NVIDIA IndeX

ParaView Plugin User’s Guide

29 November 2023
Version 5.12.0
NVIDIA IndeX – ParaView Plugin User’s Guide

Copyright Information

➞ 2023 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. Document build number rev373738

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide ii

Contents

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Licensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2 Installation 2
2.1 System requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.2 Building ParaView and the NVIDIA IndeX plugin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.3 Loading the plugin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

3 Getting started 5
3.1 Client-only mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2 Simple client/server mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.3 Client/server mode with MPI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.4 NVIDIA IndeX settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.5 Advanced NVIDIA IndeX configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.5.1 License setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.5.2 Networking options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

4 NVIDIA IndeX features 12

4.1 Features overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.2 Structured and unstructured grids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.3 Data types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.4 Transfer function and colormap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.5 Cropping / region of interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.6 High-quality rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.7 Slice rendering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.8 NVIDIA IndeX visual elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.8.1 Isosurface preset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.8.2 Depth enhancement preset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.8.3 Edge enhancement preset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.8.4 Gradient preset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.8.5 Custom preset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4.9 Time series animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.10 Catalyst and in-situ visualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.11 Mixing ParaView primitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.12 Known limitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

5 NVIDIA IndeX XAC programming 34

5.1 XAC purpose and program structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide iii
 5.2 XAC volume sample programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.2.1 Example program outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.3 Sampling a volume and map to a color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.4 Using XAC library functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.5 Adding basic volume shading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5.6 Using CUDA parameter buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

6 Frequently asked questions 39

7 Resources 41

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide iv

 1 Introduction
The NVIDIA IndeX® for ParaView® plugin makes the large-scale and high-quality volume
data visualization capabilities of the NVIDIA IndeX library available to Kitware’s ParaView.
This document is intended for a ParaView user who is new to the NVIDIA IndeX plugin and
wants to explore the features of NVIDIA IndeX supported by the plugin. The following
sections will explain the installation procedure and the various features of the plugin,
followed by a section of frequently asked questions and useful links for further reference.
For more details and download options please go to:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/index-paraview-plugin

1.1 Licensing
The NVIDIA IndeX for ParaView Plugin comes with a free evaluation license that enables all
features for a limited time, including full scalability to run on multiple NVIDIA GPUs and on
a cluster of GPU hosts. The software will continue to run after the evaluation period, but with
multi-GPU features disabled.
For licensing requests, please contact nvidia-index@nvidia.com.

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 1

 2 Installation
The NVIDIA IndeX for ParaView plugin is included in ParaView 5.12.0 and runs on
Windows, Linux (x86-64 and ARM/aarch64) and macOS (remote rendering only). To install
ParaView, you can either download a binary package 1 or build from source.

2.1 System requirements

The NVIDIA IndeX for ParaView plugin 5.12.0 requires:
• An NVIDIA GPU that supports at least CUDA compute capability 5.0, i.e. “Maxwell”
GPU architecture or newer.
To find out the compute capability of a specific GPU, go to
https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus.
• NVIDIA display driver that supports CUDA 12. The minimum driver version is:
• Linux: 525.60.13
• Windows: 527.41
• Recommended driver version (CUDA 12.3):
• Linux: 545.23.06 or newer
• Windows: 545.84 or newer
• When connecting to a remote pvserver (see Simple client/server mode (page 6)), a
suitable NVIDIA GPU and display driver is required on the remote host but not on the
local host where the ParaView client is running.
• Supported operating systems:
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS version 7 or newer. The NVIDIA
IndeX for ParaView plugin will typically also run on other Linux distributions.
• Microsoft Windows 10.
• macOS. The macOS version of the NVIDIA IndeX for ParaView plugin does not
support local rendering. However, it can be used for remote rendering together
with a Linux host that runs pvserver (see Simple client/server mode (page 6)).

2.2 Building ParaView and the NVIDIA IndeX plugin

If you have installed ParaView using a binary package provided by Kitware, then the plugin
is already included and you can continue to “Loading the plugin” (page 3).

1. https://www.paraview.org/download/

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 2

 2 Installation 2.3 Loading the plugin

The NVIDIA IndeX plugin can also be built from source, together with ParaView. See the
ParaView build documentation 2 for a general overview of the build process. For compiling
the plugin, two additional steps are necessary:
1. Since the NVIDIA IndeX plugin is not enabled in the default build, enable it by setting
PARAVIEW_PLUGIN_ENABLE_pvNVIDIAIndeX=ON when running cmake, for example:

cmake -DPARAVIEW_PLUGIN_ENABLE_pvNVIDIAIndeX=ON ../paraview-source

2. Download the latest NVIDIA IndeX libraries package for your platform from the
ParaView dependency repository: https://www.paraview.org/files/dependencies/
Windows
nvidia-index-libs-5.12.0.<YYYYMMDD>-windows-x64.tar.bz2

Linux x86-64
nvidia-index-libs-5.12.0.<YYYYMMDD>-linux.tar.bz2

Linux ARM/aarch64
nvidia-index-libs-5.12.0.<YYYYMMDD>-linux-aarch64.tar.bz2

macOS
NVIDIA IndeX libraries are not available for macOS, but are also not required for
remote rendering.
Extract the contents of the downloaded package to the lib directory inside your
ParaView installation, so that ParaView can find the libraries at runtime.

