Eye Dome Lighting

Eye-Dome Lighting (EDL) is a non-photorealistic, image-based shading technique designed to improve depth perception in scientific visualization images. To learn more, please see this blog post.

import pyvista as pv
from pyvista import examples

Point Cloud

When plotting a simple point cloud, it can be difficult to perceive depth. Take this Lidar point cloud for example:

point_cloud = examples.download_lidar()
point_cloud

Header	Data Arrays
PolyData Information N Cells 3392091 N Points 3392091 N Strips 0 X Bounds 4.809e+05, 4.811e+05 Y Bounds 4.400e+06, 4.400e+06 Z Bounds 1.754e+03, 1.787e+03 N Arrays 1	Name Field Type N Comp Min Max Elevation Points float64 1 1.754e+03 1.787e+03

And now plot this point cloud as-is:

# Plot a typical point cloud with no EDL
p = pv.Plotter()
p.add_mesh(point_cloud, color="tan", point_size=5)
p.show()

Static Scene

Interactive Scene

We can improve the depth mapping by enabling eye dome lighting on the renderer with pyvista.Renderer.enable_eye_dome_lighting().

Try plotting that point cloud with Eye-Dome-Lighting yourself below:

p = pv.Plotter()
p.add_mesh(point_cloud, color="tan", point_size=5)
p.enable_eye_dome_lighting()  # Turn on eye dome lighting here
p.show()

Static Scene

Interactive Scene

The eye dome lighting mode can also handle plotting scalar arrays. Try the above block but by specifying a scalars array instead of color in the add_mesh call.

p = pv.Plotter()
p.add_mesh(point_cloud, scalars="Elevation", point_size=5)
p.enable_eye_dome_lighting()  # Turn on eye dome lighting here
p.show()

Static Scene

Interactive Scene