pyoptix-contrib

Community-maintained Python bindings for NVIDIA OptiX, forked from NVIDIA/otk-pyoptix.

This fork adds support for OptiX 9.1 features including cluster acceleration structures and cooperative vectors.

Requirements

• OptiX SDK 7.6 or newer (9.1+ for cluster accel / coop vec features)
• CUDA Toolkit 12.6 or newer
• CMake
• A C++17 compiler

Installation

export OptiX_INSTALL_DIR=/path/to/OptiX-SDK
pip install pyoptix-contrib

On Windows (PowerShell):

$env:OptiX_INSTALL_DIR = 'C:\ProgramData\NVIDIA Corporation\OptiX SDK 9.1.0'
pip install pyoptix-contrib

The package builds from source via CMake, so the OptiX SDK must be available at install time.

For additional CMake arguments, use the PYOPTIX_CMAKE_ARGS environment variable.

Usage

import optix

# Create a device context
ctx = optix.deviceContextCreate(cuda_context, optix.DeviceContextOptions())

# Query device properties
rtcore_version = optix.deviceContextGetProperty(
    ctx, optix.DeviceProperty.DEVICE_PROPERTY_RTCORE_VERSION
)

See the examples directory for complete samples including triangle rendering, curves, denoising, and motion blur.

What's New in This Fork

• OptiX 9.1 support: Conditional compilation via IF_OPTIX91 macro
• Cluster acceleration structures: Enums, structs, and host functions (clusterAccelComputeMemoryUsage, clusterAccelBuild)
• Cooperative vectors: Element types, matrix layouts, and description structs
• New primitive types: ROCAPS curve variants and associated flags
• allowClusteredGeometry pipeline compile option
• New device properties: COOP_VEC, CLUSTER_ACCEL, max cluster vertices/triangles/SBT index/clusters-per-GAS

Windows: CUDA DLL Loading (Python 3.8+)

Python 3.8+ on Windows no longer uses PATH to find DLLs. PyOptiX will auto-detect CUDA from the CUDA_PATH environment variable. If auto-detection fails, set CUDA_BIN_DIR:

$env:CUDA_BIN_DIR = 'C:\Program Files\NVIDIA GPU Computing Toolkit\CUDA\v12.9\bin'

License

BSD 3-Clause. See LICENSE.txt.

Acknowledgments

Original work by Keith Morley and NVIDIA Corporation (NVIDIA/otk-pyoptix).