Recenter view operation in v3.3.3 on MacOS

[acbauer]

Hi,

I'm wondering if the Recenter view operation is working properly for VisIt 3.3.3 on a MacOS. The steps I'm doing are:

1. Hit the Reset view button to view my data along the z-axis.
2. Pan my view by holding the command key and dragging my mouse while the left mouse button is pressed. Now my data is not centered in the view.
3. Hit the Recenter view button. Here nothing changes in my view.
   I would expect the above operations after step 4 to have my view look the same as what it was after finishing step 1.

Thanks,
Andy

[markcmiller86]

I think you are trying to set a new center of rotation. VisIt's Recenter view feature is designed to compute, automatically a center of rotation by finding the center of the spatial extents of all plots in the view. If you have just one plot, the center of its spatial extents is unchanging. Panning the view doesn't change the plot's spatial extents.

To set a center of rotation you can use the Center of rotation pick feature in the viewer window (which requires you to pick a point on an existing plotted object in the view) or you can go to Controls->View->Advanced tab and manually enter a center of rotation coordinate.

Does that help?

[markcmiller86]

Maybe what you were hoping with the pan operation was to effectively translate the center of rotation that was set prior to the pan to the new world coordinates eye point (that point which is (0,0,0) in the new world coordinates after the pan is comleted?

[acbauer]

I modified the camera settings but the object I was looking at wasn't centered in the view. I wanted an operation to keep the camera view direction and camera up direction to stay the same but have the camera focal point be set to the center of my visible data. Is this what the Recenter view button (the one with the camera and 4 outward pointing green arrows) is supposed to do? I see that there's a Choose center of rotation button but that's not what I'm looking for. The example I gave above with panning the view was provided for others to reproduce the behavior I'm seeing and why I think the Recenter view button isn't working as expected.

[markcmiller86]

I wanted an operation to keep the camera view direction and camera up direction to stay the same but have the camera focal point be

You can set the focus as well as all other camera properties by typing values into the camera attributes. I know that is probably NOT quite what you want though. You do not want to enter numerical values...you want to gesture with the mouse. When you pan and zoom, you've gestured a new line of sight only...not a specific point in the view to serve as focus or center (for a rotation) for example.

set to the center of my visible data.

So, what do you really mean by "...center of my visible data"? If you are talking about your data, you are talking about the center of the plotted objects. VisIt computes this center as the center of the spatial extents of the union of all the objects plotted. And, that is what VisIt's Recenter view operation is currently desgined to support.

If you are talking about the center of what is visible (e.g. the view frustum), then we currently do not have the ability to ask VisIt to use the center of the current view frustrum as the new center. Maybe this is a new feature request then?

Is this what the Recenter view button (the one with the camera and 4 outward pointing green arrows) is supposed to do?

As I wrote above and it says in our docs...

• VisIt's Recenter view feature is designed to compute, automatically a center of rotation by finding the center of the spatial extents of all plots in the view.

I see that there's a Choose center of rotation button but that's not what I'm looking for.

I believe the concept of a view center in VisIt is currently used not only for establishing the camera's line of sight but also for establishing the center for rotations. Are are you requesting the ability to independently choose these?

[acbauer]

Ok, thanks for the input!