PyVista 3D Visualization

Overview

PyVista (MIT, 3.6k stars) is a Pythonic wrapper around VTK for 3D spatial data visualization. It provides a streamlined API for rendering meshes, point clouds, STL/OBJ geometry, and scalar fields without low-level VTK boilerplate.

Key Capabilities

Quick Start

import pyvista as pv

# Load and render a mesh
mesh = pv.read("geometry.stl")
mesh.plot(scalars="pressure", cmap="coolwarm")

# Offscreen rendering
plotter = pv.Plotter(off_screen=True, window_size=(1280, 720))
plotter.add_mesh(mesh, scalars="depth", cmap="viridis")
plotter.screenshot("output.png")
plotter.close()

# Pipe geometry from spline
import numpy as np
t = np.linspace(0, 10, 50)
points = np.column_stack((t, np.zeros_like(t), np.cosh((t-5)/5)))
spline = pv.Spline(points, n_points=200)
pipe = spline.tube(radius=0.15, n_sides=20)
pipe.plot()

Environment

• Python: >= 3.10
• Tested: PyVista 0.47.1, VTK 9.6.0, NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti
• Headless: Set PYVISTA_OFF_SCREEN=true or use off_screen=True in Plotter

Known Issues

• cell_quality() segfaults on tube meshes with VTK 9.6; use deprecated compute_cell_quality() until PyVista 0.48+
• First render in a session takes 500-700ms (OpenGL context init); subsequent renders are 35ms

Related Skills

• blender-interface --- Full 3D scene composition and rendering
• gmsh-meshing --- Mesh generation for analysis
• freecad-automation --- Parametric CAD geometry

References

• PyVista docs: https://docs.pyvista.org/
• PyVista GitHub: https://github.com/pyvista/pyvista
• Evaluation script: scripts/examples/pyvista_3d_evaluation.py