Ovito

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OVITO - Open Visualization Tool

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Author: Alexander Stukowski (mail@ovito.org) (Institute of Materials Science, Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany)

OVITO is a scientific visualization and analysis software for atomistic simulation data. See website for more information:

http://www.ovito.org/

If you want to build OVITO from source, see http://www.ovito.org/manual/development.html

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Change Log

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Release 2.4.4 (29-Mar-15):

• Fixed error when rendering and encoding high-resolution videos.
• Surface geometry computed by ConstructSurfaceModifier can now be exported to a VTK file from Python.
• Added Python class ovito.data.CutoffNeighborFinder, which enables access to particle neighbor lists from Python.
• Particles and bonds are now rendered in chunks in the OpenGL viewports to workaround a memory limit on some graphics hardware.
• Bond cylinders will now be rendered using a geometry shader if supported by graphics card.
• The IMD file exporter now lets the user select the particle properties to export (instead of exporting all).
• The VTK triangle mesh importer now reads per-face color information.

Release 2.4.3 (02-Mar-15):

• Added a dialog box to Affine Transformation modifier, which lets the user enter a rotation axis, angle, and center.
• Removed cutoff option from Voronoi Analysis modifier in favor of a faster algorithm for orthogonal simulation cells, which is based on Voro++'s container classes.
• OVITO can now load bonds from LAMMPS data files.
• The Atomic Strain analysis can now be performed even when the number of particles changes with time (but only for the particles that are present in both the reference and the current configuration).
• The Freeze Property modifier now works when particles are lost during the simulation.
• The Wrap at Periodic Boundaries modifier now wraps bonds crossing a periodic boundary too.
• The Show Periodic Images modifier now replicates bonds too.
• Changed integrated script interpreter from Python 2.7 to Python 3.4.
• Switched from MinGW to Visual C++ 2013 compiler for Windows builds.
• Python scripting is now supported by the 64-bit version of OVITO for Windows too.
• Added a scriptable viewport overlay, which allows to paint arbitrary 2d contents over the rendered image.
• Created C++ API documentation.
• Removed old Javascript plugin.

Release 2.4.2 (14-Nov-14):

• The Color Coding modifier now supports user-defined color maps.
• Significantly improved performance of cutoff-based neighbor finding and k-nearest neighbor search routines. This code optimization speeds up many analysis algorithms in OVITO, in particular for large datasets.
• Added the Identify Diamond Structure modifier, which finds atoms that form a cubic or hexagonal diamond lattice.
• The Color Legend overlay now provides an option to overwrite the numeric labels with a custom text.
• Dialog box asking to save changes is only shown when scene has already been saved before.
• Bug fix: Periodic boundary flags were not correctly updated when loading a new file using the 'Pick new local input file' button.
• Bug fix: Viewport.render() Python function throws exception when called without a RenderSettings object.

Release 2.4.1 (01-Nov-14):

• Introduced viewport overlay concept, which allows to include the coordinate system tripod and a color legend in the rendered image.
• The OpenGL renderer now supports the display of semi-transparent particles and surfaces.
• Particle properties are displayed in the status bar when hovering over a particle in the viewports.
• Periodic boundary conditions can be overridden by the user without the changes being lost when a new simulation frame is loaded.
• Bug fix: Implemented workaround for high-quality particle rendering on Windows computers with Intel HD 4000 graphics.
• Bug fix: StrainTensor.XZ and StrainTensor.YZ components output by Atomic Strain modifier were swapped.
• Bug fix: Fixed issue in Histogram modifier that occured when the fixed x-range is smaller than the value range.
• Bug fix: Atom type ordering is now maintained when importing a sequence of LAMMPS dump files with named atom types.
• Performance improvements in modification pipeline by avoiding unnecessary particle data copies and initialization operations.
• The 'Freeze Selection' modifier has been superseded by the more general 'Freeze Property' modifier.