2.3 Loading the plugin

To load the plugin in ParaView, start the ParaView client and navigate to [ Tools ▶
Manage Plugins ] in the menu.

Fig. 2.1 - [ Tools ▶ Manage Plugins ] from ParaView

menu

2. https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview/-/blob/master/Documentation/dev/build.md

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 3

2 Installation 2.3 Loading the plugin

Select pvNVIDIAIndeX in the list of “Local Plugins” and choose Load Selected. To automatically
load the plugin when ParaView starts, expand the list entry and check Auto Load.

Fig. 2.2 - The plugin is shown as loaded

Fig. 2.3 - Read the EULA and click Accept

When loading the plugin for the first time, please read and accept the End User License
Agreement (EULA).
Once the plugin is loaded, its name will show up in the list of “Local Plugins” with its status
changed to Loaded. Make sure there are no errors messages shown in the terminal or on
ParaView’s console.
When using the plugin in client/server mode, it must be loaded in both “Local Plugins” and
“Remote Plugins”.

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 4

 3 Getting started
This section will describe how to use the NVIDIA IndeX for ParaView plugin in both
client-only and client/server mode.

3.1 Client-only mode

To run the plugin in client-only mode, simply launch the ParaView client (paraview) and
load the plugin as described in Section 2.
With the default evaluation license or a separately provided license for the cluster version of
the plugin, NVIDIA IndeX will automatically utilize all available NVIDIA GPUs for
rendering. After the evaluation period, only a single GPU can be used with the default
license.
To verify that the plugin is installed correctly and loaded successfully in ParaView, please
create a Wavelet source (menu [ Sources ▶ Alphabetical ▶ Wavelet ]). Once you click Apply, an
Outline representation will be shown in the viewport. Change the representation from Outline
to NVIDIA IndeX to enable volume visualization.

Fig. 3.1 - Create a Wavelet source

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 5

 3 Getting started 3.2 Simple client/server mode

Fig. 3.2 - Outline is the default representation

Fig. 3.3 - Wavelet source rendered by NVIDIA IndeX

3.2 Simple client/server mode

Please refer to the ParaView Wiki 1 for a general overview of pvserver and ParaView’s
client/server mode.

1. https://www.paraview.org/Wiki/Setting_up_a_ParaView_Server

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 6

 3 Getting started 3.3 Client/server mode with MPI

To run ParaView with the NVIDIA IndeX plugin in client/server mode, first start pvserver
on a host equipped with a suitable NVIDIA GPU:

pvserver --displays=:0

When using EGL, you need to specify the EGL device index (0, 1, etc.) instead of the X11
display (:0). Please note that, in either case, this selection will not influence what GPUs will
be used by NVIDIA IndeX, but only what other ParaView renderers will use.
Once the pvserver process is launched, run the ParaView client and connect to the host
where pvserver is running by selecting [ File ▶ Connect ▶ Add Servers ] in the menu.
Typically the server address is printed out in the console where pvserver was executed and,
once the client has connected, “Client connected” will be printed there. Make sure to load the
NVIDIA IndeX plugin on both the client and the server side as described in “Loading the
plugin” (page 3).

3.3 Client/server mode with MPI

Running multiple pvserver processes enables parallel data loading and data processing in
ParaView. The following command will launch pvserver on 8 MPI ranks:

mpirun -np 8 pvserver --displays=:0

Alternatively, the mpiexec program that is part of the ParaView package can be used:

mpiexec -n 8 pvserver --displays=:0

While NVIDIA IndeX will automatically use all available NVIDIA GPUs, other renderers in
ParaView will utilize only those GPUs that are explicitly specified with --displays. Multiple
GPUs can be specified, for example, with --displays=:0.0,:0.1,:0.2,:0.3 (for X11) or
--displays=0,1,2,3 (for EGL). These GPUs will then be assigned to the MPI ranks in a
round-robin fashion. See the ParaView documentation for details. Note that the --displays
parameter will not affect the GPU assignment used by NVIDIA IndeX.
A valid license for the cluster version of the plugin is required for NVIDIA IndeX to be able to
utilize more than a single GPU. The plugin comes with a default evaluation license that
enables all multi-GPU and cluster features for a limited time. With a valid license in place (see
“License setup” (page 10)), NVIDIA IndeX can also distribute the rendering workload to
multiple GPUs on multiple hosts in a cluster environment. For example, this command will
launch 4 pvserver processes each on host1 and host2, which are equipped with 2 GPUs:

mpirun -H host1,host2 --bynode -np 4 pvserver --displays=:0.0,:0.1

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 7

 3 Getting started 3.4 NVIDIA IndeX settings

Or, with mpiexec:

mpiexec -ppn 4 -hosts host1,host2 pvserver --displays=:0.0,:0.1

When exclusively using NVIDIA IndeX for rendering, it would be sufficient to just specify
--displays=:0, independent of the actual number of GPUs.

