Compile ParaView with NVIDIA OptiX

ParaView Support
1

Dear all,

I want to compile ParaView with OptiX backend for ray tracing. I have been so far successful in installing it with the CPU based ospray, but I am unhappy with the denoiser and want to try out Nvidias optix.

So far, I have successfully compiled and installed the newest NVIDIA driver, CUDA, and OptiX libraries. But I am not sure how to link this during compilation with ParaView. For OSPRay a CMAKE flag existed,

Dospray_DIR

but it seems that there is no such flag for OptiX. I also tried to add the OptiX library to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH but that did not help either.

How can compile and build ParaView with OptiX?

2

Looking at how the superbuild does it, OptiX seems to be used through VisRTX rather than directly. VTK_USE_VISRTX seems to be the option you’re looking for.

3

Thank you, I tried that but then it could not find the VisRTX external dependencies.
Do I need to compile and install VisRTX or is it included in the paraview build but it cannot find missing dependencies to e.g., OptiX?

4

VisRTX lives here and is not vendored into ParaView itself.

5

I think it’s worth to mention, that NVIDIA’s VisRTX backend is under heavy development at the moment to become part of the upcoming ANARI backend, which is going to unify access to third-party render engines in VTK, and ParaView later on.

ANARI 1.0 has just been announced by the Khronos Group.

6

As an FYI for anyone reading this, you need to install the old version of VisRTX before the refactoring with Paraview 5.11.
I tried it with the Anari SDK package, but it needs the version v0.1.6 with the MDL SDK library.

Are there any updates on when the new VisRTX backend will be introduced to ParaView?

7

The new and revised VisRTX as an ANARI backend has been brought into VTK already end of last year https://www.khronos.org/blog/kitware-adds-anari-support-to-vtk-to-simplify-access-to-accelerated-3d-rendering-engines, which is a prerequesite for exposure in ParaView. I presume we are going see a first integration in the coming months.