BuildingANARI

Instructions for how to build ANARI on Linux. This is the basic ANARI, independent of VR capabilities, which will be documented separately.

Building ANARI on Linux

The generic ANARI SDK has minimal system requirements to build. However, for the GPU-accelerated backends, there generally will be additional required features (such as Cuda or Optix).

When building ANARI, there is a choice between downloading/cloning the reference ANARI-SDK, and separately obtaining the GPU accelerated backends, or it is possible to download the pseudo-Superbuild that will download selected backends, and do a complete build.

Prerequisites

ANARI makes use of the CMake build system. You should have at least version 3.11 of CMake.

Cloning ANARI

Clone from the Khronos Github ANARI reposoitory:

% git clone https://github.com/KhronosGroup/ANARI-SDK.git

Configuring the Build and Installing

Configuring and compiling the build:

% mkdir ANARI-SDK/Build
% cd ANARI-SDK/Build
% cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=... -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING=Debug -DBUILD_CTS:BOOL=OFF -DBUILD_TESTING:BOOL=OFF -DBUILD_VIEWER:BOOL=ON ..
% make
% make install
% cp -p anariViewer INSTALL_PREFIX/bin

• NOTE: As of ANARI version 0.8.0, I've had to modify the file "imgui_impl_glfw.cpp" to remove three GLFW function calls that are not part of my version of that library:
  • glfwGetError
  • glfwGetMonitorWorkarea
  • glfwGetMonitorContentScale

Running ANARI

The ANARI build process includes a simple tutorial application that will render a scene consisting of a pair of triangles into two image files (one with the first pass of the render, and one with a later pass). An optional "anariViewer" may also be built which contains a handful of reference scenes, along with an OBJ viewer.

Running the ANARI backend info tool

% ./anariInfo -helide

This will then output a slew of information about the backend, including what version of ANARI it was built for, and what Parameters and Extensions it handles.

Running the ANARI tutorial example

% ./anariTutorial
% display *.ppm

Running the ANARI viewer example

% ./anariViewer

Build/Install the VisRTX & VisGL ANARI backends

Once the base ANARI SDK is built, additional backends can be compiled and added to the overall ANARI installation:

% module load optix cuda anari
% git clone -b next_release --single-branch https://github.com/NVIDIA/VisRTX visrtx2_version
% mkdir visrtx2_version/Build
% cd visrtx2_version/Build
% cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<same-as-ANARI-base>  ..
% make
% make install

Then:

% export ANARI_LIBRARY=visrtx
% anariViewer

Suggestions for improving the ANARI build process

I have a few things that I need to pass along to the ANARI working group that could/should be fixed in future versions -- especially by the time we get to version 1.0.0.

• anariViewer should be copied to INSTALL_PREFIX/bin
• CMake should be fixed to not produce an erroneous GLFW library for anariViewer
• Running anariTutorial shouldn't seg-fault
  • Also anariTutorial should honor the ANARI_LIBRARY flag.
• Running anariInfo -l visgl shouldn't seg-fault

Other issues that I am personally experiencing

• My ANARI-VR test programs crash when running with the helide backend, apparently because it doesn't have directional lights
• When running anariInfo -l visrtx there appear to be some spaces in parameter names that are bugs — e.g. " transform"
  • There are other odd inconsistencies between the output of anariInfo for the backends that I've built
• The file anari_feature_utility.h seems to no longer exist — likely I missed a meeting when a change was discussed
  • So no call to anariGetDeviceFeatureStruct() is available
• There is some code in the installed share/anari directory that I'm not sure what it does/is-for