Before connecting the ParaView client to pvserver, please ensure that IceT compositing is
disabled. This can be controlled from in the Settings dialog at [ Edit ▶ Settings ▶ Render View ].
Restart ParaView after changing the setting. An error message will be printed if IceT
compositing is still enabled when running the NVIDIA IndeX plugin on multiple MPI ranks.

Fig. 3.4 - Disable IceT in the Settings dialog (Toggle advanced

properties in the top right corner must be enabled)

3.4 NVIDIA IndeX settings

When the NVIDIA IndeX plugin is loaded, a new NVIDIA IndeX tab will appear in the
Settings dialog. Enable the Toggle advanced properties button in the top right corner to show all
available settings.

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 8

3 Getting started 3.4 NVIDIA IndeX settings

Fig. 3.5 - NVIDIA IndeX tab in the Settings dialog

The following setting are available:

• Logging: The minimum required severity level for messages to appear in ParaView’s
Output Messages window as well as on standard output can be set. The current
timestamp and the hostname can optionally be added to each log message.
• Performance values: Write statistics about rendering performance to a file or to standard
output.
• Session export: Write the state of the NVIDIA IndeX scene to a file or to standard output.
• Network configuration: Various settings for running on multiple hosts in cluster mode.
• Extra configuration: Allows setting low-level configuration options, e.g. for performance
tuning.
• License keys: An NVIDIA IndeX license key that was obtained from NVIDIA can now
be entered here.

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 9

 3 Getting started 3.5 Advanced NVIDIA IndeX configuration

3.5 Advanced NVIDIA IndeX configuration

Advanced features of the NVIDIA IndeX plugin can be configured in the optional
configuration file nvindex_config.xml. Any settings specified in the configuration file have
precedence over those from the Settings dialog.
To change the configuration, copy the template of the configuration file 2 to the ParaView
settings directory 3 and modify it. On Linux the ParaView settings directory will be
$HOME/.config/ParaView or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ParaView, while on Windows, settings are
stored in %APPDATA%\ParaView.
If the ParaView settings directory is not accessible, you can set the environment variable
NVINDEX_PVPLUGIN_HOME to point to the directory that contains nvindex_config.xml:

export NVINDEX_PVPLUGIN_HOME=path-to-directory-with-config-file

3.5.1 License setup

When you obtain a license for the plugin from NVIDIA, you will receive a file named
license.lic. It contains the keys NVINDEX_VENDOR_KEY and NVINDEX_SECRET_KEY that need
to be set as environment variables on all the hosts where NVIDIA IndeX is run.

export NVINDEX_VENDOR_KEY="vendor-key-here"
export NVINDEX_SECRET_KEY="secret-key-here"

Alternatively, enter those keys into the Settings dialog or copy them into the <license>
section of the configuration file as shown below.

<index_config>
<license>
<vendor_key>vendor-key-here</vendor_key>
<secret_key>secret-key-here</secret_key>
</license>
</index_config>

3.5.2 Networking options

All the networking configuration options for the plugin are specified in the <network>
section of the configuration file.

<index_config>
<network>
<cluster_mode>TCP</cluster_mode>
<cluster_interface_address>
172.161.123.0/24:10001
</cluster_interface_address>

2. https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview/-/raw/master/Plugins/pvNVIDIAIndeX/nvindex_
config.xml
3. https://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView_Settings_Files

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3 Getting started 3.5 Advanced NVIDIA IndeX configuration

<multicast_address>224.1.3.2</multicast_address>
<discovery_address>224.1.3.3:5555</discovery_address>
<use_rdma>no</use_rdma>
</network>
</index_config>

<cluster_mode> defines the networking mode of NVIDIA IndeX. The modes OFF, UDP, TCP
and TCP_WITH_DISCOVERY are supported, and TCP is the default mode.
<cluster_interface_address> defines the network interface that is used for
communication between the hosts. This may also be an interface name, but it must be the
same on all hosts. If not set, a network interface will be chosen automatically, which might
not always be the right one. The string may end with a colon character ( : ) and a port number
to select which port to listen on for UDP and TCP unicast traffic. If no port is set then port
10000 will be used.
<multicast_address> defines the multicast address for communication between the hosts.
This will only be used when cluster_mode is set to UDP.
<discovery_address> defines the discovery address used for TCP_WITH_DISCOVERY.

