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Iso-splattingA Point-based Alternative to Isosurface VisualizationAuthors: Christopher S. Co, Bernd Hamann, Kenneth I. Joy Email: csco "at" ucdavis.edu |
Description
Isosurface visualization serves as a useful form of volume visualization, both as a stand-alone technique and as a method used to supplement further visualizations. Isosurfaces also play an important role in geometric modeling. Iso-splatting is a geometry-based technique for isosurface visualization that, unlike many other geometry-based techniques, uses points instead of triangles to represent and render an isosurface of interest. The real power of the method comes from the fact that the extraction stage in iso-splatting is split into two distinct processes, which, in turn, can be performed at various stages to make optimal use of CPU, storage, and rendering resources.
Publication
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Iso-splatting: A Point-based Alternative to Isosurface Visualization C.S. Co, B. Hamann, K.I. Joy Pacific Graphics 2003, October 2003 Paper | Slides | Slide Video 1 | Slide Video 2 | Slide Video 3 | Video (36.6 MB) | Bibtex (Download the Indeo 5 codec here) Abstract: We present a new approach to isosurface visualization that we call iso-splatting. We use point primitives for representing and rendering isosurfaces. The method consists of two steps. In the first step, point samples are generated throughout the volumetric domain of a scalar function. In the second step, these points are projected onto the isosurface of interest. We render the resulting point set using a surface splatting algorithm. The method can be extended to out-of-core or parallel environments. Our results show that this method can offer much greater time and space efficiency when compared with standard triangle-based methods, thereby supporting higher levels of interactivity. Parts of the algorithm can be accelerated using graphics hardware. One key advantage of this approach is that, since extraction computations are divided into two smaller phases, work can be distributed to exploit all available resources. |
Images
Illustration of the Approach
Side-by-side Comparison: Marching Cubes vs. Iso-splatting
Data-sets used in the Timing Experiment
Out-of-core Iso-splatting
