Polyscope is a C++/Python viewer and user interface for 3D data, like meshes and point clouds. Scientists, engineers, artists, and hackers can use Polyscope to prototype algorithms—it is designed to easily integrate with existing codebases and popular libraries. The lofty objective of Polyscope is to offer a useful visual interface to your data via a single line of code.

Polyscope uses a paradigm of structures and quantities. A structure is a geometric object in the scene, such as a surface mesh or point cloud. A quantity is data associated with a structure, such as a scalar function or a vector field.

When any of these structures and quantities are registered, Polyscope displays them in an interactive 3D scene, handling boilerplate concerns such as toggling visibility, color-mapping data and adjusting maps, “picking” to click in the scene and query numerical quantities, etc.

Note: There are two variants of this documentation, for C++ and Python. Use the buttons on the top bar to change language.

A simple workflow for visualizing data in Polyscope looks like:

C++ #include "polyscope/polyscope.h" #include "polyscope/surface_mesh.h" // Initialize polyscope polyscope :: init (); // Register a point cloud // `points` is a Nx3 array-like container of points polyscope :: registerPointCloud ( "my points" , points ) // Register a surface mesh structure // `meshVerts` is a Vx3 array-like container of vertex positions // `meshFaces` is a Fx3 array-like container of face indices polyscope :: registerSurfaceMesh ( "my mesh" , meshVerts , meshFaces ); // Add a scalar and a vector function defined on the mesh // `scalarQuantity` is a length V array-like container of values // `vectorQuantity` is an Fx3 array-like container of vectors per face polyscope :: getSurfaceMesh ( "my mesh" ) -> addVertexScalarQuantity ( "my_scalar" , scalarQuantity ); polyscope :: getSurfaceMesh ( "my mesh" ) -> addFaceVectorQuantity ( "my_vector" , vectorQuantity ); // View the point cloud and mesh we just registered in the 3D UI polyscope :: show (); Python import polyscope as ps # Initialize polyscope ps . init () ### Register a point cloud # `my_points` is a Nx3 numpy array ps . register_point_cloud ( "my points" , my_points ) ### Register a mesh # `verts` is a Nx3 numpy array of vertex positions # `faces` is a Fx3 array of indices, or a nested list ps . register_surface_mesh ( "my mesh" , verts , faces , smooth_shade = True ) # Add a scalar function and a vector function defined on the mesh # vertex_scalar is a length V numpy array of values # face_vectors is an Fx3 array of vectors per face ps . get_surface_mesh ( "my mesh" ) . add_scalar_quantity ( "my_scalar" , vertex_scalar , defined_on = 'vertices' , cmap = 'blues' ) ps . get_surface_mesh ( "my mesh" ) . add_vector_quantity ( "my_vector" , face_vectors , defined_on = 'faces' , color = ( 0.2 , 0.5 , 0.5 )) # View the point cloud and mesh we just registered in the 3D UI ps . show ()

Polyscope is designed to make your life easier. It is simple to build, and fewer than 10 lines of code should be sufficient to start visualizing. In C++, some template magic means Polyscope can probably accept the data types you’re already using!

Author: Nicholas Sharp

If Polyscope contributes to an academic publication, cite it as:

@misc { polyscope , title = {Polyscope} , author = {Nicholas Sharp and others} , note = {www.polyscope.run} , year = {2019} }

Development of this software was funded in part by NSF Award 1717320, an NSF graduate research fellowship, and gifts from Adobe Research and Autodesk, Inc.