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.

Copyright (c) 1993-2003 Ken Martin, Will Schroeder, Bill Lorensen 
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

 * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
   this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

 * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
   this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
   and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

 * Neither name of Ken Martin, Will Schroeder, or Bill Lorensen nor the names
   of any contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived
   from this software without specific prior written permission.

 * Modified source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
   misrepresented as being the original software.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS''
AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR
ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR
SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER
CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY,
OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE
OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

• The source code is found in the directories Common, Rendering, Filtering, Graphics, Imaging, Hybrid, Parallel, and Patented.
  • Common- Core classes
  • Rendering- Classes used to render
  • Filtering- Abstract superclasses for filtering data
  • Graphics- Filters that process 3D data
  • Imaging- Specialized image processing filters
  • IO- Classes for reading abd writing data
  • Hybrid- Complex classes that depend on imaging and graphics
  • Parallel- Parallel processing support such as MPI
  • Patented- Patented classes, to be used in commercial applications only with a license
• Examples that are reasonably well documented are found in the VTK/Examples directory. You may wish to start with the examples found in the Tutorial directory.

• The Utilities directory includes things like jpeg, png, and zlib source code. This code is used by VTK in various ways (reading/writing data, etc.)

• The Wrapping directory contains code related to VTK's automated wrapping process. The wrapping process automatically generates Tcl, Python, and/or Java bindings depending on how the build process is configured.

If you will be using C++ as your development language (no Tcl/Tk, Python or Java support):

  1) untar the src files
  2) untar the data files
  3) cd VTK
  4) cmake -i (run cmake in wizard mode, where you have to answer 
     questions about the build)
or
  4) ccmake (run the terminal based interface to cmake where you interactively
     change build options)
  5) if necessary change build options
  6) make

  ls /home/joe_user
      vtk vtk-solaris vtk-sgi

  cd vtk-solaris
  ccmake /home/joe_user/VTK
or
  cmake -i /home/joe_user/VTK

TK_INCLUDE_PATH /usr/src/tcltk-20001125-1/tk/generic/
TK_INTERNAL_PATH /usr/src/tcltk-20001125-1/tk/win/
TK_XLIB_PATH /usr/src/tcltk-20001125-1/tk/xlib

• Strange compile errors on Unix. Make sure that you specify the environment variables CXX and CC prior to running CMake. (If you have already run CMake, do a "make clean" to remove the cached CMake information.)
• Errors on Tcl or Tk include files. Make sure that you edit CMakeCache.txt to point to the correct location.
• Errors on Tcl or Tk libraries. Make sure that you edit CMakeCache.txt to point to the correct location.
• Link errors on Windows platforms. Make sure that the swap space is at least 300 MByte.
• Link error with borland: TCL82.LIB contains invalid OMF record, type 0x21 (possibly COFF). You have to convert Tcl libraires from coff to omf with the Borland utilitiy coff2omf. Once you have created OMF versions, re-run cmake to tell it where the Borland versions of Tcl and Tk are located. Also, make sure that you are using Tcl/Tk 8.3.2.

  1) Create a new directory called VTK/Local.
  2) Create a file called LocalUserOptions.cmake in VTK/. In that file, 
     add the command "SUBDIRS(Local)". This will add the Local directory 
     to the build.
  3) Create the .cxx and .h file for the new class in VTK/Local. Make 
     sure that you use VTK conventions to insure that the wrapping 
     occurs correctly. Complex code may break the wrapper parser; 
     use //BTX and //ETX around the  code to fix this.
  4) Create a CMakeLists.txt in VTK/Local. You can model it after 
     a CMakeList.txt file found in another directory 
     (like VTK/IO/CMakeLists.txt).
  5) Rerun ccmake (Unix) or CMakeSetup.exe (Windows).
  6) Then make/gmake (Unix) or msdev (Windows).