Meshes#

This tutorial will teach you how to load and save meshes.

NAVis knows two types of meshes:

navis.MeshNeuron for neurons
navis.Volume for meshes that are not neurons, e.g. neuropil or brain meshes

Both of these are subclasses of trimesh.Trimesh and can be used as such.

Note

NAVis has dedicated interfaces for loading meshes from remote data sources (e.g. the MICrONS, neuromorpho, Virtual Fly Brain or Janelia hemibrain datasets). These are covered in separate tutorials.

From files#

For reading run-of-the-mill files containing meshes, NAVis provides a single function: navis.read_mesh. Under the hood, that function uses trimesh.load_mesh which supports most of the common formats (.obj, .ply, .stl, etc.).

import navis

# Load an example file (here a FlyWire neuron I downloaded and saved locally)
mesh = navis.read_mesh('test_neuron.stl')

The interface is similar to navis.read_swc in that you can point navis.read_mesh at single file or at folders with multiple files:

 # When reading all files in folder you have to specificy the file extension (e.g. *.stl)
 meshes = navis.read_mesh('neurons/*.stl')

By default, navis.read_mesh will return neurons. Use the output parameter to get a navis.Volume or a trimesh.Trimesh instead:

# Load a mesh file into a Volume
vol = navis.read_mesh('test_mesh.stl', output='volume')

Manual construction#

It's super easy to construct navis.MeshNeuron or navis.Volume from scratch - they are just vertices and faces after all.

So if e.g. your mesh file format is not covered by navis.read_mesh or you created the mesh yourself (e.g. using a marching cube algorithm), just create the objects yourself:

import numpy as np

# Create some mock vertices
vertices = np.array([[1, 0, 0],
                     [0, 1, 0],
                     [0, 0, 1]])
# Make a single triangular face using the vertex indices
faces = np.array([[0, 1, 2]])

Turn into MeshNeuron

m = navis.MeshNeuron((vertices, faces), name='my_mesh', id=1, units='microns')
m


type	navis.MeshNeuron
name	my_mesh
id	1
units	1 micrometer
n_vertices	3
n_faces	1

navis.plot3d(m)

Turn into Volume

vol = navis.Volume(vertices, faces, name='my_volume')
vol

Out:

<navis.Volume(name=my_volume, color=(0.85, 0.85, 0.85, 0.2), vertices.shape=(3, 3), faces.shape=(1, 3))>

To files#

For saving navis.MeshNeurons or navis.Volumes to disk, use navis.write_mesh.

Save single neuron to file:

m = navis.example_neurons(1, kind='mesh')
navis.write_mesh(m, '~/Downloads/neuron.obj')

Save a bunch of neurons to mesh:

nl = navis.example_neurons(3, kind='mesh')
navis.write_mesh(nl, '~/Downloads/', filetype='obj')

By default, navis.write_mesh will write multiple neurons to files named {neuron.id}.obj. You can change this behavior by specifying the format in the filename:

# Use the neuron name instead of the id
navis.write_mesh(nl, '~/Downloads/{neuron.name}.obj')

Important

One thing to keep in mind here is that NAVis only works with triangular faces, i.e. no quads or polygons! Please see the documentation of navis.MeshNeuron and navis.Volume for details.

This tutorial has hopefully given you some entry points on how to load your data. See also the I/O API reference. Also note that all NAVis neurons can be stored to disk using pickle - see the pickling tutorial.

Please also keep in mind that you can also convert one neuron type into another - for example by skeletonizing MeshNeurons (see also the API reference on neuron conversion).

Total running time of the script: ( 0 minutes 0.010 seconds)

Download Python source code: plot_01_io_meshes.py

Download Jupyter notebook: plot_01_io_meshes.ipynb

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