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.

Wheels on Linux and Mac OS

Building VTK from source on Linux is fairly easy. Using the default build settings, build a Python wheel of VTK using ninja using the following script. This script assumes Python 3.9, 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.

git clone https://github.com/Kitware/VTK
cd VTK

mkdir build
cd build
PYBIN=/usr/bin/python3.9
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 \
    -DPython3_EXECUTABLE=$PYBIN ../
ninja
$PYBIN setup.py bdist_wheel
pip install dist/vtk-*.whl  # optionally install it

You may need to install python3.9-dev and ninja if you have not already installed it.

Off-Screen Plotting GPU Support

VTK supports rendering with EGL, enabling rapid off-screen using GPU hardware acceleration. Unfortuantly, the default VTK wheels are not built with this feature as it results in a > 400 MB wheel. For the adventurous/desperate, build VTK with EGL for a given Python wheel on Linux with the following:

You can build VTK for off-screen plotting using GPU support by modifying the above cmake command with:

cmake -GNinja \
  -DVTK_BUILD_TESTING=OFF \
  -DVTK_WHEEL_BUILD=ON \
  -DVTK_PYTHON_VERSION=3 \
  -DVTK_WRAP_PYTHON=ON \
  -DVTK_OPENGL_HAS_EGL=True \
  -DVTK_USE_X=False \
  -DPython3_EXECUTABLE=$PYBIN \
  ../
ninja

$PYBIN setup.py bdist_wheel
$PYBIN -m pip install dist/vtk-*.whl  # optional

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 use_ipyvtk=True 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 a X server.

Building VTK on Windows

Please reference the directions at Building VTK with Windows. This is generally a non-trivial process and is not for the faint-hearted.