Visualization of vector fields using seed LIC and volume rendering

Line integral convolution (LIC) is a powerful texture-based technique for visualizing vector fields. Due to the high computational expense of generating 3D textures and the difficulties of effectively displaying the result, LIC has most commonly been used to depict vector fields in 2D or over a surface in 3D. We propose new methods for more effective volume visualization of three-dimensional vector fields using LIC: 1) we present a fast method for computing volume LIC textures that exploits the sparsity of the input texture. 2) We propose the use of a shading technique, called limb darkening, to reveal the depth relations among the field lines. The shading effect is obtained simply by using appropriate transfer functions and, therefore, avoids using expensive shading techniques. 3) We demonstrate how two-field visualization techniques can be used to enhance the visual information describing a vector field. The volume LIC textures are rendered using texture-based rendering techniques, which allows interactive exploration of a vector field.     

Interactive visualization of three-dimensional vector fields with flexible appearance control

In this paper, we present an interactive texture-based algorithm for visualizing three-dimensional steady and unsteady vector fields. The goal of the algorithm is to provide a general volume rendering framework allowing the user to compute three-dimensional flow textures interactively and to modify the appearance of the visualization on the fly. To achieve our goal, we decouple the visualization pipeline into two disjoint stages. First, flow lines are generated from the 3D vector data. Various geometric properties of the flow paths are extracted and converted into a volumetric form using a hardware-assisted slice sweeping algorithm. In the second phase of the algorithm, the attributes stored in the volume are used as texture coordinates to look up an appearance texture to generate both informative and aesthetic representations of the vector field. Our algorithm allows the user to interactively navigate through different regions of interest in the underlying field and experiment with various appearance textures. With our algorithm, visualizations with enhanced structural perception using various visual cues can be rendered in real time. A myriad of existing geometry-based and texture-based visualization techniques can also be emulated.     

Visualization of vorticity and vortices in wall-bounded turbulent flows

This study was initiated by the scientifically interesting prospect of applying advanced visualization techniques to gain further insight into various spatio-temporal characteristics of turbulent flows. The ability to study complex kinematical and dynamical features of turbulence provides means of extracting the underlying physics of turbulent fluid motion. The objective is to analyze the use of a vorticity field line approach to study numerically generated incompressible turbulent flows. In order to study the vorticity field, we present a field line animation technique which uses a specialized particle advection and seeding strategy. Efficient analysis is achieved by decoupling the rendering stage from the preceding stages of the visualization method. This allows interactive exploration of multiple fields simultaneously, which sets the stage for a more complete analysis of the flow field. Multifield visualizations are obtained using a flexible volume rendering framework which is presented in this paper. Vorticity field lines have been employed as indicators to provide a means to identify "ejection" and "sweep" regions; two particularly important spatio-temporal events in wall-bounded turbulent flows. Their relation to the rate of turbulent kinetic energy production and viscous dissipation, respectively, have been identified.     

Stochastic Volume Rendering of Multi‐Phase SPH Data

In this paper, we present a novel method for the direct volume rendering of large smoothed‐particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation data without transforming the unstructured data to an intermediate representation. By directly visualizing the unstructured particle data, we avoid long preprocessing times and large storage requirements. This enables the visualization of large, time‐dependent, and multivariate data both as a post‐process and in situ. To address the computational complexity, we introduce stochastic volume rendering that considers only a subset of particles at each step during ray marching. The sample probabilities for selecting this subset at each step are thereby determined both in a view‐dependent manner and based on the spatial complexity of the data. Our stochastic volume rendering enables us to scale continuously from a fast, interactive preview to a more accurate volume rendering at higher cost. Lastly, we discuss the visualization of free‐surface and multi‐phase flows by including a multi‐material model with volumetric and surface shading into the stochastic volume rendering.     

Fast display of illuminated field lines

A new technique for interactive vector field visualization using large numbers of properly illuminated field lines is presented. Taking into account ambient, diffuse and specular reflection terms, as well as transparency and depth cueing, we employ a realistic shading model which significantly increases the quality and realism of the resulting images. While many graphics workstations offer hardware support for illuminating surface primitives, usually no means for an accurate shading of line primitives are provided. However, we show that proper illumination of lines can be implemented by exploiting the texture mapping capabilities of modern graphics hardware. In this way, high rendering performance with interactive frame rates can be achieved. We apply the technique to render large numbers of integral curves of a vector field. The impression of the resulting images can be further improved by a number of visual enhancements, like color coding or particle animation. We also describe methods for controlling the distribution of field lines in space. These methods enable us to use illuminated field lines for interactive exploration of vector fields     

A particle system for interactive visualization of 3D flows

We present a particle system for interactive visualization of steady 3D flow fields on uniform grids. For the amount of particles we target, particle integration needs to be accelerated and the transfer of these sets for rendering must be avoided. To fulfill these requirements, we exploit features of recent graphics accelerators to advect particles in the graphics processing unit (GPU), saving particle positions in graphics memory, and then sending these positions through the GPU again to obtain images in the frame buffer. This approach allows for interactive streaming and rendering of millions of particles and it enables virtual exploration of high resolution fields in a way similar to real-world experiments. The ability to display the dynamics of large particle sets using visualization options like shaded points or oriented texture splats provides an effective means for visual flow analysis that is far beyond existing solutions. For each particle, flow quantities like vorticity magnitude and A2 are computed and displayed. Built upon a previously published GPU implementation of a sorting network, visibility sorting of transparent particles is implemented. To provide additional visual cues, the GPU constructs and displays visualization geometry like particle lines and stream ribbons.     

