Realistic Illumination for Scalar Field and Vector Field Visualization

Florida State University, Tallahassee FL

Investigators

Abstract

Computer graphics has made great advances in producing realism and detail in synthetic scenes, yet these techniques have not been applied to scientific visualization. A realistic-looking 3D scene is immediately and viscerally apprehended, which promotes understanding of its contents. Fidelity of shading is important to a person viewing an already-familiar architectural environment. Such fidelity is even more important for a person viewing the complicated and unfamiliar geometry of isosurfaces and field lines that reveal the features in a dataset resulting from computational simulation or from physical measurement. This project will develop global illumination techniques for isosurfaces and field lines in 3D data, with applications to medical data and engineering data.