How to build 102 example of libigl tutorial in Visual C++? - c++

Question

I am currently using Visual C++ 10.0(2010) on a win7 32bit OS.
When I tried to build the basic examples of libigl github tutorials:
libigl tutorials
The following installation code works fine:
#include <igl/cotmatrix.h>
#include <Eigen/Dense>
#include <Eigen/Sparse>
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
Eigen::MatrixXd V(4,2);
V<<0,0,
1,0,
1,1,
0,1;
Eigen::MatrixXi F(2,3);
F<<0,1,2,
0,2,3;
Eigen::SparseMatrix<double> L;
igl::cotmatrix(V,F,L);
std::cout<<"Hello, mesh: "<<std::endl<<L*V<<std::endl;
return 0;
}
which indicates there is basically no problem per the tutorials.
However, I cannot get the tutorial 102 through:
#include <igl/readOFF.h>
#include <igl/viewer/Viewer.h>
Eigen::MatrixXd V;
Eigen::MatrixXi F;
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
// Load a mesh in OFF format
igl::readOFF("../shared/bunny.off", V, F);
// Plot the mesh
igl::viewer::Viewer viewer;
viewer.data.set_mesh(V, F);
viewer.launch();
}
After getting a series of building error message of missing some special headers, and then adding the corresponding directory containing the header into the including directory of VS, there is still some header missing which cannot be found in my computer.
Except for the include directory which is required per the tutorial:
x:\Program\libigl-master\include; $(IncludePath);
I already added others as follows:
x:\Program\libigl-master\external\glfw\include;
x:\Program\libigl-master\external\AntTweakBar\src;
x:\Program\libigl-master\external\AntTweakBar\include;
x:\Program\libigl-master\external\glew\include;
Error message is still there:
x:\Program\libigl-master\external\glfw\include\glfw\glfw3.h(163): fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'GL/glcorearb.h': No such file or directory
1>
So I added:
x:\Program\libigl-master\external\glfw\include\GLFW
D:\Program\libigl-master\external\glfw\include\
and got:
x:\program\libigl-master\external\glfw\include\glfw\glfw3.h(163): fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'GL/glcorearb.h': No such file or directo
which does not exist in my computer.
What should I do?

Answer 1

I had the exact same issue, and the thing is that simply adding their include paths won't make it work - as they said it would. That is because LIBIGL itself is just an auxiliary library to help manipulate 3D shapes, but their examples use much more than that (their matrix system comes from Eigen, their graphical system uses GLFW+GLEW, among many others).
But you can get most of the examples working on MSVS setting up the essential libraries. Download the following:
Eigen: This is for the basic matrix/vector arithmetics etc.
GLFW: This is used to create and handle windows for OpenGL.
GLEW: This library has the actual OpenGL function bindings to use OpenGL functions.
Note that these libraries are essential to compile the examples jut because when the examples were made, the creators had the enviroment set up with them (otherwise they would have to code by hand those OpenGL and Windows/Linux windows handling etc. In case you're interested, this is what "pure OpenGL" code looks like). So what you have to do is: set the enviroment for these libraries. This is how to do it:
After creating an empty project in MSVS, go to Solution explorer > right click the project > Properties. You've opened the Property Pages, where all the project configurations are done. We need to specify 3 things: where the compiler can find the headers, the libraries we're using and where it can find these libraries.
First we set up the headers: on the left menu expand C/C++ > General, and on the right, select Aditional Include Directories, click on the down arrow and click edit. A window will open with blank fields, click them twice to add items. Add the eigen header path, the libigl folder path, the glew folder path and the glfw folder path in each line (this is a very confusing interface).
Ok, now we need to specify which libraries we're going to use. Again, in the left menu, go to Linker > Input > Aditional Dependencies (almost the same kind of interface). Add glew32s.lib, glfw3.lib and opengl32.lib (one for each line). Finally, specify where those libraries are. Go to Linker > General > Aditional Library Directories, and specify the path where the downloaded glew32s.lib and glfw3.lib are. (something like "C:\Users...\glfw-3.2.1.bin.WIN32\lib-vc2010") - make sure you're specifying the path to the right compiler - for instance, if you're using MSVS 32 bits 2010 you should select vc2010 and not mingw-64.
If you create a source file in the project using the tutorial 2012 source code it should compile, but you might have to specify the paths to the dll's such as OpenGL32.dll if it's not already in your system path.
Finally, one last thing that might go wrong has to do with something called Runtime Library - it's in C/C++ > Code Generation > Runtime Library. Basically it describes a method to compile code, and each library we're using was compiled using a different one, so we might get errors... Honestly I don't know a lot about that, I just know that mine wasn't working with the default one, so I changed to /MD and it worked. Go figure.
PS: You might as well need to update your graphics card for OpenGL to work.

Answer 2

The only thing that worked for me was creating a visual studio project with cmake-gui. Here is what I did:
Download and install cmake https://cmake.org/download/.
Open cmake-gui.
In 'where is the source code', put the path to the tutorials: .../libigl/tutorial.
In 'where to build the binaries', put whatever your like (I used .../libigl/tutorial/build).
You will also see a bunch of options in red. Select/deselect as desired. I had to deselect Matlab as it couldn't find it for some reason.
Configure and generate (when asked, choose whichever version of Visual Studio you are using).
You should now have a Visual Studio solution in the build folder. Open and build.

Answer 3

I had the same problem in Visual Studio 2013. And the head file I was trying to use was igl/sort.h which cannot be opened.
In the tutorial , they said
Simply add libigl/include to your include path and include relevant headers.
And the include path they were referring here is actually the include directories which can be found under project>properties>Configuration Properties>VC++ Directories, not the Additional Include Directories.