Vector Fields: an Interactive Tool for Animation, Modeling and Simulation with Physically Based 3D Particle Systems and Soft Objects

Vectorfields have traditionally been used in computer graphics as a means of visualizing models over time. This paper presents a system which extends the use of vector fields as an interactive tool for physically based three dimensional particle systems and soft objects. The techniques implemented in the system provide the user with new flexibility in animation, modeling and simulation. This paper describes bounded interactive vectorfields and how they can be used to manipulate particle systems and a class of soft objects. Applications to animation, modeling and simulation are also presented.     

Animation of orthogonal texture patterns for vector field visualization

This paper introduces orthogonal vector field visualization on 2D manifolds: a representation by lines that are perpendicular to the input vector field. Line patterns are generated by line integral convolution (LIC). This visualization is combined with animation based on motion along the vector field. This decoupling of the line direction from the direction of animation allows us to choose the spatial frequencies along the direction of motion independently from the length scales along the LIC line patterns. Vision research indicates that local motion detectors are tuned to certain spatial frequencies of textures, and the above decoupling enables us to generate spatial frequencies optimized for motion perception. Furthermore, we introduce a combined visualization that employs orthogonal LIC patterns together with conventional, tangential streamline LIC patterns in order to benefit from the advantages of these two visualization approaches. In addition, a filtering process is described to achieve a consistent and temporally coherent animation of orthogonal vector field visualization. Different filter kernels and filter methods are compared and discussed in terms of visualization quality and speed. We present respective visualization algorithms for 2D planar vector fields and tangential vector fields on curved surfaces, and demonstrate that those algorithms lend themselves to efficient and interactive GPU implementations.     

实时的2D不稳定流场可视化算法

为了提高不稳定流场可视化结果的绘制质量和绘制速度,提出一种基于平流技术与纹理混合的不稳定流场可视化改进算法。算法分别通过图像平流来获得流场动画的时间一致性,通过质点平流来获得流场动画单帧图像的空间一致性,最后通过纹理混合使流场动画的时间、空间一致性统一起来。通过这种方式获得的流场动画纹理细节清晰、帧间过渡平滑,绘制速度较快,具有较高的时间、空间一致性,可以准确地反映不稳定流场的动态变化。     

Autonomous Particles for Interactive Flow Visualization

We present an interactive approach to analyse flow fields using a new type of particle system, which is composed of autonomous particles exploring the flow. While particles provide a very intuitive way to visualize flows, it is a challenge to capture the important features with such systems. Particles tend to cluster in regions of low velocity and regions of interest are often sparsely populated. To overcome these disadvantages, we propose an automatic adaption of the particle density with respect to local importance measures. These measures are user defined and the systems sensitivity to them can be adjusted interactively. Together with the particle history, these measures define a probability for particles to multiply or die, respectively. There is no communication between the particles and no neighbourhood information has to be maintained. Thus, the particles can be handled in parallel and support a real‐time investigation of flow fields. To enhance the visualization, the particles' properties and selected field measures are also used to specify the systems rendering parameters, such as colour and size. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on different simulated vector fields from technical and medical applications.     

增强型IBFV 2维矢量场可视化算法

提出一种基于质点平流的增强型IBFV可视化算法,可显著增加IBFV算法生成图像的对比度。首先通过质点平流获得一系列的矢量纹理;然后将这些矢量纹理作为IBFV算法中的背景图像,代替原来的噪声纹理与帧缓存中的纹理进行图像混合生成新图。通过这种方式不仅可以准确反映流场的动态变化,而且增强了矢量线间的对比,同时还可以获得较高的绘制速度。     

Interactive volume rendering of large fields

We first present the volume-rendering pipeline and the most typical of the existing methods for each pipeline stage. The complexity of each stage in terms of computing time is analyzed for each method. Then the demands and the scope of interactive volume rendering are briefly summarized. Based on this analysis we examine alternate solutions to optimize each pipeline stage in order to allow interactive visualization while maintaining the image quality. The proposed method maximizes interactive manipulation possibilities and minimizes runtimes by sampling at the Nyquist rate and by flexibly trading off quality for performance at any pipeline level. Our approach is suitable for rendering large, scalar, discrete volume fields such as semitransparent clouds (or X-rays) on the fly.     

Lagrangian-Eulerian advection of noise and dye textures for unsteady flow visualization

A new hybrid scheme, called Lagrangian-Eulerian advection (LEA), that combines the advantages of the Eulerian and Lagrangian frameworks is applied to the visualization of dense representations of time-dependent vector fields. The algorithm encodes the particles into a texture that is then advected. By treating every particle equally, we can handle texture advection and dye advection within a single framework. High temporal and spatial correlation is achieved through the blending of successive frames. A combination of particle and dye advection enables the simultaneous visualization of streamlines, particle paths and streak-lines. We demonstrate various experimental techniques on several physical flow fields. The simplicity of both the resulting data structures and the implementation suggest that LEA could become a useful component of any scientific visualization toolkit concerned with the display of unsteady flows.     