<use_rdma> can be set to yes or no to enable or disable InfiniBand RDMA mode for
networking.

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 11

 4 NVIDIA IndeX features
This section will provide a walk-through of the individual features of the NVIDIA IndeX for
ParaView plugin.

4.1 Features overview

• Real-time and interactive high-quality volume data visualization of both structured and
unstructured volume grids.
• Interactive visualization of time-varying structured volume grids.
• Support for 8-bit and 16-bit signed/unsigned integer and 32-bit floating point volume
data types. 64-bit floating point data and 32-bit integer data is supported via an
automatic conversion.
• XAC (NVIDIA IndeX Accelerated Compute) visual elements for volume rendering with
four different configurable presets: Isosurfaces, depth enhancement, edge enhancement,
gradient.
• User-defined programmable XAC visual element for volumes.
• Multiple, axis-aligned volume slice rendering combined with volumetric data.
• Catalyst support for regular grids to perform in-situ based visualization.
• User-defined cropping and 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.
• Multi-GPU and GPU cluster support for scalable real-time visualization of datasets of
arbitrary size. Requires an appropriate license after the evaluation period (please contact
NVIDIA).

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 12

 4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.2 Structured and unstructured grids

4.2 Structured and unstructured grids

The NVIDIA IndeX for ParaView plugin can perform volume rendering of both structured
and unstructured grid types.

Fig. 4.1 - Grid rendered as a surface

Fig. 4.2 - Grid rendered as a volume using NVIDIA IndeX

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 13

 4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.3 Data types

4.3 Data types

NVIDIA IndeX supports different data scalar types such as unsigned char, unsigned short and
float. Data in double format will be automatically converted to float.
When loading raw data, always make sure that the correct byte order is chosen, as otherwise
your visualization might have artifacts or even look completely random.

Fig. 4.3 - Choose data byte order

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 14

 4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.4 Transfer function and colormap

4.4 Transfer function and colormap

The transfer function used for volume rendering can be modified using ParaView’s colormap
editor.

Fig. 4.4 - Click on the icon to open up the colormap editor

By editing the colormap you can restrict the visualization to regions of the dataset that are
interesting to you. This can be achieved by changing the colortable, by adjusting the
transparency, or by setting custom domain range values to hide specific parts of the dataset.

Fig. 4.5 - Choose a suitable colortable and click Apply

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 15

4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.4 Transfer function and colormap

Fig. 4.6 - Colortable matching your dataset domain

Fig. 4.7 - Changing the opacity values

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 16

 4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.5 Cropping / region of interest

Fig. 4.8 - Custom data domain range

4.5 Cropping / region of interest

Structured grids can be cropped using the standard ParaView cropping controls. After
enabling Use cropping in the Properties panel, you can apply cropping either by dragging the
control points in the viewport with the mouse or by manually changing the Cropping Origin
and Cropping Scale settings.

Fig. 4.9 - Wavelet volume with cropping controls visible

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 17

4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.5 Cropping / region of interest

Fig. 4.10 - Cropping settings for structured grids

Fig. 4.11 - Wavelet volume with a custom cropping applied by dragging a

control point

For unstructured grids, cropping is controlled using the sliders in the NVIDIA IndeX Region of
Interest section of the Properties panel.

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 18

4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.5 Cropping / region of interest

Fig. 4.12 - Changing the region of interest for unstructured grids

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 19

 4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.6 High-quality rendering

4.6 High-quality rendering

High-quality rendering can be achieved by enabling the pre-integration and filtering
techniques of NVIDIA IndeX. Some of these filtering techniques are computationally
expensive, so there is a tradeoff between rendering quality and performance.
The filtering options can be found in the Properties panel, typically located on the left hand
side of the ParaView client user interface.

Fig. 4.13 - Properties panel in ParaView

Fig. 4.14 - Filtering options in the NVIDIA IndeX

properties panel

There is no single filtering mode that will be optimal for all datasets, but each filtering mode
achieves different levels of quality with different datasets and transfer function combinations,
with nearest neighbor interpolation being the most basic one. Some example images
comparing different filtering modes are shown below.

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4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.6 High-quality rendering

Fig. 4.15 - Base of an EF5 tornado cloud

Fig. 4.16 - Nearest neighbor, trilinear and tricubic B-spline interpolation

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 21

 4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.7 Slice rendering

4.7 Slice rendering

Volume slices can be enabled from the user interface. Currently they are limited to three
axis-aligned slices with the ability to move individual slice positions.

