dGB Earth Sciences

OpendTect

OpendTect is a free, open-source seismic interpretation system for visualizing, analyzing and interpreting 2D, 3D and 4D seismic data. It is also widely used for Geo-Radar interpretation. OpendTect is released under the GNU Public License (GPLv3 or higher).

OpendTect is also a software development environment for fast-track development of new plugins (in C++). Third-party developers can choose to develop under the GPL license. If so, derived products must be released as open-source plugins (copy-left principle). Alternatively, developers can opt to develop under the OpendTect Pro license agreement, which permits development of closed source plugins. Code developed in Matlab and Python can be integrated into OpendTect. For more information, please visit the software development page.

"dGB's business model promotes sharing ideas and advancing technology together."
--Jean-Francois Dutzer, Geophysics R&D Manager, GdF-Suez

"OpendTect was one of the keys of success of our IBA teams who could secure second place in the regional competition for this year 2020 and the first place for the past three years."
--Mohammed Farfour, PhD Earth Science Department, Sultan Qaboos University

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Overview
Supported functionality
Supported platforms
Academic licenses

Free

Interpretation

OpendTect supports all tools you expect to find in a seismic interpretation system, including but not limited to:

  • 2D, 3D and Pre-stack seismic viewers, cross-plots, log viewers
  • Horizon trackers (auto-tracking, manual, gridding, …)
  • Fault interpretation (sticks and planes)
  • Well-tie module
  • Time-Depth Conversion
  • 3D bodies
  • Mapping (via GMT)

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Supported functionality

Attributes

OpendTect started life as a seismic pattern recognition and attribute processing system. It supports the industry’s most advanced seismic attribute engine including:

  • Extensive set of industry-standard attributes and filters and many unique OpendTect ones
  • Pre-stack attributes
  • Ability to create attributes-from-attributes using math and logic
  • Interactive evaluation of attributes and movie-style inspection of attribute parameters on any seismic display element
  • Multi-machine, multi-platform, distributed batch processing
  • Note: more atributes are available in various commercial plugins such as Dip-Steering, Faults & Fractures, FracTex, Colored Inversion, Spectral Bluing, ...

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    Attributes Table

    Pre Stack

    Data IO

    OpendTect supports import and export of data in industry-standard formats such as SEG-Y (2D, 3D and Pre-stack Seismic), LAS (logs), ASCII (seismic, navigation data, faults, fault sticks, horizons, well data, pointsets / polygons, survey settings, velocity functions, mute functions, cross-plot data, probability density functions, and color tables), DTZ (GPR), Geotiff and Geopackage (GIS applications via free WMplugins).

    Note 1: most objects listed above can be imported as well as exported, some can only be imported, others only exported.

    Note 2: Direct access to Petrel and Petrel data IO is supported in OpendTect Pro. SeisWorks/OpenWorks data IO is supported in the commercial Workstation Access plugin.

    Free Gems

    OpendTect supports lots of functionalities for free that are highly priced in other software systems. To name a few:

    Spectral Decomposition. Data can be decomposed and RGB(A) blended on horizons, sections and volumes. OpendTect supports decomposition by: Short window FFT, Continuous Wavelets, Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), Ensemble EMD, Complete Ensemble EMD, Local Attribute and Recursive Filter.

    Rock physics library. An extensive rock physics library supports many industry standard rock-physics equations to compute well logs from existing logs.

    Pre-stack viewers. Pre-stack gathers can be pre-processed (mutes, super-gathers, scaling, …) and displayed in the 3D scene along seismic sections. Alternatively, gathers can be displayed in flat viewers.

    Distributed computing. OpendTect can process data in batch mode on clusters and on multiple machines on multiple platforms.

    Special Attributes. Fingerprint attribute computes the match between the attribute response at known - and unknown locations; Match Delta and Delta Resample attributes, respectively compute and apply, dynamic time-shifts to correct mismatches between angle stacks and 4D stacks; Position, Reference and Mathematics attributes chained together enable construction of powerful filters and attributes.

    Presentation Maker.This Python utility is a huge time saver for presenting your work. It automatically creates PowerPoint presentations from grabbed OpendTect images.

    RGB Spectral Decomposition
    GeoTiffExport by Wayne Mogg

    Free 3rd Party Plugins

    A number of open-source plugins that are developed and supported by 3rd party software developers are nowadays released with OpendTect. The following plugins are released free-of-charge:

    • Colop: a wavelet shaping utility by Péter Zahuczki to for spectral bluing, whitening and colored inversion
    • WMplugins by Wayne Mogg, includes:
      • AVOAttrib calculates 6 attributes based on different parameterizations of reflection intercept and gradient
      • AVOPolarAttrib calculates 6 attributes derived from AVO Polarization in the AVO Intercept-Gradient crossplot
      • ExternalAttrib allows attributes to be developed in a scripting language like Python
      • GeopackageDisplay displays lines and polylines from a Geopackage database file over an OpendTect 3D horizon
      • GeopackageExport exports OpendTect data to a GeoPackage database
      • GeotiffExport exports OpendTect 3D horizon and attribute data to a GeoTIFF image
      • GradientAttrib calculates inline, crossline and time/depth gradients
      • Grid 2D-3D horizon creates a 3D horizon/grid from the 2D and 3D horizon interpretation in an OpendTect survey/project
      • LocalAttrib supports spectral (time-frequency) decomposition using local attributes
      • MLVFilterAttrib applies a structure preserving Mean of Least Variance filter
      • Mistie allows creation, editing and application of a file with Z shift, phase rotations and amplitude scaling corrections for 2D and 3D seismic in an OpendTect survey/project
      • RSpecAttrib performs spectral (time-frequency) decomposition using a recursive filter
      • WMTools provides various tools to enhance OpendTect

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    Free 3rd Party Plugins