Three ways to show 3D fluid flow

Visualizing 3D fluid flow fields presents a challenge to scientific visualization, mainly because no natural visual representation of 3D vector fields exists. We can readily recognize geometric objects, color, and texture: unfortunately for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) researchers, vector fields are harder to grasp. Thus, we must construct simplified representations that human observers can understand. Simplification means focusing on relevant aspects of the flow. This offers many options, making a wide variety of flow visualization techniques both feasible and desirable. This article presents an overview of three different visualization techniques developed in the Netherlands. The three useful techniques for visualizing 3D flows are: implicit stream surfaces, turbulent particle animation, and a flow probe     

Interactive exploration of tensor fields in geosciences using volume rendering

Volume rendering methods enable the user to explore interactively scalar data on regularly spaced three-dimensional grids. This article discusses how to use this method to explore and analyse three-dimensional tensor fields. The proposed visualization makes use of the programmability of modern graphics hardware and of “Line Integral Convolution”, a texture-based technique for the visualization of vector fields. While an example from geomechanics is used for presentation purposes, the rendering methods introduced are generic and would suit other application areas that involve volumetric data with several attributes equally well.     

Using motion to illustrate static 3D shape-kinetic visualization

In this paper, we present a novel visualization technique-kinetic visualization-that uses motion along a surface to aid in the perception of 3D shape and structure of static objects. The method uses particle systems, with rules such that particles flow over the surface of an object to not only bring out, but also attract attention to information on a shape that might not be readily visible with a conventional rendering method which uses lighting and view changes. Replacing still images with animations in this fashion, we demonstrate with both surface and volumetric models in the accompanying videos that, in many cases, the resulting visualizations effectively enhance the perception of three-dimensional shape and structure. We also describe how, for both types of data, a texture-based representation of this motion can be used for interactive visualization using PC graphics hardware. Finally, the results of a user study that we have conducted are presented, which show evidence that the supplemental motion cues can be helpful.     

A new line integral convolution algorithm for visualizingtime-varying flow fields

New challenges on vector field visualization emerge as time dependent numerical simulations become ubiquitous in the field of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). To visualize data generated from these simulations, traditional techniques, such as displaying particle traces, can only reveal flow phenomena in preselected local regions and thus, are unable to track the evolution of global flow features over time. The paper presents an algorithm, called UFLIC (Unsteady Flow LIC), to visualize vector data in unsteady flow fields. Our algorithm extends a texture synthesis technique, called Line Integral Convolution (LIC), by devising a new convolution algorithm that uses a time-accurate value scattering scheme to model the texture advection. In addition, our algorithm maintains the coherence of the flow animation by successively updating the convolution results over time. Furthermore, we propose a parallel UFLIC algorithm that can achieve high load balancing for multiprocessor computers with shared memory architecture. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our new algorithm by presenting image snapshots from several CFD case studies     

基于微分的增强型三维矢量场可视化

为提高3D矢量场可视化效果,提出了一种基于微分滤波的流线增强方法。首先对三维纹理进行线性卷积运算,生成具有空间相关性的卷积纹理;其次对卷积纹理进行分数阶微分滤波,增强流线之间强度对比;最后采用纹理映射体绘制技术实现三维矢量场可视化,并通过设计体绘制的传输函数来显示矢量场的内部结构。实验结果表明,该方法有效地增强了流线间的对比,使绘制的流线更加平滑,同时也有效地消除了卷积数据过多引起的紊乱与相互遮挡。     

基于时间延迟的矢量场可视化方法的应用研究

矢量场可视化是科学计算可视化中最具有挑战性的研究课题之一。该文提出了一种基于时间延迟逐步生成、绘制和显示流线的方法，从而把稳定的二维矢量场的拓扑结构、方向、速度等特征以动画的形式显示出来。实验证明此方法简单、直观、形象。     

Tabu search algorithm combined with global perturbation for packing arbitrary sized circles into a circular container

It is important for the rapid visualization of large scale forest scene to dynamically simplify and recombine model data. In order to preserve the geometric features and visual perception of tree model, this paper presents a real-time information recombination method of complex 3D tree model based on visual perception. This method adopts visual attention model and the visual characteristic of tree structures, and then uses geometry-based and image-based methods to simplify tree models and construct a hybrid representation model. The hybrid representation model reflects the visual perception features of 3D tree models that can embody topological semantics in dynamic simulation. In addition, this method automatically extracts the representation information of 3D tree model based on visual perception, and recombines model information in real time according to the dynamic viewpoint of virtual scene. Finally, this method is applied in the simplification of different tree models, and it is compared with the existing tree model simplification methods. Experimental results show that this method can not only preserve better visual perception for 3D tree models, but also effectively decrease the geometric data of forest scene, and improve the rendering efficiency of forest scene.