Fig. 4.17 - Slice rendering options in the Properties panel. Dataset was made available by Dr. Jackqueline Chen
at Sandia Laboratories through US Department of Energy’s SciDAC Institute for Ultrascale Visualization.

Fig. 4.18 - Slice rendering with volume disabled

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 22

 4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.8 NVIDIA IndeX visual elements

4.8 NVIDIA IndeX visual elements

The visual elements feature of NVIDIA IndeX enables you to enhance the visual cues in the
dataset. The plugin provides five visual presets, each preset having one or more parameters
for finer control over the rendering.

Fig. 4.19 - Supernova SASI visualized as a volume. Dataset courtesy of Dr. John Blondin at the North Carolina
State University through US Department of Energy’s SciDAC Institute for Ultrascale Visualization.

Fig. 4.20 - Visual element presets in the Properties panel

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 23

 4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.8 NVIDIA IndeX visual elements

4.8.1 Isosurface preset

The isosurface preset allows you to extract the isosurface and volume contained inside the
range [iso-min, iso-max] and to render both with different options for mapping sample
values to colors.
Iso min/Iso max
Define the isosurface range, expressed in percentage of the scalar value range of the
volume.
Fill mode
Defines the shading mode for the volume.
No Fill
The interior of the volume is not shown.
Single Color
The volume is shown with the iso-min value.
Colormap
The colormap is applied to the volume data.
Use shading
Enables/disables the Phong-Blinn lighing model for the iso-min/iso-max surfaces.

Fig. 4.21 - Supernova SASI visualized as an isosurface

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 4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.8 NVIDIA IndeX visual elements

4.8.2 Depth enhancement preset

The depth enhancement preset allows you to enhance the depth perception of a dataset by
isolating features with high opacity values in the transfer function mapping. At each volume
position, colormap alpha values are accumulated along a predefined line segment and
samples in regions with a low opacity distribution are darkened.
Samples
Number of samples taken along the line segment.
Gamma
Controls contrast.

Fig. 4.22 - Supernova SASI visualized using the depth enhancement preset

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 4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.8 NVIDIA IndeX visual elements

4.8.3 Edge enhancement preset

The edge enhancement preset allows you to enhance the edges or “silhouettes” of a dataset
based on variations of the transfer function. At each volume position, the gradients of the
colormap alpha-channel are accumulated along a predefined line segment and samples that
contain higher gradient magnitudes are darkened.
Edge Range
The length of the line segment along which the gradient is calculated.
Samples
The number of samples used to calculate the gradient along the line segment.

Fig. 4.23 - Supernova SASI visualized using the edge enhancement preset

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 4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.8 NVIDIA IndeX visual elements

4.8.4 Gradient preset

The gradient preset highlights features of greater variation in the dataset by calculating the
gradient of the volume scalar field and using its magnitude to scale colormap samples.
Gradient Level
The gradient level or intensity as a percentage.
Gradient Scale
The maximum gradient level.

Fig. 4.24 - CHOLLA galactic outflow simulation visualized as a volume. Dataset courtesy
of Evan E. Schneider (Princeton University) and Brant Robertson (University of California,
Santa Cruz).

Fig. 4.25 - CHOLLA galactic outflow simulation visualized using the gradient preset.

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 4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.8 NVIDIA IndeX visual elements

4.8.5 Custom preset

The custom preset allows users to write their own volume rendering programs as XAC
(NVIDIA IndeX Accelerated Compute) code. The XAC programs are small CUDA kernels,
editable with your preferred text editor, that can be used to replace the default volume
shading kernel executed inside NVIDIA IndeX. XAC programs are compiled at runtime,
which means that you can load a program and edit it on the fly, with changes being applied
immediately to the rendering. The custom preset provides the means to load an XAC program
from a file, apply updates on the fly and comes with a list of predefined user parameters that
can be accessed in your program.
For an overview of XAC, see NVIDIA IndeX XAC programming (page 34). A few volume
program examples are distributed with the ParaView binary package (in
paraview-directory/kernels_nvidia_index) and with the ParaView source distribution
(in paraview-sources/Plugins/pvNVIDIAIndeX/kernel_programs).
Kernel
The XAC volume program to be loaded from a text file.
Update Kernel
Recompiles the XAC program, to apply live changes made to the XAC program file, for
example with an external text editor.
pfloat 1-4
Four general purpose floating point parameters that can be bound to the XAC volume
program.
pint 1-4
Four general purpose integer parameters that can be bound to the XAC volume program.

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4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.8 NVIDIA IndeX visual elements

Fig. 4.26 - Custom preset: Floating point and integer parameters binding in an
XAC program.

Fig. 4.27 - BigBrain Project dataset visualized with the custom preset. Dataset courtesy of
Prof. Dr. med. Katrin Amunts and the Structural and Functional Organization of the Brain lab
at the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Research Centre Jülich.

