Brayns plugins

Introduction

Brayns architecture allows it to be used for almost any kind of visualization purpose. For this reason, the core of Brayns knows nothing about any science-specific modeling.

To load specific functionalities, the Brayns backend service must be launched with plugins (using the command line), which will add extra features.

Plugins command line arguments can be chained to load multiple plugins. Plugin names are the name of the dynamic libraries (.so) implementing it.

$ braynsService --uri 0.0.0.0:5000 --plugin braynsCircuitExplorer --plugin braynsAtlasExplorer

Here we load plugins by linking dynamically against braynsCircuitExplorer.so and braynsAtlasExplorer.so (always available).

Brayns comes with built-in plugins that are always available and can be loaded at runtime.

Circuit Explorer plugin

The Circuit Explorer plugin is the main Brayns plugin for neuroscientific visualization. It provides Brayns with extra features, such as:

  • Load SONATA multi-population networks and simulations.

  • Load morphology files (Ascii, SWC or H5).

For further information on the Circuit Explorer’s JSON-RPC API, refer to Circuit Explorer API.

To load the Circuit Explorer plugin when launching the Brayns backend service, use the following argument in the command line:

--plugin braynsCircuitExplorer

Atlas Explorer plugin

The Atlas Explorer plugin is used to visualize atlas data as volumes.

It also adds a loader for NRRD files. For further information on the Atlas Explorer’s JSON-RPC API, refer to Atlas Explorer API

To load the Atlas Explorer plugin when launching the Brayns backend service, use the following argument in the command line:

--plugin braynsAtlasExplorer