# openvdb format writter
**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Created:** [September 4, 2021, 12:03pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939 "2021-09-04T12:03:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@aquanaut](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/aquanaut)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2021, 12:03pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939/1 "2021-09-04T12:03:35Z")
Dear developer,how long can we use the vtk-to-vdb exporter in Paraview?
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### Author:  [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2021, 4:59pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939/2 "2021-09-04T16:59:32Z")
There’s effort to get it into 5.10.
[https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview-superbuild/-/merge\_requests/909](https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview-superbuild/-/merge_requests/909)
Cc: @Andy_Bauer @utkarsh.ayachit
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### Author:  [@aquanaut](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/aquanaut)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2021, 9:24am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939/3 "2021-09-05T09:24:08Z")
hi @ben.boeckel Thanks for your reply.Can I build it in Linux with vdb writter by this branch now?
[ParaView / ParaView-Superbuild · GitLab (kitware.com)](https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview-superbuild)
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### Author:  [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2021, 12:25pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939/4 "2021-09-05T12:25:46Z")
If you pull Andy’s branch, you can enable it on Linux at least. It’s not working on Windows yet, so that needs work before we can merge it.
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### Author:  [@aquanaut](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/aquanaut)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2021, 12:32pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939/5 "2021-09-05T12:32:48Z")
What‘s the flag should be enabled?I built Paraview only once.
Thank you @ben.boeckel
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### Author:  [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2021, 5:26pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939/6 "2021-09-05T17:26:55Z")
The superbuild on Andy’s branch has an `ENABLE_openvdb` flag.
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### Author:  [@aquanaut](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/aquanaut)
#### Post date: [September 10, 2021, 2:50pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939/7 "2021-09-10T14:50:58Z")
hi I notice that [ParaView/ParaViewOptions.cmake at master · Kitware/ParaView · GitHub](https://github.com/Kitware/ParaView/blob/master/CMake/ParaViewOptions.cmake) have openvdb option.
Should I install openvdb in linux and add what’s LIB in Path before build.
While with superbuild\_paraview
[https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview-superbuild/-/tree/master/cmake,there](https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview-superbuild/-/tree/master/cmake,there) are no openvdb option in cmake file.
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### Author:  [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2021, 6:38pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939/8 "2021-09-13T18:38:09Z")
If you want it today, yes. The superbuild part hasn’t been merged yet.
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### Author:  [@Andy\_Bauer](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Andy_Bauer)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2021, 2:07pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939/9 "2021-09-15T14:07:03Z")
The OpenVDB writer has been merged into master and the ParaView superbuild is now working nicely with the clean-up that @ben.boeckel did. If you go to the [ParaView download page](https://www.paraview.org/download/) and select the nightly installers dated today you can install development versions of ParaView that have the OpenVDB writer available.
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### Author:  [@aquanaut](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/aquanaut)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2021, 3:44pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939/10 "2021-09-15T15:44:16Z")
I had the point data exporting to .vdb format in PV,then I import it to Blender which only support voxel data.So the point data can’t be imported to Blender.
Is there a way to convert vdb point data to voxel data?
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### Author:  [@Andy\_Bauer](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Andy_Bauer)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2021, 4:00pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939/11 "2021-09-15T16:00:56Z")
Can you share your dataset that you’re trying to write out into the VDB format and your VDB file?
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### Author:  [@aquanaut](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/aquanaut)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2021, 4:10pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939/12 "2021-09-15T16:10:34Z")
> **[vtk+vdb.zip](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hA5wHiTLkrqh1u4e035b_fK-vYFridqT/view?usp=sharing)**
>
> Google Drive file.
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### Author:  [@Andy\_Bauer](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/Andy_Bauer)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2021, 4:32pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/openvdb-format-writter/7939/13 "2021-09-15T16:32:35Z")
The VDB writer should work better for vtkImageData than for the other data set types. You have a vtkUnstructuredGrid, though it looks like it could have been stored as a vtkImageData which is more efficient. You can use the `Resample to Image` filter to convert your data to an image data and may get better results from the VDB writer.