Release 2.4.0 (16-Sep-14):

• New Python script engine (see user manual for more information).
• Added the 'Voronoi analysis' modifier, which can compute atomic volumes, coordination numbers and Voronoi indices.
• Added import/export support for extended XYZ format (see http://jrkermode.co.uk/quippy/io.html#extendedxyz), which includes metadata describing the file's columns and the simulation cell.
• Improved input and output performance for text-based file formats.
• Added calculation of non-affine displacements to 'Atomic strain' modifier. (This is Falk & Langer's D^2_min measure, see the 1998 PRB.)
• Added 'Bin and reduce' analysis modifier.
• The 'Create bonds' modifier can now handle particles that are located outside the (periodic) simulation box.
• Added a file parser for PDB files (still experimental).
• The 'Show periodic images' modifier can now assign unique IDs to particle copies.
• LAMMPS data file parser now supports additional LAMMPS atom styles such as 'charge' and 'bond'.
• Command line options to run old Javascript programs have been renamed to --jsscript and --jsexec. Javascript plugin has been deprecated and will be removed in a future program version.
• Bug fix: Export of compressed LAMMPS data files could result in truncated files.
• Bug fix: Solid volume computed by 'Construct surface mesh' modifier could be inaccurate due to low numerical precision
• Bug fix: 'Construct surface mesh' modifier crashed with certain input data.
• Bug fix: VTK mesh file parser couldn't handle multiple points per line (as written by ParaView).
• Bug fix: LAMMPS data file parser did not parse atom IDs.

Release 2.3.3 (22-May-14):

• Added user options to application settings dialog that give control over sharing of OpenGL contexts and the use of OpenGL point sprites. This allows to work around compatibility problems on some systems.
• User can now choose between dark and light viewport color schemes.
• Added scripting interface for Tachyon renderer.
• Added support for variable particle numbers in NetCDF reader (i.e. support for unlimited atom dimension) and for NC_CHAR variables as particle types. (I.e. particle types given by names instead of numbers.)
• Added user options that control the automatic fetching of the news page from the web server and the transmission of the installation ID.
• Fixed bug in camera orbit mode, not correctly restricting camera's orientation when coordinate system orientation has been changed.

Release 2.3.2 (07-Apr-14):

• Fixed bug in Wigner-Seitz analysis modifier, which could cause a program crash when numbers of atoms in reference and current configuration differ.

Release 2.3.1 (01-Apr-14):

• Added saving/loading of presets to the file column mapping dialog.
• Added the --exec command line option, which allows to directly execute a script command or to pass parameters to a script file.
• When opening a XYZ file, the column mapping dialog displays an excerpt of the file content to help the user in figuring out the mapping.
• The Construct Surface Modifier no longer creates cap polygons if the simulation cell doesn't contain any particles.

Release 2.3.0 (29-Mar-14):

• Added the new scripting interface, which allows to automate tasks.
• Added the 'Freeze property' modifier, which can prevent a particle property from changing over time.
• Added the 'Scatter plot' modifier, which plots one particle property against another. This modifier has been contributed by Lars Pastewka.
• Added the 'Wigner-Seitz analysis' modifier, which can identify vacancies and interstitials in a lattice.
• Added a file importer for NetCDF files. Code was contributed by Lars Pastewka.
• Added more input variables to the 'Compute property' and 'Expression select' modifiers (e.g. reduced particle coordinates and simulation cell size).
• It's now possible to load a sequence of files with each file containing multiple frames. To do this, import the first file from the sequence, activate the option "File contains multiple timesteps", finally open the "Frame sequence" panel and change the wildcard pattern to include the '*' placeholder character again.
• Fixed bug in CFG file importer, which did not read triclinic simulation cells correctly.
• Fixed shader compilation error on OpenGL 2.0 systems and some other OpenGL related issues.

Release 2.2.4 (29-Jan-14):

• Modified particle file importers to ensure stable ordering of particle types (using lexicographical ordering when atom types have names, and ID-based ordering otherwise). The ordering of named particle types is now independent of their first occurrence in the input file.
• Fixed particle picking issue on computers with Intel graphics.
• Fixed OpenGL issues on systems with Intel graphics.
• Fixed blurred display of viewport captions.
• Fixed program crash when changing particle radius/color without having selected a particle type first.
• OVITO is now built using version 5.2.1 of the Qt library. This fixes several issues related to the graphical user interface.

Release 2.2.3 (15-Jan-14):

• Fixed the CFG file importer, which is now able to read CFG files wr