Hierarchical molecular modelling with ellipsoids

Protein and DNA structures are represented at varying levels of details using ellipsoidal RGBA textured splats. The splat texture at each level is generated by rendering its children in a hierarchical model, from a distribution of viewing directions, and averaging the result. For rendering, the ellipsoids to be used are chosen adaptively, depending on the distance to the viewpoint. This technique is applied to visualize DNA coiling around nucleosomes in chromosomes.