the data source.

[ercius]

Ive seen this a couple of times and was able to reproduce it in 1.0.0-RC1. The way it works is strange though.

1. Load the example dataset
2. Delete the current camera - orbit in the Animations window (you can only have 1 of these)
3. Add a new ortho slice
4. Delete the ortho slice
5. Add a camera -- orbit module in the Animation window
6. The Center is not auto populated

It seems that anytime you delete a module, then the center default is lost. You can get the center back by adding in a new vis module.

[cquammen]

Thanks for the steps. I was able to reproduce the problem.

I looked into the implementation in ParaView. To be honest, the "Create Orbit" dialog is not really ready for primetime. This issue and #570 are symptoms of the rough implementation on the ParaView side. The only types of orbits that work well are orbits where you don't change the Normal setting in this dialog.

Further compounding the problem, the "Create Dialog" feature relies on some of the features in ParaView that Tomviz is not using, at least consistently.

Developer's note: the center is computed from the bounds of the active sources selection in the active pqServer. In ParaView, these are the sources selected in the Pipeline Browser. I don't believe Tomviz is setting any active sources, at least not consistently.

[psavery]

To follow up on this, in #2224, I added an animation helper dialog under "Tools"->"Animation Helper" that I believe alleviates this issue. It allows you to interactively create a camera based upon your current camera settings. Basically, the orbit proceeds to the right around the current focal point with the same focal distance.

I'm attaching the same video I just attached to #2224 that demonstrates this.

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/9558430/214189055-768e7bd2-2a21-4fbe-8b34-53426f3ed3b7.mp4

This should be in the 2.0 release candidates.

With this, in theory, if you can center your focal point on the data (which you can usually do with the "Reset Camera" button), you can create a camera orbit around it!