VTK is an open-source software system for image processing, 3D graphics, volume rendering and visualization. VTK includes many advanced algorithms (e.g., surface reconstruction, implicit modelling, decimation) and rendering techniques (e.g., hardware-accelerated volume rendering, LOD control).
VTK is used by academicians for teaching and research; by government research institutions such as Los Alamos National Lab in the US or CINECA in Italy; and by many commercial firms who use VTK to build or extend products.
The origin of VTK is with the textbook "The Visualization Toolkit, an Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics" originally published by Prentice Hall and now published by Kitware, Inc. (Third Edition ISBN 1-930934-07-6). VTK has grown (since its initial release in 1994) to a world-wide user base in the commercial, academic, and research communities.
General information is available at the VTK Homepage.
Community discussion takes place on the VTK Mailing Lists.
Doxygen-generated nightly reference documentation is available online.
If you have found a bug:
If you have a patch, please read the CONTRIBUTING.md document.
Otherwise, please join the one of the VTK Mailing Lists and ask about the expected and observed behaviors to determine if it is really a bug.
Finally, if the issue is not resolved by the above steps, open an entry in the VTK Issue Tracker.
In general VTK tries to be as portable as possible; the specific configurations below are known to work and tested.
VTK supports the following compilers: 1. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (aka MSVC++ 9.0) or newer 2. gcc 4.2 or newer 3. Apple gcc 4.2 (from Xcode 3.1.4 or newer) 4. Clang 3.0 or newer 5. Apple Clang 3.0 (from Xcode 4.2) or newer
VTK supports the following operating systems: 1. Windows Vista or newer 2. Mac OS X 10.6.8 or newer 3. Linux (ex: Ubuntu 12.04 or newer, Debian 4 or newer)
See CONTRIBUTING.md for instructions to contribute.
VTK is distributed under the OSI-approved BSD 3-clause License. See Copyright.txt for details.