Building VTK

Kitware provides Python wheels for VTK at PyPI VTK, but there are situations where you may need to build VTK from source (e.g. new release of Python, EGL rendering, additional features, etc). As pyvista does not provide vtk, you will have to build it manually.

Should you need a prebuilt wheel, a variety of prebuilt wheels can be found at pyvista-wheels, but you may be better off building your own.

Reference the official directions for Building VTK. The following directions assume you want to build a Python wheel non-standard situations like EGL.

Building Wheels

Building VTK from source is fairly straightforward. Using the default build settings, build a Python wheel of VTK using ninja using the following script. This script uses system python3, but you can use any modern Python version. For some additional useful options, see the conda-forge recipe. Most of the ones below are designed to reduce the build time and resulting wheel size.

#!/bin/bash

# Install build dependencies

# Linux/Debian
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:deadsnakes/ppa  # if on Ubuntu 20.04 or 18.04, building 3.10 for example
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y ninja-build cmake libgl1-mesa-dev python3-dev git
sudo apt install -y python3.10-dev python3.10-distutils  # if using deadsnakes + Python 3.10
# If on 18.04, you'll need a newer cmake. You can follow VTK's instructions @ https://apt.kitware.com

# Linux/CentOS
sudo yum install epel-release
sudo yum install ninja-build cmake mesa-libGL-devel mesa-libGLU-devel

git clone https://gitlab.kitware.com/vtk/vtk.git
mkdir vtk/build
cd vtk/build
git checkout v9.1.0  # optional to select a version, but recommended

export PYBIN=/usr/bin/python3.10  # select your version of choice
cmake -GNinja \
      -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
      -DVTK_BUILD_TESTING=OFF \
      -DVTK_BUILD_DOCUMENTATION=OFF \
      -DVTK_BUILD_EXAMPLES=OFF \
      -DVTK_DATA_EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL:BOOL=ON \
      -DVTK_MODULE_ENABLE_VTK_PythonInterpreter:STRING=NO \
      -DVTK_WHEEL_BUILD=ON \
      -DVTK_PYTHON_VERSION=3 \
      -DVTK_WRAP_PYTHON=ON \
      -DVTK_OPENGL_HAS_EGL=False \
      -DPython3_EXECUTABLE=$PYBIN ../
ninja

# build wheel in dist
$PYBIN -m pip install wheel
$PYBIN setup.py bdist_wheel
$PYBIN -m pip install dist/vtk-*.whl  # optionally install it

Off-Screen Plotting GPU Support

VTK supports rendering with EGL, enabling rapid off-screen rendering using GPU hardware acceleration without installing a virtual framebuffer. The default VTK wheels are not built with this feature, but you can build VTK for off-screen plotting using GPU support by modifying the above cmake command with:

#!/bin/bash

# install build dependencies (Linux/Debian)
apt-get update
apt-get install -y ninja-build cmake libegl1-mesa-dev python3-dev

# build using EGL
git clone https://github.com/Kitware/VTK
mkdir VTK/build
cd VTK/build \
git checkout v9.1.0
cd /VTK/build
cmake -GNinja \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
  -DVTK_BUILD_TESTING=OFF \
  -DVTK_BUILD_DOCUMENTATION=OFF \
  -DVTK_BUILD_EXAMPLES=OFF \
  -DVTK_MODULE_ENABLE_VTK_PythonInterpreter:STRING=NO \
  -DVTK_WHEEL_BUILD=ON \
  -DVTK_PYTHON_VERSION=3 \
  -DVTK_WRAP_PYTHON=ON \
  -DVTK_OPENGL_HAS_EGL:BOOL=ON \
  -DVTK_USE_X:BOOL=OFF \
  -DVTK_USE_COCOA:BOOL=OFF \
  -DVTK_DEFAULT_RENDER_WINDOW_HEADLESS:BOOL=ON \
  -DPython3_EXECUTABLE=/usr/bin/python3 ../
ninja

# build the python wheel
python3 -m pip install wheel \
python3 setup.py bdist_wheel \
pip install dist/vtk-*.whl

This disables any plotting using the X server, so be prepared to use this module only on a headless display where you either intend to save static images or stream the render window to another computer with a display (e.g using pyvista.set_jupyter_backend('ipyvtklink') and jupyterlab). In other words, this wheel will make VTK unusable outside of an off-screen environment, so only plan on installing it on a headless system without an X server.

Building OSMesa

OSMesa provides higher visualization performance on CPU based hosts. Use this instead of xvfb:

sudo apt-get install libosmesa6-dev cmake ninja-build

git clone https://github.com/Kitware/VTK.git
cd VTK
git checkout v9.1.0
mkdir build
cd build

PYBIN=/usr/bin/python
cmake -GNinja \
      -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
      -DVTK_BUILD_TESTING=OFF \
      -DVTK_BUILD_DOCUMENTATION=OFF \
      -DVTK_BUILD_EXAMPLES=OFF \
      -DVTK_DATA_EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL:BOOL=ON \
      -DVTK_MODULE_ENABLE_VTK_PythonInterpreter:STRING=NO \
      -DVTK_WHEEL_BUILD=ON \
      -DVTK_PYTHON_VERSION=3 \
      -DVTK_WRAP_PYTHON=ON \
      -DVTK_OPENGL_HAS_EGL=False \
      -DVTK_OPENGL_HAS_OSMESA=True \
      -DVTK_USE_COCOA=FALSE \
      -DVTK_USE_X=FALSE \
      -DVTK_DEFAULT_RENDER_WINDOW_HEADLESS=True \
      -DPython3_EXECUTABLE=$PYBIN ../
ninja
$PYBIN setup.py bdist_wheel

Wheels will be generated in the dist directory.

