Initializing

Once polyscope is a part of your project, creating visualizations is very easy. Polyscope needs to be initialized once, typically near the beginning of your program.

Example:

#include "polyscope/polyscope.h"

// Initialize polyscope, creating graphics contexts and constructing a window.
// Should be called exactly once.
polyscope::init();

/*
 * build visualizations, here or in distant code
 * 
 */

// Pass control flow to polyscope, displaying the interactive window.
// Function will return when user closes the window.
polyscope::show();

// More of your code
// ...

// Show again. Data is preserved between calls to show()
// unless explicitly removed.
polyscope::show();

Functions

#include "polyscope/polyscope.h"

init(std::string backend="")

init()

Initialize polyscope. Should be called exactly once, generally at the beginning of a program. Will throw an error if anything goes wrong during initialization.

Performs one-time work like setting up openGL and creating a window.

backend is an optional specifier for which rendering backend to use, passing "" selects a reasonable default backend. Generally, you should not need to manually set the backend.

show()

show()

Give control to the polyscope GUI. Blocks until the user returns control via the GUI, possibly by exiting the window.

This function can be called anywhere, and can be called multiple times to re-open the GUI after it has been closed. Existing data will be preserved between calls to show().

You can even nest calls to show()—for instance, if the user clicks a button in your callback which executes some function, you can invoke show() again within that function for immediate debugging. Closing the nested window will then “pop back” to continue displaying the previously shown GUI.