Documentation

See the online documentation for an introduction to the library and an API reference.

See the FAQ for answers to some common questions about OpenVDB.

See the coding standards for guidelines on our programming style and practice.

See the online documentation for an introduction to the interface between OpenVDB and Mathematica.

SIGGRAPH 2023 course

Download the presentation slides (PDF) from the SIGGRAPH 2023 OpenVDB course:

Introduction to OpenVDB
Multi-threading in OpenVDB
Building NanoVDB grid on the GPU
Developing a simple fluid solver in OpenVDB
SIMD and particle surfacing in OpenVDB
Putting the sign in signed distance functions
Mathematica bindings for OpenVDB
Production examples from DreamWorks Animation

SIGGRAPH 2015 course

Download the presentation slides (PDF) from the SIGGRAPH 2015 OpenVDB course:

Introduction and fundamentals of the data structure
Adoption in Houdini
Production examples from DreamWorks Animation
Advanced applications to particle storage at Double Negative

SIGGRAPH 2013 course

Download the presentation slides (PDF) from the SIGGRAPH 2013 OpenVDB course:

Introduction and fundamentals of the data structure
Overview of toolset
Production examples from DreamWorks Animation
Adoption in fluid tools at Digital Domain
Adoption in Houdini

Related publications

Data structure

K. Museth, “VDB: High-Resolution Sparse Volumes with Dynamic Topology”, ACM Transactions on Graphics 32(3), 2013. Presented at SIGGRAPH 2013.

K. Museth, “DB+Grid: A Novel Dynamic Blocked Grid for Sparse High-Resolution Volumes and Level Sets”, ACM SIGGRAPH 2011 Talks.

K. Museth, “An efficient level set toolkit for visual effects”, ACM SIGGRAPH 2009 Talks.

Applications

K. Museth, “Hierarchical Digital Differential Analyzer for Efficient Ray-Marching in OpenVDB”, ACM SIGGRAPH 2014 Talks.

B. V. Opstal, L. Janin, K. Museth, and M. Alden, “Large Scale Simulation and Surfacing of Water and Ice Effects in Dragons 2”, ACM SIGGRAPH 2014 Talks.

K. Museth, “A Flexible Image Processing Approach to the Surfacing of Particle-Based Fluid animation”, Mathematical Progress in Expressive Image Synthesis I, Springer, ISBN 978-4-431-55006-8, Volume 4, pp 81-84, 2014.

A. Ghoniem and K. Museth, “Hair growth by means of sparse volumetric modeling and advection”, ACM SIGGRAPH 2013 Talks.

D. Lipton, K. Museth, and B. Sutherland, “Jack’s Frost: Controllable Magic Frost Simulation for ‘Rise of the Guardians’”, ACM SIGGRAPH 2013 Talks.

J. Budsberg, M. Losure, K. Museth, and M. Baer, “Liquids in ‘The Croods’”, ACM DigiPro 2013 Short Paper. DigiPro Presentation

B. Miller, K. Museth, D. Penney and N. Bin Zafar, “Cloud Modeling and Rendering for ‘Puss In Boots’”, ACM SIGGRAPH 2012 Talks.

M. Aldén, G. Melich and K. Museth, “ Efficient and Seamless Volumetric Fracturing”, ACM SIGGRAPH 2012 Talks.

M. Matthews, “Amorphous: An OpenGL Sparse Volume Renderer”, ACM SIGGRAPH 2012 Talks.

Press Releases

“OpenVDB Version 9.0.0 Available Now; Introduces GPU Support”, ASWF, November 8, 2021.

“OpenVDB Version 7.1 Now Available”, ASWF, August 20, 2020.

“Accelerating OpenVDB on GPUs with NanoVDB”, NVIDIA August 20, 2020.

“ASWF - OpenVDB Becomes First Project”, ASWF, October 23, 2018.

“DNEG releases OpenVDB AX”, DNEG, September 12, 2018.

“DreamWorks Animation’s OpenVDB 1 ushers in a new era of volumetric storage and processing”, DreamWorks Animation, April 12, 2013.

“DreamWorks Animation Releases Proprietary Volumetric Format OpenVDB to Open Source Community”, DreamWorks Animation, August 3, 2012.