Building ManyLinux Wheels

The above directions are great for building a local build of VTK, but these wheels are difficult to share outside your local install given issues with ABI compatibility due to the version of Linux they were built on. You can work around this by building your wheels using a manylinux docker image.

To do this, create a build_wheels.sh with the following contents in the git clone``d ``vtk directory, and give it executable permissions (chmod +x build_wheels.sh):

#!/bin/bash
# builds python wheels on docker container and tests installation

set -e -x

# build based on python version from args
PYTHON_VERSION="$1"
case $PYTHON_VERSION in
3.7)
  PYBIN="/opt/python/cp37-cp37m/bin/python"
  ;;
3.8)
  PYBIN="/opt/python/cp38-cp38/bin/python"
  ;;
3.9)
  PYBIN="/opt/python/cp39-cp39/bin/python"
  ;;
3.10)
  PYBIN="/opt/python/cp310-cp310/bin/python"
  ;;
esac

yum install -y ninja-build cmake mesa-libGL-devel mesa-libGLU-devel

rm -rf /io/build
mkdir /io/build -p
cd /io/build

cmake -GNinja \
      -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
      -DVTK_BUILD_TESTING=OFF \
      -DVTK_BUILD_DOCUMENTATION=OFF \
      -DVTK_BUILD_EXAMPLES=OFF \
      -DVTK_DATA_EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL:BOOL=ON \
      -DVTK_MODULE_ENABLE_VTK_PythonInterpreter:STRING=NO \
      -DVTK_WHEEL_BUILD=ON \
      -DVTK_PYTHON_VERSION=3 \
      -DVTK_WRAP_PYTHON=ON \
      -DVTK_OPENGL_HAS_EGL=False \
      -DPython3_EXECUTABLE=$PYBIN ../
ninja-build

# build wheel in dist
rm -rf dist
$PYBIN -m pip install wheel
$PYBIN setup.py bdist_wheel

# cleanup wheel
rm -rf wheelhouse
auditwheel repair dist/*.whl

This script can then be called with:

export PYTHON_VERSION=3.10
docker run --cpus 4.5 -e \
       --rm -v `pwd`:/io quay.io/pypa/manylinux2014_x86_64 \
       /io/build_wheels.sh $PYTHON_VERSION

You should end up with a build/wheelhouse/vtk-*.whl.

Note

To build the EGL version of the wheel, follow the directions in the previous section. Add mesa-libEGL-devel to the installation dependencies.

Building Python VTK Wheel on Raspberry Pi (64-bit)

While it’s possible to build on 32-bit Raspberry Pi (ARMv7), there are several issues that crop up when building wheels for the 32-bit version (see manylinux issue 84). Should you attempt to build on 32-bit, try building the wheel using dockcross as you may run into memory limitations otherwise (especially with only 1 GB RAM).

Building the aarch64 manylinux wheel can be done via docker with the quay.io/pypa/manylinux2014_aarch64 image. Run the following:

PYTHON_VERSION=3.7
rm -rf build
docker run -e \
       --rm -v `pwd`:/io quay.io/pypa/manylinux2014_aarch64 \
       /io/build_wheels.sh $PYTHON_VERSION

Where build_wheels.sh is:

#!/bin/bash
# builds python wheels on docker container and tests installation

set -e -x

# build based on python version from args
PYTHON_VERSION="$1"
case $PYTHON_VERSION in
3.7)
  PYBIN="/opt/python/cp37-cp37m/bin/python"
  ;;
3.8)
  PYBIN="/opt/python/cp38-cp38/bin/python"
  ;;
3.9)
  PYBIN="/opt/python/cp39-cp39/bin/python"
  ;;
3.10)
  PYBIN="/opt/python/cp310-cp310/bin/python"
  ;;
esac

/bin/bash
yum install epel-release
yum install ninja-build
yum install mesa-libEGL-devel  # only needed when building EGL

mkdir /io/build -p
cd /io/build

cmake -GNinja \
      -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
      -DVTK_BUILD_TESTING=OFF \
      -DVTK_BUILD_DOCUMENTATION=OFF \
      -DVTK_BUILD_EXAMPLES=OFF \
      -DVTK_DATA_EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL:BOOL=ON \
      -DVTK_MODULE_ENABLE_VTK_PythonInterpreter:STRING=NO \
      -DVTK_WHEEL_BUILD=ON \
      -DVTK_PYTHON_VERSION=3 \
      -DVTK_WRAP_PYTHON=ON \
      -DVTK_OPENGL_HAS_EGL=False \
      -DPython3_EXECUTABLE=$PYBIN ../
ninja-build

# build wheel
rm -rf dist
$PYBIN setup.py bdist_wheel

# cleanup wheel
rm -rf wheelhouse
auditwheel repair dist/*.whl
cp wheelhouse/vtk*.whl /io/wheels

Be sure to either enable or disable DVTK_OPENGL_HAS_EGL depending on if you want EGL enabled for your wheel.