Screenshots

Polyscope includes simple functionality for saving screenshots from the current camera view to disk. The ImGUI interface windows will be automatically hidden when taking a screenshot.

Screenshots can be taken manually by pressing the [screenshot] button in the options GUI window, or programmatically using the functions below. Clicking the GUI button generates a numbered screenshot file in the current directory; the arrow to the side of the button can be used to adjust file format and transparency settings for these screenshots.

It is not necessary to call polyscope::show() before taking screenshots. You can set up you scene and programmatically configure the camera view, then call polyscope::screenshot() to save a rendered image to disk, all without any user interaction.

Example: Register a mesh, position the camera, and take a screenshot

#include "polyscope/polyscope.h"
#include "polyscope/surface_mesh.h"

// Initialize Polyscope
polyscope::init();

// Register your mesh with Polyscope
polyscope::registerSurfaceMesh("input mesh", /* your verts */, /* your faces */);

// Position the camera
polyscope::view::lookAt(glm::vec3{10., 10., 0.}, glm::vec3{0., 2., 0.});

// Adjust some screenshot default settings if you'd like
polyscope::screenshotExtension = ".jpg";

// Take a screenshot
// It will be written to your current directory as screenshot_000000.jpg, etc
polyscope::screenshot();

// Set some options and save a named screenshot
polyscope::ScreenshotOptions opts;
opts.transparentBackground = false;
polyscope::screenshot("my_scene.jpg", opts);

// Get the pixels as a raw buffer
std::vector<unsigned char> img = polyscope::screenshotToBuffer(opts);

Options can be set using the ScreenshotOptions struct

struct ScreenshotOptions {
  bool transparentBackground = true; // is the background transparent
  bool includeUI = false;            // are ImGUI UI elements (panels, buttons, etc) visible
};

• If transparentBG is true, the background will be rendered as transparent, and set as transparency alpha in the saved image if the file format supports it.
• If includeUI is true, the screenshot will be captured with the ImGui UI elements (panels, buttons, etc) visible.

includeUI may not match

The screenshot includeUI setting is imperfect, the UI will be visible, but may be in a different state compared to what you see in your own window. This is a known bug, and we hope to fix it in future version.

void screenshot(const ScreenshotOptions& options)

numbered screenshot

Saves a screenshot to the current directory, with file named like screenshot_000000.png, numbered automatically in increasing order. The numbering is reset to 0 for each run of the program; existing files will be silently overwritten.

Se the options struct above for available options.

void screenshot(std::string filename, const ScreenshotOptions& options)

named screenshot

Saves a screenshot to the path given as filename, with format inferred from the file extension.

The extension should be .png, or .jpg.

Se the options struct above for available options.

std::vector<unsigned char> screenshotToBuffer(const ScreenshotOptions& options)

screenshot to buffer

Take a screenshot from the current view and return it as a buffer. The dimensions are view::bufferWidth * view::bufferHeight, with entries RGBA at 1 byte each.

Se the options struct above for available options.

std::string options::screenshotExtension

screenshot extension

Set the extension used when taking automatically-numbered screenshots, either with screenshot() or by clicking the GUI button.

The extension should be .png, or .jpg.