DinoYURT Tutorial

DinoYURT is a MinVR program written to visualize the dynamics of dinosaur footprints; however, DinoYURT can also be used to visualize other point-based data such as pointclouds. 

Written by Ross Briden

• Operating System: Windows 10

• Hardware (optional): HTC Vive

Estimated Time: 15 minutes

1. Download and Install Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition with C++ Development Tools.   You may have to search for a different download page if the link above has only the 2019 version.  If you have already installed Visual Studio, ensure that you have the C++ Development Tools plugin by going to the Visual Studio Marketplace within Visual Studio.

2. Download CMake (version 3.10.2) for Windows. Once downloaded, install CMake using the installation wizard. Also, make sure to select Add CMake to the system PATH for all users during the installation process.  Note this is not the latest version, which has issues with MinVR

3. Next, download MinVR. To do this, open Powershell and type git clone https://github.com/MinVR/MinVR

4. Once cloned, navigate to your MinVR directory by typing 

cd MinVR

and enter the following git command:

git checkout 59d0a45

This will revert your MinVR installation to the latest stable version.

5. Next,  create a folder called build under your MinVR root directory. 

5. Finally, open MinVR\cmake\AutoBuildFreeGLUT.cmake and replace:

SVN_REPOSITORY https://svn.code.sf.net/p/freeglut/code/trunk/freeglut/freeglut

SVN_TRUST_CERT 1

with 

GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/dcnieho/FreeGLUT.git

GIT_TAG FG_3_0_0

Estimated Time: 20 minutes

MinVR CMake Setupt

1. Now, we will build MinVR using CMake. Open CMake-GUI and add your MinVR root folder to CMake by clicking Browse Source. Then,  add the build folder you created by clicking Browse Build. 

2. Next, click Configure and choose Visual Studio 2017 Win64 as your generator. Make sure your select the 64-bit version! Then, click Finish.

3.You should now be greeted with several build options. Ensure that the following features are selected and hit Configure:

4. This will produce an error but ignore it and click Configure again. CMake-GUI will automatically install the necessary dependencies to build MinVR; note that this might take some time!

5. Next, another error will appear: 

     file INSTALL cannot find "C:/Users/X/Y/Z/MinVR/build/external/FreeGLUT/lib/Debug/freeglut_staticd.pdb".

    To resolve this error, copy MinVR\build\external\FreeGLUT\freeglut_static.dir\Debug\freeglut_static.pdb to MinVR\build\external\FreeGLUT\lib\Debug and rename it as freeglut_staticd.pdb.

6. Once the configuration process completes, click Generate to finalize your build and then click Open Project, which will open your MinVR build in Visual Studio.

7. Now, navigate to the Solution Explorer window, right click ALL_BUILD, and select Build. After the building process finishes, 11 out of the 11 builds should have passed. 

8. Then, right click on INSTALL and select Build. Now, MinVR should be fully built!

9. To test your MinVR build, copy glew32.dll and glew32d.dll from \MinVR\build\install\bin to \MinVR\build\bin. Then, go to Solution Explorer, right click on itest-opengl-shaderpipeline-with-api, hover over Debug, and select Start new instance. You should see the following:

11. Now, to test your installation with OpenVR, setup your VR headset with Steam VR. 

12. Then, copy \MinVR\build\install\bin\openvr_api64.dll to \MinVR\build\bin. 

13. Next, right click on itest-opengl-shaderpipeline-with-api and select Properties. Then, navigate to Debugging and under Command Arguments type:

-c HTC_Vive.minvr

14. Then, click on Ok and run itest-opengl-shaderpipeline-with-api in debug mode, as you did in step 9. 

15. Now, you should see a floating cube in VR!!

Estimated Time: 20 minutes

DinoYURT Setup

Now that MinVR is installed and built, we will install and build DinoYURT. 

1. Download the DinoYURT source code from here. Unzip the file, create a folder called build within the root directory, and delete CMakeCache, which can be found in the root directory of DinoYURT.

2. Open CMake-GUI and add the DinoYURT root directory and the build folder you created to the cmake config. 

3. Then, click Configure and choose Visual Studio 2017 Win64 as your generator.

4. Next, click Finish and Configure. CMake will automatically install the dependencies for DinoYURT. 

5. Once the configuration process is complete, click Generate and Open Project.

6. Now, navigate to the Solution Explorer window, right click ALL_BUILD, and select Build. After the building process finishes, 3 out of the 3 builds should have passed. 

7. Now, copy glew32.dll and glew32d.dll from \MinVR\build\bin to \YOUR_DINO_DIR\build\Debug. 

8. Then, move the shaders folder in your DinoYURT root directory to \YOUR_DINO_DIR\build\Debug

9.  Next, copy \MinVR\build\install\bin\openvr_api64.dll to \YOUR_DINO_DIR\build\Debug. Then, copy \MinVR\build\install\bin\freeglut.dll and \MinVR\build\install\bin\freeglutd.dll to \YOUR_DINO_DIR\build\Debug. 

10. Finally, download this file and replace \MinVR\config\HTC_Vive.minvr with it. 

11. Now, download this folder and extract it into a folder called footmodels in \YOUR_DINO_DIR\build\Debug.

12. Then, download this folder and extract it into a folder called 16k_3slices \YOUR_DINO_DIR\build\Debug.

13. Next, download this file and this file into \YOUR_DINO_DIR\build\Debug.

14. Finally, download this folder and extract it into \YOUR_DINO_DIR\build\Debug.

15. Now, you're ready to run DinoYURT! Open \YOUR_DINO_DIR\build\Debug using the windows command line, or Powershell, and type:

 dino.exe -c HTC_Vive.minvr 16k_3slices.config