A Qt/VTK mesh viewer for inspecting scalar and vector fields, comparing meshes, playing time series and painting cell labels.
Opens VTK, STL, XDMF, mesh JSON, EnSite DIF, CARTO, FreeSurfer, LS-DYNA and NIfTI files. See supported inputs for format limits.
Download a package from Releases. Packages include Qt and VTK.
Download the .AppImage, make it executable and pass a mesh file:
chmod +x vv-*.AppImage
./vv-*.AppImage mesh.vtkThe -bin.tar.gz download contains only the binary and requires installed runtime libraries.
Extract the archive into ~/.local:
mkdir -p ~/.local
tar -xzf vv-*-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz -C ~/.local
~/.local/bin/vv mesh.vtkAdd ~/.local/bin to your PATH to run vv from any directory. Packages are not notarized; if macOS blocks a downloaded copy, remove its quarantine attribute:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine ~/.local/lib/vvIntel Macs can build from source.
Download the portable .exe and pass it a mesh file from a terminal. It extracts its runtime into %LOCALAPPDATA%\vv\ on first launch; no separate Qt or VTK installation is needed.
vv mesh.vtk # Inspect one mesh
vv before.vtk after.vtk # Compare files with a shared camera
vv -e before.vtk after.vtp # Compare fields in aligned columns
vv -o atrium.vtk cath.vtk # Overlay files in one view
vv ct.nii.gz seg.nii.gz # Slice views of a volume and its labels
vv --help # Command-line options Press Space to cycle fields, or to play/pause a time series. Shift+Space selects the next field during playback. The tool rail provides colors, display styles, probing, annotation and snapshots.
- Usage: inputs, fields, comparisons, controls and shortcuts.
- Building: dependencies, platform setup, source installation and packaging.
- Contributing: change boundaries, tests, checks and benchmarks for human and AI contributors.
- Changelog: release history.