Add an image as texture (plane) in the background#
Note
This document is part of a series teaching how to Create an image of sea surface speeds.
See also Add an image as texture on a sphere
You can find beautiful images on the NASA Blue Marble Next Generation page For this example, you can use a low-res version of the February image.
As our ocean data set has holes on the land points, we have to first create a plane behind it, before we can attach an image of Earth.
![../../../../../../_images/000-ocean-with-holes.png](../../../../../../_images/000-ocean-with-holes.png)
As a first step, we figure out the size of Earth in paraview. For this we need the Information View
(View-> Information). There we look for the section Bounds
and note the extreme values. The x-range is from roughly -300 to 300, the y-range is from roughly -131 to 150. The lower bound of the y-range is a bit weird, because Antarctica is cut off, because the oceans don’t reach 90 deg S. Now we know our plane needs to be -300 to 300 by -150 to 150, and just below z=0.
![../../../../../../_images/00a-find-data-size.png](../../../../../../_images/00a-find-data-size.png)
We can get a plane from the Sources
menu, e.g. from Geometric Shapes
.
![../../../../../../_images/00b-get-plane.png](../../../../../../_images/00b-get-plane.png)
Here we adjust the x coordinates to +/- 300 and the y coordinates to +/- 150, keeping the signs as they were. As z-coordinate we use -0.1 to put this plane just below the ocean.
![../../../../../../_images/00c-new-coordinates.png](../../../../../../_images/00c-new-coordinates.png)
After clicking Apply
, we should have all land areas filled with white.
Now we can add the texture itself. Chose Filters->Search...
and type texture
. You will be presented with the three different texture filters. Chose Texture Map to Plane
and hit Enter
![../../../../../../_images/01-find-filter.png](../../../../../../_images/01-find-filter.png)
Now you first have to click apply before you can set the texture (for whatever reason)
![../../../../../../_images/02-apply.png](../../../../../../_images/02-apply.png)
Now use the text box and search for texture. Click the Texture
dropdown menu, and chose load.
![../../../../../../_images/03-find-texture-field.png](../../../../../../_images/03-find-texture-field.png)
Pick the small blue marble from the directory with the sample data (or use any one of NASA’s Blue Marble images, e.g. the low-res version of the February image. (Thanks, NASA for that great service!).
![../../../../../../_images/04-texture-file.png](../../../../../../_images/04-texture-file.png)
You should have Earth peeking out of the holes in the ocean.
![../../../../../../_images/05-texture-on-earth.png](../../../../../../_images/05-texture-on-earth.png)
Next, you can Switch to camera parallel projection to reduce projection artifacts.