NVIDIA IndeX for ParaView Plugin

The NVIDIA IndeX for ParaView Plugin enables the large-scale volume data
visualization capabilities of the NVIDIA IndeX library inside Kitware's ParaView.
This document will provide a brief overview of the installation package, please
refer to the user guide for detailed instructions.

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Package Structure
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 installation-directory
    |
    | -- doc                User's Guide for the NVIDIA IndeX for ParaView Plugin.
    |                       The users guide provides detailed installation
    |                       instructions, describes the implemented feature set
    |                       supported by the plugin, answers frequently asked
    |                       questions and lists limitations and knows issues.
    |
    | -- lib                NVIDIA IndeX and DiCE libraries specific
    |                       to your platform.
    |
    | -- EULA.pdf           NVIDIA End User License Agreement.
    |
    | -- license.txt        Third-party licensing information.
    |
    | -- README.txt         This file.

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Compatibility and Prerequisites
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The NVIDIA IndeX for ParaView Plugin is compatible with:

* ParaView-5.3.0 and ParaView-5.4.0
  (depending on the downloaded package, Windows 64-bit).
* OpenMPI-1.7.4
  (if running in client-server mode).
* NVIDIA IndeX 1.5
  (installed with the ParaView plugin).
* NVIDIA GPU(s) supporting CUDA compute capability 3.0 or higher, i.e. Kepler
  GPU architecture generation or later.
* NVIDIA display driver version 384.76 or later on Windows.

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Features and Licensing
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The NVIDIA IndeX for ParaView plugin comes with a free workstation license that
enables exploiting the capabilities of a single GPU.

If you aim to use NVIDIA IndeX on a cluster of multiple hosts and/or
with multiple NVIDIA GPUs, then please contact us for the appropriate licensing.

# Features
----------

* Real-time and interactive high-quality volume data visualization of both,
  structured and unstructured volume grids

* Interactive visualization of time varying structured volume grids.

* Supporting 8-bit and 16-bit unsigned int, and 32-bit floating point volume
  data types.

* Advanced rendering techniques with three different configurable presets for
  Iso-surfaces, Depth enhancement and Edge enhancement.

* Multiple, axis-aligned volume slice rendering combined with volumetric data.

* User defined region of interest selection.

* Advanced filtering and pre-integration techniques enabling high-fidelity
  visualizations.

* Depth-correct integration of ParaView geometry rendering into NVIDIA IndeX
  volume rendering.

* Free single GPU version for leveraging today's GPU performance.

* Multi-GPU and GPU cluster support for scalable real-time visualization of
  datasets of arbitrary sizes. Requires an appropriate license
  (please contact us).

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Known Limitations and Bugs in the BETA release
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Structured volume grids
-------------------------

* Datasets larger than a single GPU's available memory cannot be rendered.
  This issue is plugin specific and shall be resolved in the final release
  version.

* Datasets in *.vtk format won’t distribute to the PV Server and cause
  errors. Please use *.pvti or any other format instead for distributed data
  This issue is ParaView specific. Please contact Kitware for additional details.

# Unstructured volume grids
---------------------------

* Datasets containing degenerated faces may result in correct renderings
  or cause ParaView to fail. The NVIDIA IndeX ParaView plugin tries to resolve
  all invalid faces automatically.

# Auxiliary
-----------

* ParaView doesn't recognize updating the coloring state from 'solid color' to a
  state that is valid for volume rendering when switching to NVIDIA IndeX's
  volume rendering. An invalid coloring state may result into a blank rendering.
  Please update the coloring state appropriately manually.

* The Windows version of the NVIDIA IndeX plugin for ParaView is restricted
  to run on a single workstation/computer only, i.e., cluster rendering
  is not supported on Windows platforms.

* When loading an older state file with both volumetric and geometry data without
  NVIDIA IndeX representation saved in it, first frame shows only volumetric data and when you
  interact the subsequent frames are correct again with both geometry and volume data.

* When using the official ParaView-5.0.1 binaries please make sure that the
  appropriate libstdc++ is used. It might be necessary to delete
  ../lib/paraview-5.0/libstdc++.so.6 and use your system's libstdc++.

* When using further NVIDIA ARC software installations (such as the NVIDIA IndeX
  native library) in parallel, please avoid conflicts between library versions,
  e.g., by setting your environment LD_LIBRARY_PATH appropriately.

* There is also a known crash on exit on certain Ubuntu releases.

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Contact
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please do not hesitate to contact us on the NVIDIA IndeX for ParaView Plugin
forum for further assistance: https://forum.nvidia-arc.com


Copyright 2018 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved.
