Building AbcImport/AbcExport on Windows (with CMake)

[Shih-Chin]

Hi folks,

I've received few emails asking about compiling AbcImport/AbcExport on Windows.
After few experiments, I found the following workflow might be the easier way to build the plugins with CMake.

Prerequisites

• Boost
  

1. open vc10 command prompt
2. cd c:\boost\boost_1_xx_00
3. bootstrap.bat
4. b2 toolset=msvc-10.0 address-model=64 link=static threading=multi --with-program_options --with-thread

• HDF5
  
• Ilmbase
  
• Zlib
  
• glut (optional)
  

Ps. Since I usually build maya plugin with /MD, thus all the static third-party libraries I used are built with /MD.

Pre-Configuration

Now, suppose we have following folder structure:

• alembic_source_root (hg clone https://code.google.com/p/alembic/)
  
• houdini
• lib
• maya
• ...
• CMakeLists.txt
• init_cache.cmake

Create init_cache.cmake

In order to make configuration easier, we could create a simple text file name "init_cache.cmake" as initial cmake cache:

 

SET(BOOST_ROOT C:/boost/boost_1_53_0 CACHE PATH "Boost Root")

SET(ENV{HDF5_ROOT} D:/coding/packages/HDF5 CACHE PATH "HDF5 Root")

SET(ILMBASE_ROOT D:/coding/packages/ilmbase CACHE PATH "Ilmbase Root")

SET(ZLIB_ROOT D:/coding/packages/zlib CACHE PATH "Zlib Root")

SET(GLUT_ROOT_PATH D:/coding/packages/glut-3.7 CACHE PATH "Glut Root")

SET(MAYA_ROOT C:/adsk/Maya2013 CACHE PATH "Maya Root"); 

 

SET(USE_PYALEMBIC OFF CACHE BOOL "Compile Python Binding")

SET(USE_ARNOLD OFF CACHE BOOL "Use Arnold")

Ps. Please replace the path of each 3rd-party library in your local machine.

Modify CMakeLists.txt (optional)

If we want to link static libraries of Ilmbase, we have to do little modification of CMakeLists.txt in line 80:

#ADD_DEFINITIONS ( -DOPENEXR_DLL -DHALF_EXPORTS )
ADD_DEFINITIONS ( -DPLATFORM_BUILD_STATIC )

Create VC Project

1. open vc10 command prompt
   
2. cd /d alembic_source_root
   
3. mkdir vc_proj
   
4. cd vc_proj
   
5. cmake -G "Visual Studio 10 Win64" -C ..\init_cache.cmake ..
   
6. If all goes well, we could simply open the ALEMBIC.sln and compile the libraries as usual.
   

Hope this short post would make some windows users' lives a little easier. :)

Ps. I've not successfully built the PyAlembic yet, I still have the import error as described in 

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alembic-discussion/OMOvhg0Nv7o/discussion

If anyone has any idea on that, please let me know. Thanks.

Cheers,

Shih-Chin

[Roeland Schoukens]

The easiest way to build the core Alembic lib is:

• Get the prerequisites and build those with the included CMake or VS project files. (be careful to always link to the same runtime lib)
  
• create an empty Visual C++ project
• add the source files under lib/Alembic (exclude the Tests/ directories). You can drag and drop a folder to add all subfiles, although then they appear as a flat list in the solution explorer.
  
• set up the include and library paths to the prerequisites.
• Set the Configuration Type to a DLL or a static lib
  
• build

Someone posted a project file a while ago → https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alembic-discussion/Mn-NFIPvefM/QkJX40xbm9sJ.

If I would have to build PyAlembic I would also just try to set up a visual studio project like this.

--
Roeland

[Moritz Moeller]

On 1/6/13 5:26 AM, Shih-Chin wrote:
> Create VC Project
>
> 1. open vc10 command prompt
> 2. cd /d alembic_source_root
> 3. mkdir vc_proj
> 4. cd vc_proj
> 5. cmake -G "Visual Studio 10 Win64" -C ..\init_cache.cmake ..
> 6. If all goes well, we could simply open the ALEMBIC.sln and compile
> the libraries as usual.

Just out of curiosity: why not generate an nmake or JOM makefiles with
CMake and do the final build step on the command line, too? Why open an IDE?

.mm