A 3D viewer for ANUGA shallow-water simulation output files (.sww). SWW files contain bedslope geometry and per-timestep water stage and momentum data. The viewer renders the animated water surface over the terrain and provides interactive controls for exploring the simulation.

Pre-built packages for Linux, macOS, and Windows are available on the Releases page.

Linux — AppImage

Download anuga-viewer-linux-x86_64.AppImage, make it executable, and run it:

chmod +x anuga-viewer-linux-x86_64.AppImage

# Run directly
./anuga-viewer-linux-x86_64.AppImage path/to/simulation.sww

# Or install to your PATH (no root required)
cp anuga-viewer-linux-x86_64.AppImage ~/.local/bin/anuga_viewer
anuga_viewer path/to/simulation.sww

macOS

Download anuga-viewer-macos.dmg, open it, and drag ANUGA Viewer to Applications. On first launch macOS may show a security warning — right-click the app and choose Open to bypass it.

Windows

Download and run anuga-viewer-windows-setup.exe. The installer adds Start Menu and Desktop shortcuts and registers .sww file associations.

Build from source (Ubuntu / Debian)

sudo apt-get install git build-essential libcurl4-openssl-dev libcppunit-dev \
                     libopenscenegraph-dev libnetcdf-dev
git clone https://github.com/anuga-community/anuga-viewer.git
cd anuga-viewer
make
sudo make install

Add to ~/.bashrc:

export SWOLLEN_BINDIR=/path/to/anuga-viewer/bin
export PATH=$PATH:$SWOLLEN_BINDIR

Press v to cycle through water colour modes. Use [ / ] to adjust the right endpoint of the colour scale without changing mode. In stage modes { / } move the left endpoint and , / . pan the whole range.

The four max modes display a static snapshot of the worst-case flood extent and do not animate with the timestep.

Press z to flatten or Z to exaggerate the vertical scale. Each keypress changes the scale by a factor of 1.5. The current multiplier is shown in the HUD. Lighting normals are recomputed to match the displayed geometry, so shading remains correct at any exaggeration level.

The initial vertical scale can also be set on the command line:

anuga_viewer -scale 5 simulation.sww

Apply an image to the bedslope with -texture:

anuga_viewer -texture images/bedslope.jpg simulation.sww

If the SWW file contains UTM zone metadata, OpenStreetMap or ESRI satellite tiles are fetched automatically and draped over the terrain. Use -maptiles satellite to select satellite imagery or -maptiles none to disable tile fetching. If the zone is absent or incorrect, supply it with --epsg:

anuga_viewer --epsg 32755 simulation.sww   # UTM zone 55 South

Press t to cycle between landscape (textured) and colour (data) view modes.

anuga_viewer [options] <file.sww>

1. Press 1 to start recording the camera path, 1 again to stop. Press 3 to save the macro as movie.swm.

2. Export the macro as JPEG frames:

   anuga_viewer -movie myframes movie.swm
   

3. Stitch frames into a video with ffmpeg:

   ffmpeg -framerate 25 -i myframes/frame_%d_%d.jpg output.mp4
   

The viewer opens on the wrong monitor.

Pass -- screen 0 (or 1) on the command line:

anuga_viewer -- screen 0 simulation.sww

TIF textures fail to load.

Re-save the file in GIMP or another image editor. Very large textures (> 4096 × 4096) may also exceed GPU limits — try resizing first.

The viewer crashes with a GL / segfault error on WSL2.

Make sure you are using the system OpenSceneGraph (libopenscenegraph-dev) and not one installed inside a conda environment. Conda's libGLX.so conflicts with the WSL2 Intel GPU driver.