Area and volume coherence for efficient visualization of 3D scalar functions
- 1 November 1990
- journal article
- Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics
- Vol. 24 (5) , 27-33
- https://doi.org/10.1145/99308.99315
Abstract
We present an algorithm for compositing a combination of density clouds and contour surfaces used to represent a scalar function on a 3-D volume subdivided into convex polyhedra. The scalar function is interpolated between values defined at the vertices, and the polyhedra are sorted in depth before compositing. For n tetrahedra comprising a Delaunay triangulation, this sorting can always be done in O( n ) time. Since a Delaunay triangulation can be efficiently computed for scattered data points, this provides a method for visualizing such data sets. The integrals for opacity and visible intensity along a ray through a convex polyhedron are computed analytically, and this computation is coherent across the polyhedron's projected area.Keywords
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