README.md



Introduction
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.

Learning Resources


General information is available at the VTK Homepage.


Community discussion takes place on the VTK Mailing Lists.


Commercial support and training
are available from Kitware.


Doxygen-generated nightly reference documentation is
available online.


Reporting Bugs
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.


Requirements
In general VTK tries to be as portable as possible; the specific configurations below are known to work and tested.
VTK supports the following C++11 compilers:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 or newer
gcc 4.8.3 or newer
Clang 3.3 or newer
Apple Clang 5.0 (from Xcode 5.0) or newer
Intel 14.0 or newer

VTK supports the following operating systems:

Windows Vista or newer
Mac OS X 10.7 or newer
Linux (ex: Ubuntu 12.04 or newer, Debian 4 or newer)


Contributing
See CONTRIBUTING.md for instructions to contribute.

License
VTK is distributed under the OSI-approved BSD 3-clause License.
See Copyright.txt for details.