research-article

Image-Space Visibility Ordering for Cell Projection Volume Rendering of Unstructured Data

Authors:

Claudio T. Silva,

Peter L. WilliamsAuthors Info & Claims

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Volume 10, Issue 6

Pages 695 - 707

https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2004.45

Published: 01 November 2004 Publication History

Abstract

Projection methods for volume rendering unstructured data work by projecting, in visibility order, the polyhedral cells of the mesh onto the image plane, and incrementally compositing each cell's color and opacity into the final image. Normally, such methods require an algorithm to determine a visibility order of the cells. The Meshed Polyhedra Visibility Order (MPVO) algorithm can provide such an order for convex meshes by considering the implications of local ordering relations between cells sharing a common face. However, in nonconvex meshes, one must also consider ordering relations along viewing rays which cross empty space between cells. In order to include these relations, the algorithm described in this paper, the scanning exact meshed polyhedra visibility ordering (SXMPVO) algorithm, scan-converts the exterior faces of the mesh and saves the ray-face intersections in an A-Buffer data structure which is then used for retrieving the extra ordering relations. The image which SXMPVO produces is the same as would be produced by ordering the cells exactly, even though SXMPVO does not compute an exact visibility ordering. This is because the image resolution used for computing the visibility ordering relations is the same as that which is used for the actual volume rendering and we choose our A-Buffer rays at the same sample points that are used to establish a polygon's pixel coverage during hardware scan conversion. Thus, the algorithm is image-space correct. The SXMPVO algorithm has several desirable features; among them are speed, simplicity of implementation, and no extra (i.e., with respect to MPVO) preprocessing.

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Cited By

Okuyan EGüdükbay U(2014)Direct volume rendering of unstructured tetrahedral meshes using CUDA and OpenMPThe Journal of Supercomputing10.1007/s11227-013-1004-x67:2(324-344)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11227-013-1004-x
Maximo AMarroquim RFarias R(2010)Hardware-assisted projected tetrahedraProceedings of the 12th Eurographics / IEEE - VGTC conference on Visualization10.1111/j.1467-8659.2009.01673.x(903-912)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8659.2009.01673.x
Childs HDuchaineau MMa K(2006)A scalable, hybrid scheme for volume rendering massive data setsProceedings of the 6th Eurographics conference on Parallel Graphics and Visualization10.5555/2386124.2386151(153-161)Online publication date: 11-May-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2386124.2386151
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Image-Space Visibility Ordering for Cell Projection Volume Rendering of Unstructured Data
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Computer vision
      1. Computer vision problems
        Interest point and salient region detections
  2. Computer graphics
    1. Image manipulation
    2. Rendering
2. Theory of computation
  1. Randomness, geometry and discrete structures
    1. Random projections and metric embeddings

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cover image IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics Volume 10, Issue 6

November 2004

128 pages

ISSN:1077-2626

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Copyright © 2004.

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IEEE Educational Activities Department

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 November 2004

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Cited By

Okuyan EGüdükbay U(2014)Direct volume rendering of unstructured tetrahedral meshes using CUDA and OpenMPThe Journal of Supercomputing10.1007/s11227-013-1004-x67:2(324-344)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11227-013-1004-x
Maximo AMarroquim RFarias R(2010)Hardware-assisted projected tetrahedraProceedings of the 12th Eurographics / IEEE - VGTC conference on Visualization10.1111/j.1467-8659.2009.01673.x(903-912)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8659.2009.01673.x
Childs HDuchaineau MMa K(2006)A scalable, hybrid scheme for volume rendering massive data setsProceedings of the 6th Eurographics conference on Parallel Graphics and Visualization10.5555/2386124.2386151(153-161)Online publication date: 11-May-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2386124.2386151
Govindaraju NHenson MLin MManocha DLastra AOlano MLuebke DPfister H(2005)Interactive visibility ordering and transparency computations among geometric primitives in complex environmentsProceedings of the 2005 symposium on Interactive 3D graphics and games10.1145/1053427.1053435(49-56)Online publication date: 3-Apr-2005
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1053427.1053435
Callahan SIkits MComba JSilva C(2005)Hardware-Assisted Visibility Sorting for Unstructured Volume RenderingIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2005.4611:3(285-295)Online publication date: 1-May-2005
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TVCG.2005.46

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