Installing VTK for Python

Question

I'm trying to install VTK module for python, I am however unsuccesful in doing so. I have downloaded a VTK tar-file, but I'm unable to extract it. I'm capable of extracting other tar-files, so there must be something specific with this file I suppose.

This is my error:

gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--format violated tar: Child returned status 1 tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

I hope somebody can help me with this.

Answer 1

The answer depends on the operating system you are using. This will be a lot easier if you can find a package or installer for your specific operating system and/or distribution.

Linux

If you are using Linux then look for the corresponding package in the distribution's package manager. For example, on Ubuntu Linux you should be able to install it using the following command:

sudo apt-get install python-vtk

Microsoft Windows

If you are using Microsoft Windows, the easiest way would be to install Python(x,y). It comes with VTK support.

Additionally, Anaconda also includes VTK package as well as support for virtual environments. It might be a good option for some folks.

Mac OS X

If you are using Mac OS X, try installing everything via MacPorts.

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As @Nil mentioned in comments below, a standalone python interface to VTK is now provided by VTK developers. You may download it for Windows, Darwin, and Linux from here.

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As mentioned by @Nil, VTK used to offer vtkpython binaries on their download page. However, they've dropped this since VTK-8.x.x as mentioned here:

Sorry, about that. We decided to drop the vtkpython binaries for 8. I want to focus our energies on supporting python wheel installs instead. There’s no timeline yet for a complete solution but we’ve made some good progress toward that recently here: https://github.com/jcfr/VTKPythonPackage.

Thus, the recommended way of installing vtkpython now is (see this page):

$ python -m pip install --upgrade pip
$ python -m pip install vtk