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 4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.10 Catalyst and in-situ visualization

4.9 Time series animation

The time series animation feature allows you to render timesteps of a dataset in real-time.
You can navigate, change colormaps and perform data operations as you would with a static
dataset. In order to have a smooth playback, please enable Cache Geometry For Animation in
the ParaView Settings dialog. The animation will be slower in the first cycle, but once all the
timesteps are loaded, the playback should be smooth, as long as there is enough system
memory available.

Fig. 4.28 - Enable Cache Geometry for Animation (Toggle advanced

properties in the top right corner must be enabled)

4.10 Catalyst and in-situ visualization

NVIDIA IndeX supports in-situ visualization, for running a simulation and visualizing it in
real-time without writing any data to disk. Catalyst 1 is the co-processing library that enables
orchestration of simulation, analysis and visualization tasks together with VTK and
ParaView. Catalyst can also be used to set up NVIDIA IndeX and ParaView to do live
visualization of your simulation. Please visit the Catalyst website to learn how to write scripts
to integrate your simulation and enable in-situ visualization.

1. https://www.paraview.org/in-situ/

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4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.10 Catalyst and in-situ visualization

As an example, a simple Wavelet source can be used to illustrate the Catalyst integration with
NVIDIA IndeX rendering. Make sure you have compiled ParaView with Catalyst support
before trying to do the live visualization.
You can start with 50 iterations of a Wavelet data source in a single process by running the
following command. The scripts CatalystWaveletDriver.py and
CatalystWaveletCoprocessing.py are located in the directory
Clients/ParaView/Testing/XML/ in the ParaView source repository.

mpirun -np 1 pvbatch -sym CatalystWaveletDriver.py 7→

CatalystWaveletCoprocessing.py 50

Next, start the ParaView client and connect to the port where Catalyst is running with
[ Catalyst ▶ Connect ] in the menu
Once ParaView connects to Catalyst, enable Input and click Extract input from the Pipeline
Browser. Once the input is extracted, you can switch the rendering to the NVIDIA IndeX
representation.

Fig. 4.29 - Enable input and extract input to visualize

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 4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.12 Known limitation

Fig. 4.30 - Wavelet example shown at different iterations with Catalyst

4.11 Mixing ParaView primitives

One of the unique features of the plugin is the ability to mix volume rendering from NVIDIA
IndeX together with other ParaView primitives such as glyphs, streamlines and surfaces.

Fig. 4.31 - Wavelet data rendered as a surface by ParaView and as a volume by NVIDIA IndeX

4.12 Known limitation

Regular volume grids
When running with MPI on multiple pvserver ranks, datasets in .vtk format won’t get
distributed to multiple ranks by ParaView, and only a single GPU will be utilized. The
NVIDIA IndeX for ParaView Plugin will print a warning if this case is detected. Please use a
different data format such as .pvti that supports distributed data. Since this issue is specific
to ParaView, please contact Kitware for additional details.

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4 NVIDIA IndeX features 4.12 Known limitation

Unstructured grids
Datasets containing degenerate faces may result in incorrect renderings or cause ParaView to
fail. The NVIDIA IndeX plugin will try to resolve all invalid faces automatically.

General
The Windows version of the NVIDIA IndeX plugin is restricted to run on a single host only,
i.e., cluster rendering is not supported on Windows platforms.
When loading an older state file with both volumetric and geometry data without the
NVIDIA IndeX representation saved in it, the first frame will show only volumetric data.
After interacting with the scene, the subsequent frames will be correct again with both
geometry and volume data visible.

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 33

 5 NVIDIA IndeX XAC programming
This section covers aspects of volume rendering using the NVIDIA IndeX Accelerated Compute
(XAC) technology. It dives into the structure of a basic CUDA-based XAC volume sample
program, how to access volumes and how to use colormaps a transfer functions.

5.1 XAC purpose and program structure

NVIDIA IndeX Accelerated Compute (XAC) defines an infrastructure to work with
interactive CUDA-based sampling programs (also called kernels or shaders) for rendering and
compute that are compiled at runtime into the NVIDIA IndeX rendering environment. These
programs are executed natively on the GPU and can therefore utilize the full performance of
the GPU hardware.
There are two fundamental types of XAC programs: volume sample programs and surface
sample programs. Both program types have a predefined structure, receive specific input
data, can set specific output and can be specialized towards different types of scene elements.

