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.
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A high-level overview is given in the IEEE Vis talk "VTK-m: Accelerating the Visualization Toolkit for Massively Threaded Architectures."
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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.
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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.
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Community discussion takes place on the VTK-m users email list.
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Doxygen-generated reference documentation is available for both:
- Last Nightly build VTK-m Doxygen nightly
- Last release VTK-m Doxygen latest
There are many ways to contribute to VTK-m, with varying levels of effort.
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Ask a question on the VTK-m users email list.
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Submit new or add to discussions of a feature requests or bugs on the VTK-m Issue Tracker.
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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.
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Submit an Issue or Pull Request for the VTK-m Users Guide
VTK-m Requires:
- C++14 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)
- CMake 3.24+ (for ROCM+THRUST support)
Optional dependencies are:
- Kokkos Device Adapter
- Kokkos 3.7+
- CXX env variable or CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER should be set to hipcc when using Kokkos device adapter with HIP (ROCM>=6).
- CUDA Device Adapter
- Cuda Toolkit 9.2, >= 10.2
- Note CUDA >= 10.2 is required on Windows
- TBB Device Adapter
- 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
- On Screen Rendering
- OpenGL Driver
- Mesa Driver
- On Screen Rendering Tests
- 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
VTK-m supports all major 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-v2.0.0.tar.gz
$ mkdir vtkm-build
$ cd vtkm-build
$ cmake-gui ../vtk-m-v2.0.0
$ 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.
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 cover only a small portion of the capabilities of VTK-m.
Below is a simple example of using VTK-m to create a simple data set and use VTK-m's rendering engine to render an image and write that image to a file. It then computes an isosurface on the input data set and renders this output data set in a separate image file:
#include <vtkm/cont/Initialize.h>
#include <vtkm/source/Tangle.h>
#include <vtkm/rendering/Actor.h>
#include <vtkm/rendering/CanvasRayTracer.h>
#include <vtkm/rendering/MapperRayTracer.h>
#include <vtkm/rendering/MapperVolume.h>
#include <vtkm/rendering/MapperWireframer.h>
#include <vtkm/rendering/Scene.h>
#include <vtkm/rendering/View3D.h>
#include <vtkm/filter/contour/Contour.h>
using vtkm::rendering::CanvasRayTracer;
using vtkm::rendering::MapperRayTracer;
using vtkm::rendering::MapperVolume;
using vtkm::rendering::MapperWireframer;
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
vtkm::cont::Initialize(argc, argv, vtkm::cont::InitializeOptions::Strict);
auto tangle = vtkm::source::Tangle(vtkm::Id3{ 50, 50, 50 });
vtkm::cont::DataSet tangleData = tangle.Execute();
std::string fieldName = "tangle";
// Set up a camera for rendering the input data
vtkm::rendering::Camera camera;
camera.SetLookAt(vtkm::Vec3f_32(0.5, 0.5, 0.5));
camera.SetViewUp(vtkm::make_Vec(0.f, 1.f, 0.f));
camera.SetClippingRange(1.f, 10.f);
camera.SetFieldOfView(60.f);
camera.SetPosition(vtkm::Vec3f_32(1.5, 1.5, 1.5));
vtkm::cont::ColorTable colorTable("inferno");
// Background color:
vtkm::rendering::Color bg(0.2f, 0.2f, 0.2f, 1.0f);
vtkm::rendering::Actor actor(tangleData.GetCellSet(),
tangleData.GetCoordinateSystem(),
tangleData.GetField(fieldName),
colorTable);
vtkm::rendering::Scene scene;
scene.AddActor(actor);
// 2048x2048 pixels in the canvas:
CanvasRayTracer canvas(2048, 2048);
// Create a view and use it to render the input data using OS Mesa
vtkm::rendering::View3D view(scene, MapperVolume(), canvas, camera, bg);
view.Paint();
view.SaveAs("volume.png");
// Compute an isosurface:
vtkm::filter::contour::Contour filter;
// [min, max] of the tangle field is [-0.887, 24.46]:
filter.SetIsoValue(3.0);
filter.SetActiveField(fieldName);
vtkm::cont::DataSet isoData = filter.Execute(tangleData);
// Render a separate image with the output isosurface
vtkm::rendering::Actor isoActor(
isoData.GetCellSet(), isoData.GetCoordinateSystem(), isoData.GetField(fieldName), colorTable);
// By default, the actor will automatically scale the scalar range of the color table to match
// that of the data. However, we are coloring by the scalar that we just extracted a contour
// from, so we want the scalar range to match that of the previous image.
isoActor.SetScalarRange(actor.GetScalarRange());
vtkm::rendering::Scene isoScene;
isoScene.AddActor(isoActor);
// Wireframe surface:
vtkm::rendering::View3D isoView(isoScene, MapperWireframer(), canvas, camera, bg);
isoView.Paint();
isoView.SaveAs("isosurface_wireframer.png");
// Smooth surface:
vtkm::rendering::View3D solidView(isoScene, MapperRayTracer(), canvas, camera, bg);
solidView.Paint();
solidView.SaveAs("isosurface_raytracer.png");
return 0;
}A minimal CMakeLists.txt such as the following one can be used to build this example.
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.12...3.15 FATAL_ERROR)
project(VTKmDemo CXX)
#Find the VTK-m package
find_package(VTKm REQUIRED QUIET)
if(TARGET vtkm::rendering)
add_executable(Demo Demo.cxx)
target_link_libraries(Demo PRIVATE vtkm::filter vtkm::rendering vtkm::source)
endif()VTK-m is distributed under the OSI-approved BSD 3-clause License. See LICENSE.txt for details.