Hidden Line Removal now available in VTK and ParaView

There has been a long-standing issue in the ParaView bug tracker to enable a more visually-appealing way to render wireframe objects. Since wireframes are mostly transparent by definition, geometry behind a wireframe surface can show through. This is often distracting and can obscure details that a user wishes to visualize.

A new feature in VTK and ParaView, through work funded by Sandia, allows wireframes to be rendered in a way that still shows the object’s topology, but without the distraction of background wireframe surfaces:

This is achieved using a technique called Hidden Line Removal, which uses the OpenGL depth buffer to hide lines that are behind the closest wireframe surface. In VTK, this is enabled by calling vtkRenderer::SetUseHiddenLineRemoval. In ParaView, there is a new per-renderview option that toggles this on/off for the current view: