Visualization of Structured Nonuniform Grids
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Although graphics hardware is well suited to accelerate texture-based volume rendering methods for volume visualization of uniform grids, hardware acceleration is less easily exploited for texture-based volume rendering more complex meshes. Meteorological simulation and measurement data are gridded according to the requirements of the simulation and/or the measurement system. Therefore, an intermediate resampling step is often necessary for texture-based volume rendering, eliminating any potential benefits offered by the original grid structure and often introducing resampling errors. This article presents a novel, texture-based volume rendering architecture applicable to many nonuniform meshes, which avoids the need for resampling or for the visibility sorting typically required for tetrahedral meshes. Advanced lighting methods in texture-based volume rendering improve the perception of 3D structure in the volume. Functional approximations of the mapping from world space to computational space, performed per-fragment on programmable graphics hardware, allows application of these advanced techniques to many important grids in meteorological research at interactive rates.
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Index Terms:
weather visualization, grid structures, volume rendering, volume visualization
Citation:
Kirk Riley, Yuyan Song, Martin Kraus, David S. Ebert, Jason J. Levit, "Visualization of Structured Nonuniform Grids," IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 46-55, Jan./Feb. 2006, doi:10.1109/MCG.2006.25
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