Rendering styles¶

pv.add_mesh(..., style=...) selects the rendering mode. Five styles ship today; each takes a different translation path in the bridge:

Style	Path	Cookbook
`"surface"` (default)	Triangulated `bpy.types.Mesh` + Principled BSDF	PBR materials
`"wireframe"`	Duplicate mesh + `Wireframe` modifier (coplanar diagonals dissolved)	This page
`"points"`	Native `bpy.types.PointCloud`, Principled BSDF or Emission dot	Point clouds
`"points_gaussian"`	Native `bpy.types.PointCloud`, soft splat or hard sphere	Point clouds
`show_edges=True` (any base style)	Wireframe modifier stacked over the fill surface	This page

The bridge routes the actor's prop.style (and the mapper class for points_gaussian / PointGaussianMapper) to the right translator, so the user just passes a style= kwarg to add_mesh and the correct Cycles material lands automatically.

Surface + `show_edges`¶

The default filled shading with a wire overlay. The overlay is a duplicate bpy object whose faces are dissolved when coplanar (so triangulation diagonals on a cube don't bleed into the visible edges) and then run through Blender's Wireframe modifier. Edge colour and line width come from the actor's property.

plotter.add_mesh(
    pv.Cube(),
    show_edges=True,
    edge_color="black",
    line_width=2,
    color="#e0c2a6",
)

The fill surface keeps its Principled BSDF; the wire overlay uses an emissive shader matching prop.edge_color. Two materials, one visible mesh.

Wireframe only¶

style="wireframe" hides the fill surface entirely. The bridge builds only the wire-overlay object — no underlying solid.

plotter.add_mesh(
    pv.Cube(),
    style="wireframe",
    edge_color="white",
    line_width=3,
)

Useful for technical-drawing-style renders, CAD QA, or as a debug overlay on top of a separately-loaded scene.

Points¶

See the Point clouds cookbook for the full story. Quick reference:

Setup	Material foreground
`style="points"`, `render_points_as_spheres=False` (default)	Emission dot (flat-coloured, unlit)
`style="points"`, `render_points_as_spheres=True`	Principled BSDF sphere
`style="points_gaussian"`, `emissive=False`	Principled BSDF + transparent mix via camera-facing falloff
`style="points_gaussian"`, `emissive=True`	Emission + transparent mix
`style="points_gaussian"`, `render_points_as_spheres=True`	Hard opaque sphere (no falloff)

Each path produces a native bpy.types.PointCloud, so render cost scales with N_points rather than N_points × N_geom_verts.

Side-by-side gallery¶

examples/styles/style_gallery.py renders three actors in a row to show the visual difference between surface + show_edges, wireframe-only, and the plain-surface default. Run it to see how the bridge maps prop.style to bpy data-blocks at a glance:

uv run python examples/styles/style_gallery.py

Outputs land under docs/assets/examples/styles/ as style_gallery_blender.png and style_gallery_pyvista.png.

Constraints and caveats¶

Wireframe + animation. bake_deformation=True works for surface-style actors. The wireframe duplicate is regenerated each frame so animated topology stays in sync — at the cost of one extra mesh build per actor per frame.
No style="hidden_line" yet. VTK has a hidden-line removal mode (depth-buffer-aware wireframe) that the bridge doesn't translate. Use Blender's Freestyle line renderer post-export if you need it.
add_mesh(..., style="points", scalars=...) works. Per-point scalars colour the points via a POINT-domain scalars Color Attribute, same machinery as the mesh path.