scivis-openvdb-blender

Template for creating and then rendering OpenVDB scientific visualisation voxel data in Blender (cycles) for beautiful visualisations.

Requirements

Text editor / C++ IDE (Visual Studio, CLion, etc...)
C++ Compiler (g++ / clang++) (often bundled with IDE)
OpenVDB build (with python support if using python)
Blender

Generic Steps

Edit C++ file main.cpp to create *.vdb files using OpenVDB library
Compile code g++ main.cpp
Run to create *.vdb files
Import *.vdb files into blender
Shade with shader nodes
Render with cycles

Using helper tools

Easy raytrace plot for debugging

Adjusting parameters as necessary

vdb_render myvoxels.vdb out.exr \
  -translate 160,0,0 -absorb 0.0001,0.0001,0.0001 \
  -gain 0.01 -scatter 0.003,0.004,0.006 \
  -light 0.5,0.5,0,1,1,1

Voxel viewer with x,y,z endpoint shifts to look into volume

# View controls
vdb_view -h 
vdb_view myvoxels.vdb

Installation

This section contains some useful snipets to help with installation on specific operating systems. These may depend on your own Operating system, and software versions. Please refer to the installation instructions by the original software provider.

OpenVDB Package Managed Install on Linux

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get libopenvdb-dev
sudo apt-get libopenvdb-tools
sudo apt-get python3-openvdb

OpenVDB Package Managed Install on Mac

Caveat: This does not come with the helper viewing tools, or python package. If needed, build from source.

brew update
brew install openvdb

Manual OpenVDB build

See 'Building Standalone' section and then 'Building with OpenVDB' section of: https://www.openvdb.org/documentation/doxygen/build.html

# Install Build Dependencies
sudo apt-get update
# Core library
sudo apt-get install cmake                   # CMake
sudo apt-get install libtbb-dev              # TBB
sudo apt-get install zlibc                   # zlib
sudo apt-get install libboost-system-dev     # Boost::system
sudo apt-get install libboost-iostreams-dev  # Boost::iostream
sudo apt-get install libblosc-dev            # Blosc
# Python
sudo apt-get install libboost-python-dev     # Boost::python
sudo apt-get install libboost-numpy-dev      # Boost::numpy
sudo apt-get install python-dev              # Python
sudo apt-get install python-numpy            # NumPy
# Optional
sudo apt-get install libpng-dev              # libpng
sudo apt-get install libilmbase-dev          # IlmBase
sudo apt-get install libopenexr-dev          # OpenEXR
# vdb_view
sudo apt-get install libglu1-mesa-dev freeglut3-dev mesa-common-dev #OpenGL
sudo apt-get install libglfw3-dev            # GLFW
sudo apt-get install libglew-dev

# To build OpenVDB (and python module, and helper binaries)
# after downloading from https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openvdb/releases
# and extracting and cd'ing into folder...
mkdir build
cd build

cmake -D OPENVDB_BUILD_VDB_PRINT=ON \
      -D OPENVDB_BUILD_VDB_RENDER=ON \
      -D OPENVDB_BUILD_VDB_VIEW=ON \
      -D OPENVDB_BUILD_PYTHON_MODULE=ON \
      ../

make -j4

sudo make install

Manual OpenVDB build on Mac

See 'Building Standalone' section and then 'Building with OpenVDB' section of: https://www.openvdb.org/documentation/doxygen/build.html

# Install Build Dependencies
# Core library
brew install cmake                     # CMake
brew install ilmbase                   # IlmBase
brew install openexr                   # OpenEXR
brew install tbb                       # TBB
brew install zlib                      # zlib
brew install boost                     # Boost
# Python
brew install boost-python3              # Boost-python
brew install python                    # Python
brew install numpy                     # NumPy
# vdb_view
brew install glfw                      # GLFW
brew install glew

# To build OpenVDB (and python module, and helper binaries)
# after downloading from https://github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openvdb/releases
# and extracting and cd'ing into folder...
mkdir build
cd build

cmake -D OPENVDB_BUILD_VDB_PRINT=ON \
      -D OPENVDB_BUILD_VDB_RENDER=ON \
      -D OPENVDB_BUILD_VDB_VIEW=ON \
      -D OPENVDB_BUILD_PYTHON_MODULE=ON \
      ../

make -j4

sudo make install

Useful Links

Editors

Package Managed install

Windows (vcpkg)

Mac (homebrew)

Linux (apt)

OpenVDB

tomhepz/scivis-openvdb-blender