VTK-m

VTK-m is a toolkit of scientific visualization algorithms for emerging processor architectures. VTK-m supports the fine-grained concurrency for data analysis and visualization algorithms required to drive extreme scale computing by providing abstract models for data and execution that can be applied to a variety of algorithms across many different processor architectures.

You can find out more about the design of VTK-m on the VTK-m Wiki.

Learning Resources

• A high-level overview is given in the IEEE Vis talk "VTK-m: Accelerating the Visualization Toolkit for Massively Threaded Architectures."

• The VTK-m Users Guide provides extensive documentation. It is broken into multiple parts for learning and references at multiple different levels.

  • "Part 1: Getting Started" provides the introductory instruction for building VTK-m and using its high-level features.
  • "Part 2: Using VTK-m" covers the core fundamental components of VTK-m including data model, worklets, and filters.
  • "Part 3: Developing with VTK-m" covers how to develop new worklets and filters.
  • "Part 4: Advanced Development" covers topics such as new worklet types and custom device adapters.

• A practical VTK-m Tutorial based in what users want to accomplish with VTK-m:

  • Building VTK-m and using existing VTK-m data structures and filters.
  • Algorithm development with VTK-m.
  • Writing new VTK-m filters.

• Community discussion takes place on the VTK-m users email list.

• Doxygen-generated reference documentation is available for both:

  • Last Nightly build VTK-m Doxygen nightly
  • Last release VTK-m Doxygen latest

Contributing

There are many ways to contribute to VTK-m, with varying levels of effort.

• Ask a question on the VTK-m users email list.

• Submit new or add to discussions of a feature requests or bugs on the VTK-m Issue Tracker.

• Submit a Pull Request to improve VTK-m

  • See CONTRIBUTING.md for detailed instructions on how to create a Pull Request.
  • See the VTK-m Coding Conventions that must be followed for contributed code.

• Submit an Issue or Pull Request for the VTK-m Users Guide

Dependencies

VTK-m Requires:

• C++11 Compiler. VTK-m has been confirmed to work with the following
  • GCC 5.4+
  • Clang 5.0+
  • XCode 5.0+
  • MSVC 2015+
  • Intel 17.0.4+
• CMake
  • CMake 3.12+
  • CMake 3.13+ (for CUDA support)

Optional dependencies are:

• CUDA Device Adapter
  • Cuda Toolkit 9.2, >= 10.2
  • Note CUDA >= 10.2 is required on Windows
• TBB Device Adapter
  • TBB
• OpenMP Device Adapter
  • Requires a compiler that supports OpenMP >= 4.0.
• OpenGL Rendering
  • The rendering module contains multiple rendering implementations including standalone rendering code. The rendering module also includes (optionally built) OpenGL rendering classes.
  • The OpenGL rendering classes require that you have a extension binding library and one rendering library. A windowing library is not needed except for some optional tests.
• Extension Binding
  • GLEW
• On Screen Rendering
  • OpenGL Driver
  • Mesa Driver
• On Screen Rendering Tests
  • GLFW
  • GLUT
• Headless Rendering
  • OS Mesa
  • EGL Driver

VTK-m has been tested on the following configurations:c

• On Linux
  • GCC 5.4.0, 5.4, 6.5, 7.4, 8.2, 9.2; Clang 5, 8; Intel 17.0.4; 19.0.0
  • CMake 3.12, 3.13, 3.16, 3.17
  • CUDA 9.2, 10.2, 11.0, 11.1
  • TBB 4.4 U2, 2017 U7
• On Windows
  • Visual Studio 2015, 2017
  • CMake 3.12, 3.17
  • CUDA 10.2
  • TBB 2017 U3, 2018 U2
• On MacOS
  • AppleClang 9.1
  • CMake 3.12
  • TBB 2018

Building

VTK-m supports all majors platforms (Windows, Linux, OSX), and uses CMake to generate all the build rules for the project. The VTK-m source code is available from the VTK-m download page or by directly cloning the VTK-m git repository.

The basic procedure for building VTK-m is to unpack the source, create a build directory, run CMake in that build directory (pointing to the source) and then build. Here are some example *nix commands for the process (individual commands may vary).

$ tar xvzf ~/Downloads/vtk-m-v1.4.0.tar.gz
$ mkdir vtkm-build
$ cd vtkm-build
$ cmake-gui ../vtk-m-v1.4.0
$ cmake --build -j .              # Runs make (or other build program)

A more detailed description of building VTK-m is available in the VTK-m Users Guide.

Example

The VTK-m source distribution includes a number of examples. The goal of the VTK-m examples is to illustrate specific VTK-m concepts in a consistent and simple format. However, these examples only cover a small part of the capabilities of VTK-m.

Below is a simple example of using VTK-m to load a VTK image file, run the Marching Cubes algorithm on it, and render the results to an image:

#include <vtkm/Bounds.h>
#include <vtkm/Range.h>
#include <vtkm/cont/ColorTable.h>
#include <vtkm/filter/Contour.h>
#include <vtkm/io/VTKDataSetReader.h>
#include <vtkm/rendering/Actor.h>
#include <vtkm/rendering/Camera.h>
#include <vtkm/rendering/CanvasRayTracer.h>
#include <vtkm/rendering/Color.h>
#include <vtkm/rendering/MapperRayTracer.h>
#include <vtkm/rendering/Scene.h>
#include <vtkm/rendering/View3D.h>

vtkm::io::VTKDataSetReader reader("path/to/vtk_image_file.vtk");
vtkm::cont::DataSet inputData = reader.ReadDataSet();
std::string fieldName = "scalars";

vtkm::Range range;
inputData.GetPointField(fieldName).GetRange(&range);
vtkm::Float64 isovalue = range.Center();

// Create an isosurface filter
vtkm::filter::Contour filter;
filter.SetIsoValue(0, isovalue);
filter.SetActiveField(fieldName);
vtkm::cont::DataSet outputData = filter.Execute(inputData);

// compute the bounds and extends of the input data
vtkm::Bounds coordsBounds = inputData.GetCoordinateSystem().GetBounds();

// setup a camera and point it to towards the center of the input data
vtkm::rendering::Camera camera;
camera.ResetToBounds(coordsBounds);
vtkm::cont::ColorTable colorTable("inferno");

// Create a mapper, canvas and view that will be used to render the scene
vtkm::rendering::Scene scene;
vtkm::rendering::MapperRayTracer mapper;
vtkm::rendering::CanvasRayTracer canvas(512, 512);
vtkm::rendering::Color bg(0.2f, 0.2f, 0.2f, 1.0f);

// Render an image of the output isosurface
scene.AddActor(vtkm::rendering::Actor(outputData.GetCellSet(),
                                      outputData.GetCoordinateSystem(),
                                      outputData.GetField(fieldName),
                                      colorTable));
vtkm::rendering::View3D view(scene, mapper, canvas, camera, bg);
view.Paint();
view.SaveAs("demo_output.png");

A minimal CMakeLists.txt such as the following one can be used to build this example.

project(example)

set(VTKm_DIR "/somepath/lib/cmake/vtkm-XYZ")

find_package(VTKm REQUIRED)

add_executable(example example.cxx)
target_link_libraries(example vtkm_cont vtkm_rendering)

License

VTK-m is distributed under the OSI-approved BSD 3-clause License. See LICENSE.txt for details.