5.2 XAC volume sample programs

To understand the purpose of XAC programs, it is helpful to look at a few internal aspects of
how NVIDIA IndeX renders data.
During rendering, rays are generated for each pixel and intersected with elements in the
scene. When such a view ray hits a volume, the volume sample program is executed at each
sample position along the ray and produces a four component RGBA color vector (x: red, y:
green, z: blue, w: alpha/opacity), which is then accumulated and blended into the final color
of the pixel (compositing).
A standard XAC volume sample program consists of three parts:
Header and declaration
Defines global variables and declarations
Initialization function
Initialize parameters of the program run (for example, buffer bindings)
Execution function
Computes the output color

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 5 NVIDIA IndeX XAC programming 5.3 Sampling a volume and map to a color

5.2.1 Example program outline

A basic XAC program will look like this:

Listing 5.1

NV_IDX_XAC_VERSION_1_0 Current XAC version string (optional)

using namespace nv::index; Include the default namespace (contains library

using namespace nv::index::xac; and helper functions)

Define class containing the XAC program

class Volume_sample_program
implementation
{
NV_IDX_VOLUME_SAMPLE_PROGRAM Program type declaration (required)

public:
NV_IDX_DEVICE_INLINE_MEMBER
Initialization function
void initialize()
{
// initial setup...
}
NV_IDX_DEVICE_INLINE_MEMBER
Main rendering function (required)
int execute(
const Sample_info_self& input, Sample_output& out)
{
float4 color = make_float4(1.f); Do some color computations here...

out.set_color(color); Store the output color

return NV_IDX_PROG_OK;
}
};

5.3 Sampling a volume and map to a color

By default, the XAC program receives information about the scene and the scene element for
which the program is executed. The variable state.self contains a reference to the scene
element which called the program (in this case the target volume). Note that this variable can
have different types and contents depending on the type of the scene element.
The parameter Sample_info_self& input contains references to additional information,
such as:
sample_position (float3)
Current sample position (in the volume grid)
scene_position (float3)
Current position in the scene
ray_origin (float3) ray_direction (float3) ray_t (float)
Properties of the current view ray

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 5 NVIDIA IndeX XAC programming 5.4 Using XAC library functions

The full XAC API is documented in the NVIDIA IndeX Programmer’s Manual.1
To sample a data value from a volume and map it to a color using the transfer function (or
colormap), the following lines have to be added to the execute() function:

Listing 5.2

NV_IDX_DEVICE_INLINE_MEMBER
int execute(const Sample_info_self& input, Sample_output& output)
{
const float3& sample_position =
Get current sample position
input.sample_position_object_space;

const Sparse_volume& volume = state.self; Get references to the

volume and its
const Colormap colormap = volume.get_colormap(); colormap

const auto& sample_context = input.sample_context; Get a sample

context and
const auto sampler =
generate a volume
volume.generate_sampler<float>(sample_context); sampler

float sample_value = Sample the volume at the

sampler.fetch_sample(sample_position); current position

Apply the
float4 sample_color = colormap.lookup(sample_value);
colormap

output.set_color(sample_color); Store the output color (RGBA)

return NV_IDX_PROG_OK;
}

5.4 Using XAC library functions

Within each XAC program you have access to several helper functions. This includes:
• The CUDA math library 2
• Basic linear algebra functions (for example, point, vector and matrix operations)
• XAC library convenience functionality (nv::index::xaclib)
• NVIDIA IndeX reference types (nv::index::xac)
The XAC library holds a set of additional functions, which provide convenient access to
typical operations, such as color transformations and volume gradient computation. You can
access those functions by calling them from the nv::index::xaclib namespace.
For example, to use a simple color gamma operation, you can add the following lines to your
program:

1. https://raytracing-docs.nvidia.com/nvindex/index.html
2. https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-math-api/index.html

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 5 NVIDIA IndeX XAC programming 5.6 Using CUDA parameter buffers

Listing 5.3

float4 sample_color = Initialize the sample color using the volume

colormap.lookup(sample_value); mapping from before

float screen_gamma = 0.7f;

sample_color = Apply gamma
function to the color
xaclib::gamma_correct(sample_color, screen_gamma);

output.set_color(sample_color); Store the output color

5.5 Adding basic volume shading

The basic volume sample program can be extended to integrate advanced visualization: In
this case, we are adding a simple local lighting model (simple Phong lighting based on a
headlight) that helps to emphasize isosurface directions. To do this, we need to compute a
isosurface normal, which can be derived from the volume gradient, for which we use an XAC
library function.
To integrate volume shading into the XAC program, the following lines have to be added:

Listing 5.4

float4 sample_color =
Apply the colormap, creating an RGBA color
colormap.lookup(sample_value);

const float3 gradient =

xaclib::volume_gradient( Approximate the volume gradient based on finite
differences
volume, sample_position);

const float3 normal = -normalize(gradient); Get the isosurface normal (in

outward direction) and view
const float3 view_dir = input.ray_direction;
direction

const float4 specular_color =

Define specular (reflective highlight) color
make_float4(1.f, 1.f, 1.f, 1.f);

sample_color =
xaclib::headlight_shading(
Apply built-in headlight shading
state.scene, normal, view_dir,
sample_color, specular_color);

output.set_color(sample_color); Store the output color

5.6 Using CUDA parameter buffers

Changing fixed parameters in the XAC code requires recompiling the program. To change
parameters interactively without recompilation, XAC allows to pass and bind custom
parameter buffers to the program.

