ANARI-SDK

This repository contains the source for the ANARI API SDK. This includes:

• Front-end library
• Device implementation utilties for implementations
• Example device implementation (not intended for production use)
• Example applications
• Interactive sample viewer
• Unit tests
• Render tests

The 1.0 provisional ANARI specification can be found on the Khronos website here.

Please note that the example device, sample applications, and tests do not yet fully cover the entire specification and are still a work-in-progress. These are expected to be completed in full on or before the official 1.0 ANARI specification release.

The SDK is tested on Linux, but is also intended to be usable on other operating systems such as macOS and Windows.

If you find any problems with the SDK, please do not hesitate to open an issue on this project!

Building the SDK

The repository uses CMake 3.11+ to build the library, example implementation, sample apps, and tests. For example, to build (must be in a separate directory from the source directory), you can do:

% cd /path/to/anari
% mkdir build
% cd build
% cmake ..

Using a tool like ccmake or cmake-gui will let you see which options are available to enable. The following CMake options are offered:

• BUILD_SHARED_LIBS : build everything as shared libraries or static libraries
• BUILD_TESTING : build unit and regression test binaries
• BUILD_EXAMPLES : build example device and example applications
• BUILD_VIEWER : build viewer too (needs glfw3) if building examples

Once built, the library can be installed via the install target created by CMake. This can be invoked from your build directory with (on any platform):

% cmake --build . -t install

Using the SDK after install with CMake

The ANARI SDK exports CMake targets for the main front-end library and utilities helper library. The targets which are exported are as follows:

• anari::anari : main library target to link with libanari
• anari::anari_utilities : (DEPRECATED) library target which adds implementation helpers
• anari::anari_library_debug : library target for the debug device
• anari::helium : (static) library target containing base device implementation abstractions

These targets can be found with CMake via find_package(anari). The examples are written such that they can be built stand alone from the SDK source tree. The simplest usage can be found here.

Running the examples

The basic tutorial app (built by default) uses the example device as an example, which can be run with:

% ./anariTutorial

The viewer application (enabled with BUILD_VIEWER=ON) by default uses the environment library, which reads ANARI_LIBRARY as an environment variable to get the library to load. For example it can be run with:

% export ANARI_LIBRARY=helide
% ./anariViewer /path/to/some/file.obj

Alternatively, either --library or -l can be used to override the library to be loaded on the command line directly.

The regression test binary used to render the test scenes without a window (results saved out as PNG images) uses the same mechanisms as the viewer to select/override which library is loaded at runtime.

Available Implementations

SDK provided ExampleDevice implementation

An example device implementation helide is provided as a starting point for users exploring the SDK and for implementors to see how the API might be implemented. It implements a very simple, geometry-only ray tracing implementation using Embree for intersection. Users should look to use vendor provided, hardware-optimized ANARI implementations which are shipped independently from the SDK. (see below)

List of publically available implementaions

Below is a list of available ANARI implemenations compatible with this SDK:

• AMD RadeonProRender
• Intel OSPRay
• NVIDIA USD
• NVIDIA VisRTX

If you implement a backend to the ANARI SDK, please open a PR to add it to this list!