Data: Visualization: Maverick Visualization Software

Home > User Info > Data > Visualization > Maverick Visualization Software

In addition to the "Common TeraGrid Software and Services" (CTSS) available on all TeraGrid resources, the Maverick Sun Terascale Visualization System at TACC also provides the Visualization TeraGrid Software and Services (VTSS) as well as several other visualization software packages, available as modules that can be simply loaded and run at the command line through a VNC session.

In order to run any of the software packages*, you will need to:

1. Start a VNC session on Maverick (see Starting a VNC Session on Maverick)
2. Set up your environment to run the software by loading its module with the command

   module load <module_name>

3. Start the the application with the command

   vglrun <vglrun_name>

At any time you can view all available modules with the command

module available

*NOTE: This excludes Parallel ParaView which uses MPI. These are run using a special qsub script described below.

Visualization Software Available on Maverick

Below is a table of the visualization software packages currently available on the Maverick Sun Terascale System and their corresponding module load and vglrun commands. Versions and commands in BOLD type are the default versions for that software package.

Visualization Software on Maverick
Package	Version	Module Name	Application Name (for vgrlun)	Web site	Description
Amira	3.1	amira	amira	Amira homepage	Amira is a visualization tool that allows visualization and processing of 3D data sets in medicine, biology, physics and engineering. It includes automatic and interactive segmentation tools, reconstruction algorithms to create polygonal models from segmented objects, and many other tools relevant to CT and volumetric data sets.
AVS	5.6	avs	avs	AVS 5 Documentation	AVS 5.6 is a visualization tool from Advanced Visual Systems, Inc.. It is built on a visual programming paradigm that makes it easy to visualize scientific data without requiring extensive programming knowledge or expertise in advanced visualization techniques. A large collection of vendor-supplied and public domain modules is available from the International AVS Center at the North Carolina Supercomputing Center. AVS has standard subsystems for handling image, geometry, volume, and chemistry data and a graph manipulation package for plotting.
AVS/Express	6.0	avs_express	avs_express	AVS/Express Documentation	AVS/Express is a general purpose data-flow visualization tool. AVS/Express also provides an object oriented environment for developing interactive visualization applications for use with data from science and engineering related sources. Beginning users should refer to the Getting Started and Using AVS/Express Guides
Chromium	1.7 1.8	chromium/1.7 chromium	N/A	Chromium homepage	Chromium is a system for interactive rendering on clusters of graphics workstations. Various parallel rendering techniques such as sort-first and sort-last may be implemented with Chromium. Furthermore, Chromium allows filtering and manipulation of OpenGL command streams for non-invasive rendering algorithms
Ensight Gold	8.0.7	ensight	ensight8	Ensight homepage	EnSight Gold is a software package from CEI for post-processing and scientific visualization, and works with a variety of data formats. EnSight also supports parallel processing and rendering which enables users to visualize extremely large datasets. A note about additional environment setup. {LINK}
Ferret	6.0	ferret	ferret	Ferret homepage	Ferret is an interactive computer visualization and analysis environment designed to meet the needs of oceanographers and meteorologists analyzing large and complex gridded data sets. Ferret offers a Mathematica-like approach to analysis; new variables may be defined interactively as mathematical expressions involving data set variables. Calculations may be applied over arbitrarily shaped regions. Fully documented graphics are produced with a single command.
Gimp	1.2.1	no module load needed	gimp	Gimp homepage	GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It is akin to Adobe Photoshop, can be used for photo retouching image composition and image authoring.
GLUT	3.7 3.7_64 bit	glut glut-64	N/A	GLUT homepage	GLUT is the OpenGL Utility Toolkit, a window system independent toolkit for writing OpenGL programs. It implements a simple windowing application programming interface (API) for OpenGL. Glut is simple, easy, and small, but is not full featured enough to be used to design complex user interfaces.
Mesa	6.2.1	mesa	N/A	Mesa homepage	Mesa is a 3-D graphics library with an API which is very similar to that of OpenGL
OpenDX	4.3.2	dx	dx	OpenDX homepage	OpenDX is a full-featured software package for the visualization of scientific, engineering and analytical data. It's an open source software project based on IBM's Visualization Data Explorer.
ParaView	1.6.3 1.8.5 2.0.2 2.2.1 2.2.1 mpi 2.4.2 64 bit, mpi 2.4.4 64 bit 2.4.4 mpi	paraview/1.6 paraview/1.8 paraview/2.0 paraview/2.2 none none paraview none	paraview/1.6 paraview/1.8 paraview/2.0 paraview/2.2 see below see below paraview see below	ParaView homepage	ParaView is an extensible, open source, multi-platform application for visualizing large data sets. It uses the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) as the data processing and rendering engine, and can run on distributed or shared memory parallel systems as well as single processor systems.
Vis5D	5.2	vis5d	vis5d	Vis5D homepage	Vis5D is a system for interactive visualization of large 5-D gridded data sets such as those produced by numerical weather models.
VMD	1.8.3	vmd	vmd	VMD homepage	VMD is a molecular visualization program for displaying, animating, and analyzing large biomolecular systems using 3-D graphics and built-in scripting
VTK	4.4.2 5.0.2	vtk/4.4 vtk	vtk/4.4 vtk	VTK homepage	The Visualization ToolKit (VTK) is an open source, freely available software system for 3D computer graphics, image processing, and visualization. It is a object-orientated library supports a wide variety of visualization and imagiing algorithms and advanced modeling techniques.

Parallel ParaView

Parallel ParaView is a parallel version of ParaView. It utilizes MPI to take advantage of multiple processors and multiple graphics resources on maverick. The user can run Parallel ParaView from their local machine using either a VNC session or a paraview client.

Running Parallel ParaView from a VNC session

1. Start and connect to a VNC session (see section Starting a VNC Session)
2. From a terminal in the VNC session, run the command:
   

   ssh maverick /usr/local/qsub/paraview_mpi $DISPLAY <num_graphics_devices>

   
   ParaView will appear on your VNC desktop. This may take up to about 30 seconds.

When rendering with paraview, several smaller windows will show up in addition to the rendering window. These smaller windows show the portion of the frame buffer that is being rendered on each of the several graphics cards being utilized by ParaView (specified by the <num_graphics_devices> argument). You may minimize these windows. ParaView will use at least three but up to six graphics cards (depending on system load).

Running Parallel ParaView in client-server mode

1. Login to maverick.tacc.utexas.edu
2. Run the command:

   /usr/local/qsub/pvserver_mpi <PVSERVER_PORT> <num_graphics_devices>

   
   <PVSERVER_PORT> will be the port your pvclient will connect to. You may choose any port number above 1024.
3. Wait a minute or so for the pvservers to get started. Now you can connect to mav1.tacc.utexas.edu on port <PVSERVER_PORT> with your pvclient. On your local machine, run the command:

   pvclient -sh=mav1.tacc.utexas.edu -sp=<PVSERVER_PORT>

   
   The client should now be started and working.