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5 NVIDIA IndeX XAC programming 5.6 Using CUDA parameter buffers

The NVIDIA IndeX plugin provides pre-defined parameter buffers that can be edited through
the ParaVier user interface.

Listing 5.5

struct Custom_params
{
float4 floats; // floats array Custom parameters set in the ParaView user
interface
int4 ints; // ints array
};

const Custom_params* m_custom_params;

NV_IDX_DEVICE_INLINE_MEMBER
void initialize()
{
Bind input
m_custom_params parameter buffer
= state.bind_parameter_buffer<Custom_params>(0); from parameter
slot 0
}

NV_IDX_DEVICE_INLINE_MEMBER
int execute(
const Sample_info_self& sample_info,
Sample_output& sample_output)
{
Retrieves input
const float input_value = m_custom_params.floats[0]; parameter

const float red = input_value * 0.6f;

const float green = 0.5f - input_value * 0.4f; Use input parameter to
const float blue = input_value * 0.2f; compute some values
const float alpha = input_value + 0.1f;

float4 modified_color =
make_float4(red, green, blue, alpha);
Color computation
modified_color =
xaclib::clamp(modified_color, 0.f, 1.f);

sample_output.set_color(modified_color); Store the output color

return NV_IDX_PROG_OK;
}

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 38

6 Frequently asked questions
Q: Do I need to install the CUDA SDK or any other libraries for using the plugin?
A: There is no need to install the CUDA SDK separately as the plugin package is bundled
with all the required libraries. However, an appropriate NVIDIA display driver for your GPU
needs to be installed.

Q: When I load the plugin from ParaView’s [ Tools ▶ Manage Plugins ] window,
pvNVIDIAIndeX does not show up as loaded.
A: Make sure you have no errors in ParaView’s console or in the terminal where you started
ParaView from. Any error messages will give you additional information about what the
issue might be.

Q: The plugin is loaded successfully without any errors but NVIDIA IndeX does not show up
in ParaView’s Representation drop-down list.
A: Make sure you have loaded a structured or unstructured volume grid dataset and it is
selected in ParaView’s pipeline browser. ParaView chooses the available representations
based on the input data format.

Q: There is an error saying “Failed loading NVIDIA IndeX library” and the viewport is
empty.
A: This error message is usually printed when the NVIDIA IndeX libraries (.so on Linux
and .dll on Windows) are not found. Make sure that libnvindex.so and libdice.so can
be found by ParaView. Either copy all the libraries to ParaView’s library directories or set the
environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH (or PATH on Windows) accordingly. Refer to
“Building ParaView and the NVIDIA IndeX plugin” (page 2) for more information.

Q: Viewport is blank when I choose NVIDIA IndeX as a representation.

A: Select an appropriate Scalar Array for the dataset instead of Solid Color.

Q: Viewport is blank when I choose NVIDIA IndeX as a representation with a Scalar Array
and not with Solid Color
A: This is most likely because of an old NVIDIA display driver. Update your display drivers
to the recommended versions. If this happens in client/server mode, make sure that IceT
compositing is disabled, as described in Client/server mode with MPI (page 7).

Q: Why does my rendering look down-sampled when I interact?

A: NVIDIA IndeX does not down-sample the data and renders at full resolution. By default,
ParaView will optimize for high latency networks and enables compression and level of
detail. You can disable this under [ Edit ▶ Settings ] and turn off LOD Resolution, Image
Reduction Factor and Image Compression.

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 39

6 Frequently asked questions

Q: Can I render multiple volumes at once in the same scene in ParaView?

A: While the NVIDIA IndeX library itself supports multi-volume rendering, the ParaView
plugin does not yet have this feature integrated so you can only render one volume at a given
time.

Q: Can I use the NVIDIA IndeX library in my own application without ParaView?
A: Yes, an NVIDIA IndeX SDK is available. Please contact NVIDIA for more details:
nvidia-index@nvidia.com

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 40

7 Resources
• NVIDIA IndeX for ParaView plugin website 1
• NVIDIA IndeX website 2
• ParaView binaries and source code download 3
• ParaView documentation 4
• ParaView support forum 5
• Contact email: paraview-plugin-support@nvidia.com

1. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/index-paraview-plugin
2. https://developer.nvidia.com/index
3. https://www.paraview.org/download/
4. https://www.paraview.org/resources/
5. https://discourse.paraview.org

© 2023 NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA IndeX ± ParaView Plugin User’s Guide 41