[Question] [Win10] How can I draw silently and export the rendered image into opengl texture format?

[Rullec]

Hi guys,
Thanks for your excellent work on this lib, I love it a lot. I work on win10 and gnuplot backend, and really eager to know:

1. how can matplotplusplus draw silently? at this moment it pops up a window, which is not my intention.
2. how can I export the rendered image into OpenGL texture format (an array of float numbers, given width and height), instead of saving them to "*png" or "*jpg" at disk.

Thanks a lot!
Bests,
Xudong

[DaMilyutin]

I have same question.
Maybe you found the answer elsewhere? Can you share it, please?

[Rullec]

I am glad to offer my help if you are insterested in this process. ;-)

[DaMilyutin]

Thank you for the answer and for the help offer.
I'm looking for some more fancy-looking plots and GUI in my pet project.
I used Qt QCustomPlot some time ago. But...
I want it to be lightweight (no big dll dependencies, smaller exe) and use free libraries and frameworks.
I was in search for libraries and tools for that.

For GUI I've discovered sixtyfps. Quite intresting alternative to Qt/QML which binds both to C+++ and Rust.
But I had some difficulties with passing data around between C++ and .60 (their markup lang which is compiled from Rust).
I need to pass arrays of doubles.

What struck me lately is to write prototype totally in Rust. And thus it would be easier to manage.

BTW, there is Rust library named plotters: https://github.com/38/plotters
If you want more fancy looking plots and 3d plots you may either use it from Rust or write some C/C++ bindings for it.
It can output to buffer, too. Ex, see: https://github.com/sixtyfpsui/sixtyfps/tree/master/examples/plotter

[Rullec]

Thanks for your kine reply!

[Rullec]

Though I have no idea about Rust, but it indeed looks fancinating! I will certainly try sixtyfps when it is needed in the future. Good luck!

[HarrisonLeece]

@Rullec I want to do something similar. I'm in such need for it that I am learning OpenGL. So far I found this link, https://lencerf.github.io/post/2019-09-21-save-the-opengl-rendering-to-image-file/ which may be helpful, if you are able to use OpenGL with some proficiency already. Unfortunately, I've not yet written a program that saves the image yet.

[alandefreitas]

Hi @Rullec

matplot++ doesn't work at this level of abstraction. Backends could but are not required to allow exposing the raster image buffer as binary data. In fact, they are not even required to be raster images, as they could be vector images.

If you need plots inside an OpenGL application for debugging, it'd easier to use something at this level of abstraction, such ImGui + ImPlot. If it's not for debugging, then you'd have to draw the plot yourself depending on the level of customization you need. If you need plots in a Qt application, it'd be easier to use Qt Charts. And so on...

[Rullec]

Thanks for your reply!

[Rullec]

Yes, I think you can totally correct. The design methodology of matplot++ is not quite suitable for my case.
Still thanks you work on this project ;-)