forked from Kitware/VTK
-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
Visualization Toolkit
infoadisan/VTK
Folders and files
| Name | Name | Last commit message | Last commit date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Repository files navigation
<HTML>
<header>
<title>VTK README</title>
</header>
<body>
<H1>
<IMG ALIGN="middle" SRC=vtkBanner.gif><br>
Welcome To The Visualization Toolkit
</H1>
<UL>
<LI> <A HREF="#Introduction">Introduction</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#Copyright">Copyright Notice</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#Organization">Organization</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#Documentation">Documentation</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#Compilation">Compilation</A>
<UL>
<LI> <A HREF="#Building">Building with CMake</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#Configuration">Configuration Options in CMake</A>
</UL>
<LI> <A HREF="#Installation">Installation</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#Problems">Common Problems</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#Data">Getting Data</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#Running">Running VTK</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#NewClass">Adding A New Class</A>
<LI> <A HREF="#Help">Getting Help / Mailing List</A>
</UL>
<HR>
<h1><A NAME="Introduction">Introduction</h1>
VTK is an open-source software system for image processing, 3D graphics,
volume rendering and visualization. VTK includes many advanced algorithms
(e.g., surface reconstruction, implicit modelling, decimation) and rendering
techniques (e.g., hardware-accelerated volume rendering, LOD control).<p>
VTK is used by academicians for teaching and research; by government research
institutions such as Los Alamos National Lab in the US or CINECA in Italy; and
by many commercial firms who use VTK to build or extend products.<p>
The origin of VTK is with the textbook "The Visualization Toolkit, an
Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics" originally published by
Prentice Hall and now published by Kitware, Inc. (Third Edition
ISBN 1-930934-07-6). VTK has grown (since its initial release in 1994)
to a world-wide user base in the commercial, academic, and research
communities.<p>
This README is written for VTK version 5.0 and greater. For more information,
additional resources, and the FAQ see the web page at
<A HREF="http://www.vtk.org">http://www.vtk.org</A><p>
<HR>
<h1><A NAME="Copyright">Copyright Notice</h1>
VTK has a generous open-source copyright modelled after the BSD license. Yes,
you can use VTK in commercial products. The complete text of the
copyright follows.
<pre>
Copyright (c) 1993-2005 Ken Martin, Will Schroeder, Bill Lorensen
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* Neither name of Ken Martin, Will Schroeder, or Bill Lorensen nor the names
of any contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived
from this software without specific prior written permission.
* Modified source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
misrepresented as being the original software.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS''
AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR
ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR
SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER
CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY,
OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE
OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
</pre>
<HR>
<h1><A NAME="Organization">Organization</h1>
The VTK source code repository is organized into four major sections.
<ul>
<li>The toolkit source code is found in the following directories
next to this README. In some cases an additional README.html
file may be found in the named directory. Please see these for
more information.
<ul>
<li><b>Common</b>- Core classes commonly used by other kits
<li><b>Filtering</b>- Data pipeline implementation superclasses
<li><b>Rendering</b>- Classes used to render a scene (surface primitives)
<li><b>Graphics</b>- Filters that process 3D data
<li><b>Imaging</b>- Specialized image processing filters (2D & 3D)
<li><b>Infovis</b>- Classes for information visualization
<li><b>IO</b>- Classes for reading and writing data
<li><b>Views</b>- Classes for application-level views
<li><b>VolumeRendering</b>- Classes for rendering volume data
<li><b>Hybrid</b>- Complex classes that depend on imaging and graphics
<li><b>Widgets</b>- Classes for interacting with the objects in the scene
<li><b>Parallel</b>- Parallel processing support such as MPI
<li><b>GenericFiltering</b>- Part of an adaptor framework
supporting integration of VTK with external systems
</ul>
</li><p>
<li><B>Examples</B> that are reasonably well documented are found in the
VTK/Examples directory. You may wish to start with the examples
found in the Tutorial directory.<p></li>
<li>The <B>Utilities</B> directory includes things like jpeg, png,
and zlib source code. This code is used by VTK in various ways
(reading/writing data, etc.)<p></li>
<li>The <B>Wrapping</B> directory contains code related to VTK's automated
wrapping process. The wrapping process automatically generates
Tcl, Python, and/or Java bindings depending on how the build
process is configured.<p></li>
</ul>
There are hundreds of testing examples located in the Testing/ directory
under each source code directory (e.g., Graphics/Testing). These are
undocumented tests but can be helpful in some cases.<p>
<HR>
<h1><A NAME="Documentation">Documentation</h1>
The ideal way to learn about the software is from two books:
<i>The Visualization Toolkit, An Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics</i>
and <i>The VTK User's Guide</i> both published by Kitware, Inc. (Note:
<i>The Visualization Toolkit</i> was originally published by Prentice-Hall,
the third edition is published by Kitware.)
You may order the books from the following locations (Amazon.com also
carries the books.)
<pre>
The Visualization Toolkit, An Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics (Third Edition)
by Will Schroeder, Ken Martin and Bill Lorensen.
Kitware, Inc.,
ISBN 1-930934-07-6
<A HREF="http://www.kitware.com/products/vtktextbook.html">http://www.kitware.com/products/vtktextbook.html</A>
The VTK User's Guide (VTK 4.2 Edition)
Kitware, Inc.,
ISBN 1-930934-08-4
<A HREF="http://www.kitware.com/products/vtkguide.html">http://www.kitware.com/products/vtkguide.html</A>
</pre>
On-line Doxygen man pages are also available at
<A href="http://www.vtk.org/doc/nightly/html/">
http://www.vtk.org/doc/nightly/html/</a><p>
<hr>
<h1><a name="Compilation">Compilation</h1>
<div align="left" style="width:720;">
The Visualization Toolkit can be built on UNIX, PC (Windows
NT/2000/XP/7), and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (or greater) systems. VTK uses
<a href="http://www.cmake.org">CMake</a> to generate its build system.
To build VTK one must first install CMake version 2.8.5 or higher.
CMake may be downloaded from <a
href="