Installing the Orfeo Toolbox in QGIS

Here are some resources that answer your question:

http://wiki.orfeo-toolbox.org/index.php/Quantum_GIS_plugins

http://osgeo-org.1803224.n2.nabble.com/Is-there-a-way-of-installing-the-qgis-plugin-for-ORFEO-Toolbox-OTB-td5963420.html

The right way is to install the new analysis framework and then the (new) plugins for Orfeo (and SAGA).

Announcement and instructions:

http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-user/2011-October/013923.html

Figured I'd leave this answer in case someone sees it now. It seems like they've cleaned this up since it was asked, and that old wiki doesn't link well to the current website:

https://www.orfeo-toolbox.org/download/

There are full installation instructions as well here https://www.orfeo-toolbox.org/CookBook/Installation.html where they have downloadable install scripts to run.

If you are using ubuntu, you can also do

sudo apt install aptitude
sudo aptitude install add-apt-repository
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable
sudo aptitude install otb-bin otb-bin-qt python-otb

This was the thing that worked for me after 30 minutes of trying a full build from source.

This is how I installed it on Windows 8.1 running QGIS 2.18.16:

• Download zip file for Windows 64bit version from https://www.orfeo-toolbox.org/download/
• Unzipped it to a sensible location (i.e. not a temporary location)
• Start QGIS
• Go to menu option Processing > Options
• Expand Providers > Orfeo Toolbox
• For OTB application folder set the value to be the folder path to the bin folder, for example if you have unzipped the download to c:scratch then the bin folder would be C:ScratchOTB-6.4.0-Win64bin
• Set the OTB command line tools folder to the same bin folder
• Press OK
• If you get a Wrong value error message about a msys folder you then need to go to Providers > Grass Commands and clear the value in Msys folder, this is some sort of bug in QGIS.
• Restart QGIS

IMPORTANT: Folder path must not have spaces, so c:Program Files will not work!

This approach got it working but I have not fully tested all the functionality. The reason is that I was interested in a specific function that it had.

Since QGIS 3.8, the OTB provider plugin is part of QGIS core but disabled by default (enable it under Options->Processing->Providers). Install OTB (download from https://www.orfeo-toolbox.org/download/) before enabling the plugin.

Prior to QGIS 3.8, install OTB and add the plugin repository http://orfeo-toolbox.org/qgis/plugins.xml (detailed steps at https://gitlab.orfeo-toolbox.org/orfeotoolbox/qgis-otb-plugin) for the OTB provider plugin.

Example plugin settings on Windows:

Activate: (check the box)
OTB application folder: C:/OTB-6.6.1-Win64/lib/otb/applications
OTB folder: C:/OTB-6.6.1-Win64

I tried installing Orfeo Toolbox in QGIS on Mac and struggled a lot but eventually managed it. Here's how for any beginners confused by terminology:

https://www.orfeo-toolbox.org/download/ (download MacOS)

Make sure the file does not end in .txt, if it does, remove this so it just ends in .run

Go to terminal and run these commands:

chmod +x OTB-7.2.0-Darwin64.run

./OTB-7.2.0-Darwin64.run

(Making sure that the file path is correct). This will unpack the file.

Then go to QGIS, processing, processing options. Click on the providers drop down menu, and select otb. Tick the activate box.

Then input the file path name of the otb application folder (will probably be something like /lib/otb/applications)

Then input the file path name of the otb folder in otb folder.

Press OK and you're done!