ParaUnity

This project illustrates the combination of ParaView and Virtual Reality by using the Unity gaming engine.

It is possible to either export your rendered data from ParaView into a running (and prepared) Unity Project or visualize it in a separate Unity Player window.

Development Setup (Windows)

The information listed here is specific to Windows machines. However, the source code is cross platform compatible and the development setup on other systems should be quite similar (and even less problematic).

Required Components

Software	Recommended Version
Unity SDK	>= 5.3.2f1
CMake	>= 3
Visual Studio	2013
Qt	4.8
ParaView	5

Warning: Make sure you use the same Visual Studio version in all your build targets / products. Mixing up different versions of the Visual Studio runtime is the main source for runtime failures.

Compilation

1. Compile Qt (optional): Extract the Qt source code to your preferred location and run the following commands inside a Visual Studio command prompt:

   ./configure.exe -prefix "<QT_DIR>" -debug-and-release -nomake examples -nomake tests -nomake demos -opensource -confirm-license  -platform win32-msvc2013
   nmake
   nmake install
   

   The last command will copy all binaries into <QT_DIR>.

   You may need to add <QT_DIR>\bin into the PATH environment variable.

   This step is not required unless you want to build the ParaView plugin with Qt 4.8 and Visual Studio 2013.

2. Compile ParaView: Extract the ParaView source code to your preferred location and run the following commands inside a terminal (e.g. cmd.exe):

   mkdir build
   cd build
   cmake -G "Visual Studio 12 2013" -DQT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE="<QT_DIR>\bin\qmake.exe"  ..
   nmake
   

3. Compile the ParaView plugin: Navigate to the subfolder ParaView/Unity3DPlugin and run the following commands inside a terminal (e.g. cmd.exe):

   mkdir build
   cd build
   cmake -G "Visual Studio 12 2013" -DParaView_DIR="<PARAVIEW_DIR>\build" ..
   nmake
   

   <PARAVIEW_DIR> is the directory where your extracted and compiled ParaView source reside.

4. Compile the Unity Player component: Navigate to the subfolder Unity/ParaViewEmbeddedPlayer and open the project with the Unity Editor.

   In the Editor UI, click File -> Build Settings... -> Build to build the player executable.

   Make sure you use unity_player as name for the executable / bundle and copy it to same location where the ParaView plugin resides (i.g. the same folder where the plugin .dll file is located).